Native name	Союз Советских Социалистических Республик''Soyuz Sovietskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik''
Conventional long name	Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Other names
Common name	Soviet Union
Continent	Eurasia
Status	Federation
Government type	Union socialist soviet republic, single-party communist state
Year start	1922
Year end	1991
Date start	30 December
Date end	26 December
P1	Russian SFSR
Flag p1	Flag RSFSR 1918.svg
P2	Transcaucasian SFSR
Flag p2	Flag of Transcaucasian SFSR.svg
P3	Ukrainian SSR
Flag p3	Flag of the Ukrainian SSR (1927-1937).svg
P4	Byelorussian SSR
Flag p4	Flag of the Byelorussian SSR (1919).svg
S1	Russia
Flag s1	Flag of Russia 1991-1993.svg
S2	Georgia (country)Georgia
Flag s2	Flag of Georgia.svg
S3	Ukraine
Flag s3	Flag of Ukraine.svg
S4	Moldova
Flag s4	Flag of Moldova.svg
S5	Belarus
Flag s5	Flag of Belarus.svg
S6	Armenia
Flag s6	Flag of Armenia.svg
S7	Azerbaijan
Flag s7	Flag of Azerbaijan.svg
S8	Kazakhstan
Flag s8	Flag of Kazakhstan.svg
S9	Uzbekistan
Flag s9	Flag of Uzbekistan.svg
S10	Turkmenistan
Flag s10	Flag of Turkmenistan.svg
S11	Kyrgyzstan
Flag s11	Flag of Kyrgyzstan.svg
S12	Tajikistan
Flag s12	Flag of Tajikistan.svg
S13	EstoniaEstonia3
Flag s13	Flag of Estonia.svg
S14	LatviaLatvia3
Flag s14	Flag of Latvia.svg
S15	LithuaniaLithuania3
Flag s15	Flag of Lithuania.svg
Flag	Flag of the Soviet Union
Image coat	Coat_of_arms_of_the_Soviet_Union.svg
Symbol	State Emblem of the Soviet Union
Symbol type	State Emblem
Image map size	220px
Image map caption	The Soviet Union after World War II
Capital	Moscow
Largest city	Moscow
National motto	Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь!(Translit.: ''Proletarii vsekh stran, soyedinyaytes'!'')English: Workers of the world, unite!
National anthem	''The Internationale'' (1922–1944) ''National Anthem of the Soviet Union'' (1944-1991)
Common languages	Russian, many others
Demonym	Soviet
Currency	Soviet ruble (руб) (SUR)
Currency code	SUR
Leader1	Vladimir Lenin
Leader2	Mikhail Gorbachev
Year leader1	1922–1924 (first)
Year leader2	1985–1991 (last)
Title leader	Leader
Legislature	Congress of Soviets and Central Executive Committee (1922-1937) Supreme Soviet (1937-1989; 1991)Congress of People's Deputies and Supreme Soviet (1989-1991)
Stat year1	1991
Stat area1	22402200
Stat pop1	293047571
Footnotes	1On 21 December 1991, eleven of the former socialist republics declared in Alma-Ata (with the 12th republic – Georgia – attending as an observer) that with the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceases to exist. 2Assigned on 19 September 1990, existing onwards. 3The governments of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania view themselves as continuous and unrelated to the respective Soviet republics.Russia views the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian SSRs as legal constituent republics of the USSR and predecessors of the modern Baltic states.The Government of the United States and a number of other countries did not recognize the annexation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to the USSR as a legal inclusion.
Utc offset	+2 to +13
Cctld	.su2
Calling code	7 }}

The Soviet Union (), officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, , abbreviated СССР, ''SSSR''), was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991. An informal name used among its residents was the Union (''Soyuz'').

The Soviet Union had a single-party political system dominated by the Communist Party until 1990. Although the USSR was nominally a union of Soviet republics (15 in all after 1956) with the capital in Moscow, it was actually a highly centralized state with a planned economy.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 brought about the downfall of the Russian Empire. Its successor, the Russian Provisional Government, was short-lived. After the Bolsheviks won the ensuing Russian Civil War, the Soviet Union was founded in December 1922 with the merger of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Following the death of the first Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin, in 1924, Joseph Stalin eventually won a power struggle and led the country through a large-scale industrialization with a command economy and political repression. In World War II, in June 1941, Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union, a country with which it had signed a non-aggression pact. After four years of brutal warfare, the Soviet Union emerged victorious as one of the world's two superpowers, the other being the United States.

The Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite states engaged in the Cold War, a prolonged global ideological and political struggle against the United States and its Western Bloc allies, which it ultimately lost in the face of economic troubles and both domestic and foreign political unrest. In the late 1980s, the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform the state with his policies of ''perestroika'' and ''glasnost'', but the Soviet Union collapsed and was formally dissolved in December 1991 after the abortive August coup attempt. The Russian Federation assumed its rights and obligations.

Geography, climate and environment

With an area of , the Soviet Union was the world's largest state. Covering a sixth of the Earth's land surface, its size was comparable to that of North America. The European portion accounted for a quarter of the country's area, and was the cultural and economic center. The eastern part in Asia extended to the Pacific Ocean to the east and Afghanistan to the south, and was much less populous. It spanned over east to west across 11 time zones, and almost north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, taiga, steppes, desert, and mountains.

The Soviet Union had the world's longest border, measuring over , two-thirds of it a coastline of the Arctic Ocean. Across the Bering Strait was the United States. The Soviet Union bordered Afghanistan, China, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Hungary, Iran, Mongolia, North Korea, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Turkey from 1945 to 1991.

The Soviet Union's longest river was the Irtysh. Its highest mountain was Communism Peak (now Ismail Samani Peak) in Tajikistan, at . The world's largest lake, the Caspian Sea, lay mainly within the Soviet Union. The world's largest freshwater and deepest lake, Lake Baikal, was in the Soviet Union.

History

The last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, ruled the Russian Empire until his abdication in March 1917, due in part to the strain of fighting in World War I. A short-lived Russian provisional government took power, to be overthrown in the 1917 October Revolution (N.S. November 1917) by revolutionaries led by the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin.

The Soviet Union was officially established in December 1922 with the union of the Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics, each ruled by local Bolshevik parties. Despite the foundation of the Soviet state as a federative entity of many constituent republics, each with its own political and administrative entities, the term "Soviet Russia"strictly applicable only to the Russian Federative Socialist Republicwas often incorrectly applied to the entire country by non-Soviet writers and politicians.

Revolution and foundation

Modern revolutionary activity in the Russian Empire began with the Decembrist Revolt of 1825. Although serfdom was abolished in 1861, it was done on terms unfavorable to the peasants and served to encourage revolutionaries. A parliament—the State Duma—was established in 1906 after the Russian Revolution of 1905, but the Tsar resisted attempts to move from absolute to constitutional monarchy. Social unrest continued and was aggravated during World War I by military defeat and food shortages in major cities.

A spontaneous popular uprising in Saint Petersburg, in response to the wartime decay of Russia's economy and morale, culminated in the February Revolution and the toppling of the imperial government in March 1917. The tsarist autocracy was replaced by the Russian Provisional Government, which intended to conduct elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly and to continue fighting on the side of the Entente in World War I.

At the same time, workers' councils, known as Soviets, sprang up across the country. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, pushed for socialist revolution in the Soviets and on the streets. In November 1917, during the October Revolution, they seized power. In December, the Bolsheviks signed an armistice with the Central Powers, though by February 1918, fighting had resumed. In March, the Soviets quit the war for good and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

A long and bloody Russian Civil War ensued between the Reds and the Whites, starting in 1917 and ending in 1923 with the Reds victorious. It included foreign intervention, the execution of Nicholas II and his family and the famine of 1921, which killed about five million. In March 1921, during a related conflict with Poland, the Peace of Riga was signed, splitting disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between the Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia. The Soviet Union had to resolve similar conflicts with the newly established Republic of Finland, the Republic of Estonia, the Republic of Latvia, and the Republic of Lithuania.

Unification of republics

On 28 December 1922, a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. These two documents were confirmed by the 1st Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by the heads of the delegations, Mikhail Kalinin, Mikha Tskhakaya, Mikhail Frunze, Grigory Petrovsky, and Aleksandr Chervyakov, on 30 December 1922.

On 1 February 1924, the USSR was recognized by the British Empire. The same year, a Soviet Constitution was approved, legitimizing the December 1922 union.

An intensive restructuring of the economy, industry and politics of the country began in the early days of Soviet power in 1917. A large part of this was done according to the Bolshevik Initial Decrees, government documents signed by Vladimir Lenin. One of the most prominent breakthroughs was the GOELRO plan, which envisioned a major restructuring of the Soviet economy based on total electrification of the country. The plan was developed in 1920 and covered a 10- to 15-year period. It included construction of a network of 30 regional power plants, including ten large hydroelectric power plants, and numerous electric-powered large industrial enterprises. The plan became the prototype for subsequent Five-Year Plans and was basically fulfilled by 1931.

Stalin era

From its beginning, the government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks). After the economic policy of War Communism during the Civil War, the Soviet government permitted some private enterprise to coexist alongside nationalized industry in the 1920s and total food requisition in the countryside was replaced by a food tax (see New Economic Policy).

