Soviet Union

The Soviet Union, officially known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was a union of countries in northern Eurasia. Founded in 1922, it was governed as a single-party state until its dissolution on December 26, 1991. Its capital was Moscow. 
==History==
===Birth of Zhores Alferov===
Vitebsk was the birthplace of , who grew up to become a renowned scientist, father of hetero-structure transistors, and Nobel Prize winner.Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: 1.04: Eye-Spy
===Training Child Assassins===
In 1937, the girl who would assume the identity of Dottie Underwood was one of the many girls that lived and were trained as elite spies and assassins in the Red Room Academy.
Every morning, one of her instructors entered the room and opened the handcuffs that tied each girl to her bed. One of those mornings, Underwood shared a piece of bread she managed to hide with one of her friends, Anya.
The girls were taken to a room modeled after a typical American classroom, where the girls were indoctrinated and brainwashed through films they were forced to watch and learn by heart. The films, such as served a double purpose, as they showed the behavior a woman should show to not raise any suspicions, and also, through subliminal messages embedded in the movies, they brainwashed the girls.
One day, Underwood and Anya had to fight each other as part of their training under the watch of her instructor. Despite it looked like an even match at first, Underwood managed to overpower Anya and grabbed her through the neck. With a gesture, her instructor ordered Underwood to kill her friend, and she subsequently broke her neck.Agent Carter: 1.05: The Iron Ceiling
===World War II===
====HYDRA Desertion====
In 1943, Johann Schmidt and his HYDRA division went rogue, separating themselves from the Nazi regime. According to one of HYDRA's maps, the Soviet Union was among the European countries planned to be invaded following the destruction of the United States.
====Emergency Surgery====
In 1943, Doctor Johann Fennhoff rested nearby a Soviet campaign hospital reading a book, when he was suddenly approached by one of the surgeons, who asked for his assistance. Fennhoff did not understand how could he help him in a surgery procedure, given he was specialized in psychiatry. The surgeon explained that the nurses had told him about Fennhoff's talent, and how he could numb a man's mind to make him feel no pain.
Fennhoff explained that he had never attempted the technique during an operation, but the surgeon assured him it was the last option he had, as he had used all their supplies of anesthetic, and he needed to amputate the leg of young Private Ovechkin, or else he would die of an infection. The surgeon then asked Fennhoff if he would help him save Ovechkin's life.
Fennhoff hypnotized Ovechkin, asking him about his life before the war, and Ovechkin began to think about the picnic he had with his mother the day before he left, playing chess and trying to make the game last forever. While Ovechkin was hypnotized, the surgeon and his nurses began the procedure to amputate Ovechkin's leg.
Fennhoff told Ovechkin to pay no attention to them, and to focus on the game and his mother, assuring him that he could stay in that day as long as he wanted, but he must focus on it. Ovechkin continued explaining how his mother surrendered the game, as she felt that her son could not stop time, and then they walked in order to speak of the future and what they would do when he returned to his home.
Fennhoff congratulated Ovechkin and, with a gesture, told the surgeons to start cutting Ovechkin's leg, as he was now fully hypnotized and could not feel any pain despite his leg was being cut with a saw.Agent Carter: 1.07: SNAFU
===Johann Fennhoff's Recruitment===
In 1944, a group of four men, including Johann Fennhoff, were kidnapped and taken to a covert facility. Inside, a woman removed their hoods and a Russian Officer named Fyodor congratulated them for having been selected to Leviathan, something they should consider an honor.
Fyodor acknowledged that they would soon know the glory of devoting your life to what he called "a greater good", but he offered them the chance to decline. Pasha, one of these men, claimed that he had a wife and four daughters that needed him, and Fyodor acknowledged that he would like to be with his family. Fyodor subsequently ordered the woman to release Pasha, and she used a knife to stab Pasha on the throat.
Fyodor told the rest that his family would join him soon, and asked the other three men if any of them wished to reunite with their loved ones.Agent Carter: 1.06: A Sin to Err
===United States Embassy===
Jack Thompson contacted a man who met in primary school that had been destined to the United States embassy in Moscow, in order to search for Leet Brannis, one of the main suspects in their search for Howard Stark and his technology.
Thompson's contact discovered that Brannis was a member of the Soviet 478th Rifle Division during World War II, and that the entire battalion was wiped out during the battle of Finow in Germany. The contact informed Thompson that Brannis was declared deceased in 1944 with the rest of his battalion.
