Soviet Union

The **Union of Soviet Socialist Republics**, more commonly known as the **Soviet Union** or the **USSR**, is a Marxist-Leninist Socialist superstate in Eurasia, stretching from the Pacific to the Baltic Sea. It shares a naval border with the Yakuza State. The USSR shares a border with China and Korea towards the Siberian south, Iran, Sindistan and India in Central Asia, Turkey and the puppets of Romania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia to the southwest. They also share a border with their rivals USSS and Germany to the west, and also borders Canada from their Alaskan territory. Spanning over 27 Million square kilometers, it is the largest country in the entire world.

The Soviet Union is considered by many to be the heart of the Soviet Empire, and is the leader in military and industry. However, recent events have placed a dent on the Soviet economy and technological development. The USSR also leads the Warsaw Pact, and is the founder of the Comintern, the successor to the United Nations. By 1984, the USSR is stuck at an ideological cold war against the Europeans and the Chinese, all trying to rule to world with their own brand of communism.

## History

The **Soviet Union** arose from the ruins of the former Russian Empire, and after fending off against Nazi Germany in World War II, they found themselves becoming a superpower, rivaling the United States. Paranoid that the United States will eventually invade the Soviet Union, Stalin began funding communist rebels across Britain and America, in hopes of directly turning their biggest enemies to communism. After Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev took control of the USSR, and immediately enacted a series of reforms to make the Soviet Union more friendly to the outside world, and to remove the cult of personality Stalin has built in a process called De-Stalinization.

When the communist rebels Stalin had funded in Britain and America rose up in 1954, the USSR were more hands-off on their approach to the rebellion in the beginning, pretending that they have never contacted them. Khrushchev's doctrine of "peaceful coexistence" also initally prevented an all-out war against the Americans, but by 1956, members of the Politburo like Leonid Brezhnev and Vyacheslav Molotov are pressuring Khrushchev to seize the chance of America being kept busy by their ongoing civil war, and attack NATO now to achieve global domination. Khrushchev ultimately agreed to, and in 1957, the USSR and her allies invaded Western Europe, starting World War III.

Towards the end of World War III, Molotov and Georgy Zhukov suggested that Khrushchev should build the new Palace of the Soviets, as a symbol of the trimph of communism. Despite inital doubts, Khrushchev eventually decided to build it exactly where the original one was going to stand, but he also decides to change the design of the building to remove any connotations with Stalinist arcitecture. The plan was approved in October 1960, and the construction began at the start of 1961. The Soviets also scaled down their military size post-WW3, as they focuses on getting a man on the moon.

Despite the victory of World War III however, many people of the Politburo were not happy about Khrushchev's reluctance to declare war on NATO when they had the chance, as well as his general policies, now being deemed incompetent by many Soviet officials. And so, Leonid Breznhev overthrew him in late 1961, just weeks before the vote will be made on whether to build the Palace of the Soviets. The final straw for Khrushchev came in September 1961, when he attempted to sell weapons to the United States, which was deemed unacceptable by Brezhnev himself. Now the new leader of the Soviet Union. Brezhnev's early reign would witness the Soviet Union enter their golden age in the 1960's, with the Palace of the Soviets opening in parts between 1970 and 1973, and with the Soviets landing on the moon in 1968, while also establishing the Salyut Space Stations in 1971.

Starting in the early 70's however, Breznhev's conservative policies became too much for many foreign governments, and as a result, the Franco-Soviet Split occured in 1971, followed by a brief Sino-Soviet War in 1972, which saw a few hundred Soviet deaths. The 1970's saw the Soviet Union enter into a slow political and economical decline, as they began to lose influence across the globe due to new variants of communism appearing. The French fully realized their idea of Eurocommunism, while the Chinese developed the Chinese Way of Socialism, nicknamed "Chinsoc" by most outsider as a nod to Ingsoc, or English Socialism. After a popular revolution in Pakistan, the USSR invaded it with Iran and Afghanistan, before forcing Afghanistan to join the USSR in 1975. To Brezhnev's credit though, they did redrew the boundries to ensure that there is as little divisions among the Afghan ethnic groups, though this wasn't enough to prevent a Taliban uprising in 1979.

By the time the USSR invaded Hokkiado in 1980 to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Yakuza, the nation is starting to fall behind their communist rivals France and Germany in the space race, with the new Marx-Jaures Europa Space Station (named after Karl Marx and Jean Jaures, two of the most famous communist leaders in the history of Germany and France) being completed in 1982, compared to the Soviets' Mir Space Station, which is still under construction by 1984. The USSR even began to fall behind economically behind the United States, who are fighting a seemingly never ending war against Oceania. Brezhnev died in 1982, and was succeeded by Yuri Andropov. Andropov attempted to regroup the Soviet Union by slightly loosening the state-controlled economy and cracking down on corruption, as well as attempting to prevent an uprising in the Polish SSR.

The decline of the Soviet economy, combined with Andropov's chronically poor health, further worsened the Soviet Union's political and economical situation, and when Andropov suddenly died in February 1984, a relatively young and progressive member of the Politburo named Mikhail Gorbachev was the favourite to take over. However, others casted their doubts, and gave the job of the General Secutary of the Soviet Union to a sickly Konstantin Chernenko. Just months into the job however, he is quickly proving to be both too old and too ill to properly rule the Soviet Union. The instability at the halls of the Palace of the Soviets could turn the tides of the entire world, and it is a matter of when, not if, will the USSR have to select another new leader. Will Gorbachev finally be trusted with the job of leading the superpower? Will it be Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet foreign minister who has far more experience than Gorbachev? Or will it be Nikolai Tikhonov, the Soviet Premier since 1980? Perhaps it might not even be these three, but who knows...