Soviet Union

***"Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too..." -Marcus Aurelius***

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics(USSR), was a transcontinental country spanning much of Eurasia that was formed in 30 December 1922. A flagship communist state, it is nominally a federal union. In practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until after the Great Invasion.

## Beginnings (1917-1991):

The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, which saw the Bolsheviks, overthrow the Russian Provisional Government that formed earlier that year following the February Revolution and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, marking the end of the Russian Empire. Following the coup, the Bolsheviks lead by Vladimir Lenin established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR), the world's first constitutionally guaranteed socialist state. Persisting internal tensions escalated into the brutal Russian Civil War. As the war progressed in the Bolshevik's favor, the RSFSR began to incorporate land conquered from the war into nominally independent states, which were unified into the Soviet Union in December 1922. Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin came to power. Stalin inaugurated a period of rapid industrialization and forced collectivization that led to significant economic growth, but also contributed to a famine in 1930–1933 that killed millions. The labour camp system of the Gulag was also expanded in this period. Stalin conducted the Great Purge to remove his actual and perceived opponents. After the outbreak of World War II, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The combined Soviet civilian and military casualty count—estimated to be around 27 million people—accounted for the majority of losses of Allied forces. In the aftermath of World War II, the territory taken by the Red Army formed various Soviet satellite states.

The beginning of the Cold War saw the Eastern Bloc of the Soviet Union confront the Western Bloc of the United States, with the latter grouping becoming largely united in 1949 under NATO and the former grouping becoming largely united in 1955 under the Warsaw Pact. Following Stalin's death in 1953, a period known as de-Stalinization occurred under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev.

## Post-Cold War (1991-2036):

With the conclusion of the Cold War seeing the Soviet Union as the grand victor, the Warsaw Pact expanded to now house a newly-unified socialist German Republic following the invasion of the FRG in 1991. 1992 saw the addition of France as a member republic of the Soviet Union following a bloody civil war. 1994 was nicknamed the 'Great Expansion' year of the Soviet Union, with Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands willingly joining the Warsaw Pact, while the United Kingdoms became a target for the Soviets following a summer of British defiance. 21st of February 1995 marked the Invasion of Great Britain in a bloody war lasting 8 months, eventually leading to the subjugation of the British Isle, while a reunified Ireland sought its independance through various dealings with the Union.

The modern era saw the Union facing mounting internal troubles, as the occidental member republics enjoyed employing vastly different politics compared to the eastern side of the Soviet Union, usually under the form of social reforms, while the eastern counterpart attempted to keep the politics of the member republics universal through the use of sanctions or direct threats at signs of any possible dissent.

Following the American Resurgence of the 2000s, the Soviets carried out multiple proxy wars with the Americans across the Balkans in the wake of a shattered Yugoslavia (2002-2004 Yugoslavian Civil War), across Asia Minor (2007-2009 Soviet-Turkish relationships dim and culminate in Turkey's growing American support) and the Middle East.

Operation Sandstorm was a vast military action spanning an entire decade (2010-2022), represented by great Middle Eastern turmoil, most considering its beginning to be marked by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, armed and supported by the American government. Soon followed the destabilization of Palestine following the establishment of the ILF (Israeli Liberation Front). With the threat of fundamentalist islamist extremists such as ISIS also on the rise, the Soviet Union intervened by delivering great military aid to the Syrian Arab Republic ( Syrian arab republic link) and bringing them that much closer to the Soviet state, with the promise of eliminating the rising threat of islamic extremism and bringing about a new age of Ba'athism, stamping out Saddam's naive ideals of Iraqi supremacy. In the wake of more Iraqi-Iranian conflict, American-armed Iraq dissuaded neutral Iran by way of a mighty display of force, threatening the use of weapons of mass destruction, which brought the closer attention of the Soviet Union.

Operation Sandstorm culminated with two great wars, namely the Iraqi-Syrian war (2014-2018) and the Soviet-American scramble for petrol (2013-2020), the latter seeing the two powers facing eachother in vicious combat over the lands of a now torn UAE. The later years of Operation Sandstorm were seen with minor skirmishes between the Soviets and the USA in Egypt (2018-2022). Though Operation Sandstorm saw the loss of millions of lives, it was ultimately deemed a phyrric American victory, as the USA managed in the end to secure a foothold in the Middle East in the form of an occupied UAE and a powerful sattelite in Saddamist Iraq. The efforts to spread their influence also bore fruit, as the Egyptian People's Republic faced internal struggle and the threat of civil unrest, while Palestine would be forever plagued by the threat of Israeli uprising.

The War in Iberia (2024-2026) represented yet another important power struggle between the Soviet state and the United States of America - risen from the ashes like a phoenix of unbridled rage. Soviet intervention once again struck Spain like a hammer, in the wake of treaties with the American state. Though the Soviets managed to maintain great control over the country despite the ongoing violent guerilla war and their foreign-aided enemies, the Soviets were forced to pull out of the Iberian Peninsula following growing border tensions between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

The years followed with multiple Sino-Soviet border conflicts, aswell as back-and-forth skirmishes (2026-2033), eventually calmed by the way of multiple treaties and deals between the Soviet and Chinese empires.

## Great Invasion (2036-2040):

The Great Invasion (2036-2040) marked the greatest threat faced by the Union since a century prior during the Second World War. Though the Soviets managed to rout the US Army out of Europe and the Middle East (~2039), it was not done without great loss and devastation. Despite this, the Reds still managed a short-lived invasion of the American Mainland, dealing terrible blows to the capital by way of nuclear discharges, aswell as a number of other major American cities, such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Forced back home by growing civil unrest and logistical issues, the Red Army was forced to deal with dissent in the British Isle and France.

## Aftermath of the Great Invasion(2040-2087):

Following the Great Invasion, the Union was left shattered, scrambling to maintain the control it once had. Many regions of the Union turned over time into lawless wastelands as the Red Army's power faded. The Union's army, as the rest of the Union, was shattered into hundreds of different militias tasked with upholding Soviet rule (see ⁠red-militias ). Despite this, a small portion of the real Red Army remained, modernized and truly disciplined - an elite fighting force to be reckoned with (see ⁠red-army ).