Soviet leaders argued that one-party rule was necessary to ensure that "capitalist exploitation" would not return to the Soviet Union and that the principles of Democratic Centralism would represent the people's will. Debate over the future of the economy provided the background for a power struggle in the years after Lenin's death in 1924. Initially, Lenin was to be replaced by a "troika" consisting of Grigory Zinoviev of Ukraine, Lev Kamenev of Moscow, and Joseph Stalin of Georgia.

On 3 April 1922, Stalin was named the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Lenin had appointed Stalin the head of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, which gave Stalin considerable power. By gradually consolidating his influence and isolating and out-maneuvering his rivals within the party, Stalin became the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union and, by the end of the 1920s, established totalitarian rule. In October 1927, Grigory Zinoviev and Leon Trotsky were expelled from the Central Committee and forced into exile.

In 1928, Stalin introduced the First Five-Year Plan for building a socialist economy. While encompassing the internationalism expressed by Lenin throughout the course of the Revolution, it also aimed to build socialism in one country. In industry, the state assumed control over all existing enterprises and undertook an intensive program of industrialization. In agriculture, collective farms were established all over the country.

Famines ensued, causing millions of deaths; surviving kulaks were persecuted and many sent to Gulags to do forced labour. Social upheaval continued in the mid-1930s. Stalin's Great Purge resulted in the execution or detainment of many "Old Bolsheviks" who had participated in the October Revolution with Lenin. The death toll is uncertain, with a wide range of estimates. According to declassified Soviet archives, in 1937 and 1938, the NKVD arrested more than one and a half million people, of whom 681,692 were shot – an average of 1,000 executions a day. The excess deaths during the 1930s as a whole were in the range of 10–11 million. Yet despite the turmoil of the mid-to-late 1930s, the Soviet Union developed a powerful industrial economy in the years before World War II.

The 1930s

The early 1930s saw closer cooperation between the West and the USSR. From 1932 to 1934, the Soviet Union participated in the World Disarmament Conference. In 1933, diplomatic relations between the United States and the USSR were established. In September 1934, the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations. After the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, the USSR actively supported the Republican forces against the Nationalists, who were supported by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

In December 1936, Stalin unveiled a new Soviet Constitution. The constitution was seen as a personal triumph for Stalin, who on this occasion was described by ''Pravda'' as a "genius of the new world, the wisest man of the epoch, the great leader of communism." By contrast, western historians and historians from former Soviet occupied countries have viewed the constitution as a meaningless propaganda document.

The late 1930s saw a shift towards the Axis powers. In 1938, after the United Kingdom and France had concluded the Munich Agreement with Germany, the USSR dealt with the Nazis as well, both militarily and economically during extensive talks. The two countries concluded the German–Soviet Nonaggression Pact and the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement. The nonaggression pact made possible Soviet occupation of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and eastern Poland. In late November of the same year, unable to coerce the Republic of Finland by diplomatic means into moving its border back from Leningrad, Joseph Stalin ordered the invasion of Finland.

In the east, the Soviet military won several decisive victories during border clashes with the Japanese Empire in 1938 and 1939. However, in April 1941, USSR signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact with the Empire of Japan, recognizing the territorial integrity of Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state.

World War II

Although it has been debated whether the Soviet Union had any intention of invading Germany once it was strong enough, Germany itself broke the treaty and invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, starting what was known in the USSR as the "Great Patriotic War". The Red Army stopped the seemingly-invincible German Army at the Battle of Moscow, aided by an unusually harsh winter. The Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted from late 1942 to early 1943, dealt a severe blow to the Germans from which they never fully recovered and became a turning point of the war. After Stalingrad, Soviet forces drove through Eastern Europe to Berlin before Germany surrendered in 1945. The German Army suffered 80% of its military deaths in the Eastern Front.

The same year, the USSR, in fulfillment of its agreement with the Allies at the Yalta Conference, denounced the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1945 and invaded Manchukuo and other Japan-controlled territories on 9 August 1945. This conflict ended with a decisive Soviet victory, contributing to the unconditional surrender of Japan and the end of World War II.

The Soviet Union suffered greatly in the war, losing around 27 million people. Despite this, it emerged as a military superpower. Once denied diplomatic recognition by the Western world, the Soviet Union had official relations with practically every nation by the late 1940s. A member of the United Nations at its foundation in 1945, the Soviet Union became one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, which gave it the right to veto any of its resolutions (see Soviet Union and the United Nations).

The Soviet Union maintained its status as one of the world's two superpowers for four decades through its hegemony in Eastern Europe, military strength, economic strength, aid to developing countries, and scientific research, especially in space technology and weaponry.