Thompson contacted him again to determine if the man whose hotel room key was found near the Brannis' corpse was also Russian, and the contact managed to identify him as Sasha Demidov, another member of the Soviet 478th Rifle Division that was declared deceased but turned out to have survived.Agent Carter: 1.03: Time and Tide
===Infiltrating the Soviet Union===
The Howling Commandos acted as a tactical team for a Strategic Scientific Reserve team led by Jack Thompson that included Peggy Carter. Thompson tried to cross the Soviet border from Poland, but Dum Dum Dugan, knowing the terrain much better than him, proposed to head to Lithuania and cross the border through the city of Ashmyany in Belarus.
Dugan showed Thompson a pair of trucks they would use to travel through Lithuania and Belarus, and boarded one of them with Carter to talk to her friend while crossing the countries.
===Stories Around the Fire===
Peggy Carter, her Strategic Scientific Reserve team and the Howling Commandos camped in Belarus after crossing the Soviet border, so he spent a time laughing with her friends around a fire. Jack Thompson and Junior Juniper returned from their watch, stating that Mike Li and Rick Ramirez were going to do the night watch, so they would depart by dawn.
Carter asked Juniper if he saw an abominable snowman like the one in Tibet, and Juniper stated that he never said he saw an "abominable snowman". Pinky Pinkerton explained that Juniper specified he saw a "yeti", though Dum Dum Dugan laughed saying that it was hard to understand Juniper while he was sobbing.
Thompson asked the difference between a yeti and an abominable snowman, and Juniper said that one was real and the other was not, making the rest laugh. Carter asked Thompson if they had mermaids in Japan, as he had been destined there during World War II. The Commandos wanted Thompson to share one of his stories, and he aid that he did a lot of ground work and especially he dug a lot of trenches.
Carter then pointed that he surely did not receive the Navy Cross for digging trenches. Thompson remained thoughtful about the Navy Cross, and shared a story about how he discovered six Japanese soldiers while he fell asleep on the night shift, and one of them would have killed his commanding officer, so he shot the six soldiers in the back before they knew they were there.
Visibly disturbed for the memory, Thompson said that he preferred Juniper's story about the Yeti, and drank a sip of Dugan's bourbon.
===Infiltration into the Red Room Academy===
====Preparation====
Peggy Carter, her Strategic Scientific Reserve team and the Howling Commandos arrived to the outskirts of the Red Room Academy, the place where, according to the coded message sent by Leviathan, an exchange between them and Howard Stark would take place.
Jack Thompson examined the place before entering and determined that Leviathan probably had not arrived yet, and ordered to infiltrate the facility in four teams of two, meeting on the ground floor in 30. Happy Sam Sawyer sought Carter's approval of the plan, and she explained that Thompson was leading the operation.
Thompson told Carter to voice her plan, and she explained that using two teams of four instead of four teams of two would be safer, secretly knowing the message was just a bait for them. She explained the need of discretion as they did not know what to expect inside the facility.
Thompson agreed with her plan, and divided them into two groups, one led by Carter and composed of Dum Dum Dugan, Junior Juniper and Mike Li, and the other one led by Thompson and composed of Happy Sam Sawyer, Pinky Pinkerton and Rick Ramirez.
The two teams then infiltrated the academy to investigate the presence of Stark or Leviathan.
====Boarding School====
Peggy Carter, Dum Dum Dugan, Junior Juniper and Mike Li infiltrated together the Red Room Academy, and they examined a room modeled after a typical American classroom that made them all feel uneasy.
Li unintentionally activated a projector, and while Dugan told him to shut it off, Carter realized there was something hidden in the images. Carter started to slowly examine the projected movie frame by frame, and found subliminal messages embedded in it, with the words "Instill Fear" written in Russian. Li then heard a child crying, and wondered what was a little kid doing in that place. Carter grabbed her weapon, and told them to be careful, feeling it could be a trap.
The team entered a room filled with children's beds, and Carter realized the facility was a boarding school. Juniper wondered why there were handcuffs on each bed, and Dugan simply answered it was Russia, before noticing a little girl crying in a corner of the room.
Dugan approached the girl, Eva, and told her they were there to help and they would not hurt her. Eva stopped crying and slowly touched Dugan's bowler hat, nodding when he asked her if she liked the hat. Dugan asked Carter the reason they were called "bowler hats", and Eva seized the opportunity to quickly stab Dugan, take his gun and shoot at Juniper.
Carter managed to disarm Eva, but she was too fast and was able to escape, while Juniper died on the ground. Dugan, who managed to survive despite being stabbed, grabbed a hand grenade and attempted to throw it through the hole that Eva used to escape, but Carter stopped him from killing a little girl. Carter asked Dugan if he was all right, and explained that his Bulletproof Vest took the brunt of the stabbing, saving his life.
