Soviet Union (PJW)

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1989. Following its victory in World War II, the territories overtaken by the Soviet Union were turned into satellite states, dividing postwar Europe into capitalist and communist halves, culminating in increased tensions with the United States. The confrontation between the two superpowers began the Cold War.

In 1953, General Secretary Joseph Stalin died and was quickly succeeded by Nikita Krushchev, who in 1956 denounced Stalin and began the De-Stalinization of Soviet society. The successes of his foreign policies and technology advancements allowed Khrushchev to remain in power until his death in 1971, shortly after Soviet cosmonauts completed the first manned moon landing. The power struggle between the hardliner and reformist factions resulted in the ascension of Deputy Chairman Dmitry Ustinov. Ustinov, a hardliner Stalinist, returned the Soviet Union to its former repression. After initially joining the international coalition in the Korean Crisis, Ustinov reversed the detente between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Ustinov clamped down on the nationalist and independence movements within the Soviet Union, and reversed the freedoms the states of the Warsaw Pact achieved under Khrushchev. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan following the overthrow of its Stalinist government, eventually destroying Kabul with a nuclear weapon. The arms race with the United States, and later China, severely hurt the Soviet economy. China would become the Soviet Union's main enemy in the early 1980s, culminating in the Sino-Soviet Exchange, a nuclear conflict that killed 100 million Soviet citizens. Despite the high losses, the Soviets won the short war and gained large amounts of territory from China.

Ustinov would be killed during the war, and was replaced by Moscow politburo member Evsei Agron. Agron's cruel, sociopathic, totalitarian rule involved the killings of millions of citizens deemed undesirable. His efforts to strip Eastern Europe of its resources to rebuild the Soviet Union resulted in the Eastern European War and the nuclear destruction of much of the former Warsaw Pact. With not enough resources to maintain its empire, the Soviet Union gradually collapsed until finally being destroyed in the nuclear Soviet Civil War in 1989.

It was succeeded in the east with the reformed People's Republic of Siberia, while western Russia remains dividied between several small states loosely united in the Confederation of Russia.