The second team, composed of Jack Thompson, Happy Sam Sawyer, Pinky Pinkerton and Rick Ramirez arrived to the room, and Thompson asked what had happened. Carter revealed that Leviathan would have almost certainly been alerted of their presence, so they needed to move quickly.
Dugan took Juniper's dog tags, and breathed heavily until he managed to overcome the death of his friend for the time being. Dugan told Carter they needed an exit on the back of the facility, who acknowledged that they needed to find the ones who were trying to frame Howard Stark.
Carter ordered Dugan, Pinkerton and Ramirez to find a back way out of the facility, and the rest to come with her to further investigate the bottom levels.
====Prisoners of Leviathan====
Happy Sam Sawyer killed a Leviathan soldier standing guard in a hallway, and Jack Thompson ordered him to stay at that position to alert them of any other soldier that could appear.
Thompson approached a prison cell where two prisoners were being kept, and one of them, with a heavy Russian accent, realized that they were not Leviathan. Peggy Carter told him they were the "good guys", and asked them why Leviathan was holding them as prisoners.
Doctor Viktor Ivchenko explained that Leviathan acquired a set of blueprints in the black market, and they wanted his cellmate, Nikola, to build it for them, as Nikola was an engineer and Ivchenko was his psychiatrist. Ivchenko explained that Nikola was burdened with a gift that allowed him to see things in multiple dimensions. He exemplified the gift saying that Nikola was able to see the biology and phytochemistry when looking at a simple field of grass.
Ivchenko explained that in order to keep Nikola's gift from overwhelming him, he required discipline and stability, and since Leviathan took his family, and Nikola's stability with them, he provided Nikola with the discipline he needs.
Carter asked about the weapon Leviathan wanted them to construct, and Nikola explained that it was a Photonic Amplifier. He asked Carter if she knew that light was composed of both particles and waves, something she already knew, so Nikola explained that Howard Stark had found a way of altering the behavior of the waves, showing them the blueprints with the symbol of Stark Industries.
Carter asked if Stark was there in the facility, and Nikola got angry, saying that Leviathan stole the blueprints, if Stark was there, they would not need him and he could be in Kiev with his wife. Ivchenko calmed Nikola, and asked Carter if they had entered the facility hoping to find Stark. Ivchenko also revealed he had heard no mention of Stark himself from Leviathan.
Sawyer shouted that Leviathan soldiers were coming, and Nikola begged Carter to liberate them. She told Nikola and Ivchenko to get away from the door, and she shot to its lock, breaking it and liberating the two prisoners.
====Final Shooting====
Peggy Carter, Jack Thompson, Happy Sam Sawyer and Mike Li retreated to the Boiler Room with the two prisoners they had recently liberated, Nikola and Doctor Ivchenko, to defend themselves from a squad of Leviathan soldiers that were attacking them.
Carter contacted Dum Dum Dugan to tell him they were trapped in the boiler room and needed an exit. The soldiers continued to attack them, and while the agents managed to kill some of them, they were clearly outnumbered. Carter asked Nikola and Ivchenko to show them the way out of the facility in case they knew it.
Eva appeared from inside a pipe and killed Li with a shot to the head, and while Sawyer retaliated, Eva managed to shoot him in the leg, escaping from the gunfire.
Nikola, claiming he knew what to do, took Sawyer as his hostage, and told the soldiers to hold their fire, as if they let Ivchenko and himself escape, he would handle the Americans. Carter tried to persuade Nikola, saying they would not be leverage and would die before being captured.
Thompson was paralyzed by fear and unable to move, and Ivchenko tried to calm Nikola down while grabbing a weapon. Nikola was tired of being a prisoner and did not want to hear Ivchenko, so Carter threatened to kill him in case he killed Sawyer. Before he could react, Ivchenko killed Nikola, apologizing in tears for having to do it.
A large number of soldiers arrived, so Carter contacted Dugan again to make him hurry with the exit. Sawyer ran out of ammunition, and as Carter told Thompson to take Li's ammunition, she realized that Thompson was paralyzed in fear. Carter handed Sawyer her gun to let him continue shooting, and she tried to make Thompson react, to no avail.
Dugan blasted a hole in the wall and entered the room with Pinky Pinkerton and Rick Ramirez, shouting his war cry, "Wah-hoo", though Carter told him to stop "wah-hooing" and help them. Pinkerton and Ramirez started shooting at the soldiers, and Carter ordered everybody to get out.
Thompson was still paralyzed by fear, so Carter went to his position and made him regain his senses while Dugan covered her. Dugan told Carter to leave, but she insisted on being the last one on leaving the facility. Dugan asked her what would Captain America say if he left Carter behind, and she answered that he would tell him to do as Carter said.
Dugan left and Carter shot a final wave of bullets to buy some time for her to escape. She ran to the truck that was waiting outside, covered by Pinkerton and Dugan, and she managed to jump it and avoid the enemy fire. Ivchenko, surprised by her performance, told Carter that it had not been bad for a girl, and she jokingly answered that she hated them all.
===Space Program===
The Soviet Union began to develop a series of space programs, launching rockets to space. During the first years of the program, animals, especially dogs, were sent instead of human beings to test the safety of the rockets and traveling outside Earth.
One of these dogs, named Cosmo, was lost in space, and ended up being captured by Taneleer Tivan and put in his collection.
===Imprisonment of Anton Vanko===
Siberia was the place chosen by Soviet authorities to imprison Russian physicist Anton Vanko after he was deported back to the U.S.S.R. in 1967.
The Soviet government sent him to a prison in Siberia, serving for 20 years, due to being unable to develop the Arc Reactor technology by himself, given that he developed it in the United States with Howard Stark, the man who ordered his deportation.
Vanko left Siberia and returned to Moscow following Premier Gorbachev's call for democratization in January 1987, living in poverty with his son, Ivan Vanko.
===Red Guardian===
The Soviet Union created its first known super soldier Alexei Shostakov who was dubbed the Red Guardian. He went on many missions on behalf of the Soviet Union and became a well-known figure among his people, all while gaining a rivalry with his American counterpart, Captain America, although Captain America had no knowledge of the Red Guardian.Black Widow
===Winter Soldiers===
Arnim Zola, a former Nazi scientist who worked for HYDRA, was eventually incarcerated by the Strategic Scientific Reserve towards the end of World War II. However, Sergeant Bucky Barnes, a former member of the Howling Commandos and prisoner of war whom Zola had administered with his recreated Super Soldier Serum, was captured by the Soviet Union and was held prisoner. Following Zola's release from prison, he and the Soviet Union brainwashed and tortured Barnes, turning him into a super soldier assassin known as Winter Soldier. As part of many HYDRA and Soviet operations, Barnes was sent to assassinate anyone who posed a threat to their goals. After completing his missions, his mind was frozen by HYDRA to prevent him from feeling remorse to those he killed.
===Birth of Emil Blonsky===
Russia was the birthplace of Emil Blonsky, although he was raised in England and become a member of the .
===Invasion of Afghanistan===
During the 1980s, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and established a smelting plant in Gulmira.
===Birth of Sofia===
The city of Saint Petersburg in Russia was the birthplace of the woman who would become the mercenary known as Sofia.The Avengers Prelude: Black Widow Strikes
===Birth of Natasha Romanoff===
Stalingrad is the birthplace of Natasha Romanoff, who went to become one of the world's most talented spies, first for the KGB and, eventually, for S.H.I.E.L.D..The Avengers Prelude: Fury's Big Week
===Aborted S.H.I.E.L.D. Mission===
Hank Pym, a consultant with S.H.I.E.L.D., was assigned a mission in June 1989, requiring him to go to Moscow, Russia.
===Assassinating the Starks===
In December 1991, Bucky Barnes was defrosted from a Cryostasis Chamber by HYDRA at a secret compound located in Siberia, Russia. His superior, Soviet Armed Forces Colonel Vasily Karpov, ordered him to assassinate Howard Stark and his wife Maria and to retrieve Stark's recreated Super Soldier Serum. The serum was later given to HYDRA's most elite death squad, thus converting them into Winter Soldiers. However, the new super soldiers turned on their HYDRA handlers as a result of mental instability caused by the serum, prompting HYDRA to place them in cryostasis. A few days later, the Soviet Union was officially dissolved, and HYDRA's Siberian facility was eventually abandoned.
===Dissolution===
Many of the republics that comprised the Soviet Union formally declared independence, and the Union was ultimately dissolved into several countries.
===Alternate Universes===
====Invasion of Afghanistan====
In an alternate universe, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan during the 1980s, they left behind crates of Stark Industries weapons. These were later acquired by the Ten Rings to use for their own purposes.Iron Man: Teen Novelization
==Known Leaders==
*Joseph Stalin
*Vladimir Lenin
==Post-Soviet States==
*Armenia
*Belarus
*Estonia
*Georgia
*Kazakhstan
*Latvia
*Lithuania
*Russia
*Ukraine
==References==
==External Links==
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