Cold War

During the immediate postwar period, the Soviet Union rebuilt and expanded its economy, while maintaining its strictly centralized control. It aided post-war reconstruction in the countries of Eastern Europe, while turning them into satellite states, binding them in a military alliance (the Warsaw Pact) in 1955, and an economic organization (The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance or Comecon) from 1949 to 1991, the latter a counterpart to the European Economic Community. Later, the Comecon supplied aid to the eventually victorious Chinese Communist Party, and saw its influence grow elsewhere in the world. Fearing its ambitions, the Soviet Union's wartime allies, the United Kingdom and the United States, became its enemies. In the ensuing Cold War, the two sides clashed indirectly using mostly proxies.

Khrushchev era

Stalin died on 5 March 1953. In the absence of a mutually-agreeable successor, the highest Communist Party officials opted to rule the Soviet Union jointly. Nikita Khrushchev, who had won the power struggle by the mid-1950s, denounced Stalin's use of repression in 1956 and eased repressive controls over party and society. This was known as de-Stalinization.

Moscow considered Eastern Europe to be a buffer zone for the forward defense of its western borders, and ensured its control of the region by transforming the East European countries into satellite states. Soviet military force was used to suppress anti-communist uprisings in Hungary and Poland in 1956.

In the late 1950s, a confrontation with China regarding the USSR's rapprochement with the West and what Mao Zedong perceived as Khrushchev's revisionism led to the Sino–Soviet split. This resulted in a break throughout the global Communist movement, with Communist regimes in Albania, Cambodia and Somalia choosing to ally with China in place of the USSR.

During this period, the Soviet Union continued to realize scientific and technological exploits: launching the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1; a living dog, Laika; and later, the first human being, Yuri Gagarin, into Earth's orbit. In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, and Alexey Leonov became the first person to walk in space, in 1965.

Khrushchev initiated "The Thaw" better known as Khrushchev's Thaw, a complex shift in political, cultural and economic life in the Soviet Union. That included some openness and contact with other nations and new social and economic policies with more emphasis on commodity goods, allowing living standards to rise dramatically while maintaining high levels of economic growth. Censorship was relaxed as well.

Khrushchev's reforms in agriculture and administration, however, were generally unproductive. In 1962, he precipitated a crisis with the United States over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba. The Soviet Union backed down after the United States initiated a naval blockade, causing Khrushchev much embarrassment and loss of prestige. He was removed from power in 1964.

Brezhnev era

Following the ousting of Khrushchev, another period of collective leadership ensued, consisting of Leonid Brezhnev as General Secretary, Alexei Kosygin as Premier and Nikolai Podgorny as Chairman of the Presidium, lasting until Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970s as the preeminent Soviet leader. In 1968 the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies invaded Czechoslovakia to halt the Prague Spring reforms. Brezhnev presided over a period of ''détente'' with the West (see SALT I, SALT II, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty) while at the same time building up Soviet military might.

In October 1977, the third Soviet Constitution was unanimously adopted. The prevailing mood of the Soviet leadership at the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982 was one of aversion to change. The long period of Brezhnev's rule had come to be dubbed one of "standstill", with an aging and ossified top political leadership.

Reforms and dissolution

Two developments dominated the decade that followed: the increasingly apparent crumbling of the Soviet Union's economic and political structures, and the patchwork attempts at reforms to reverse that process. Kenneth S. Deffeyes argued in ''Beyond Oil'' that the Reagan administration encouraged Saudi Arabia to lower the price of oil to the point where the Soviets could not make a profit selling their oil, so that the USSR's hard currency reserves became depleted.

Brezhnev's next two successors, transitional figures with deep roots in his tradition, did not last long. Yuri Andropov was 68 years old and Konstantin Chernenko 72 when they assumed power; both died in less than two years. In an attempt to avoid a third short-lived leader, in 1985, the Soviets turned to the next generation and selected Mikhail Gorbachev.

Gorbachev made significant changes in the economy and party leadership, called ''perestroika''. His policy of ''glasnost'' freed public access to information after decades of heavy government censorship. Gorbachev also moved to end the Cold War. In 1988, the Soviet Union abandoned its nine-year war in Afghanistan and began to withdraw its forces. In the late 1980s, he refused military support to the Soviet Union's former satellite states, resulting in the toppling of multiple communist regimes. With the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and with East Germany and West Germany pursuing unification, the Iron Curtain came down.

In the late 1980s, the constituent republics of the Soviet Union started legal moves towards or even declaration of sovereignty over their territories, citing Article 72 of the USSR constitution, which stated that any constituent republic was free to secede. On 7 April 1990, a law was passed allowing a republic to secede if more than two-thirds of its residents voted for it in a referendum. Many held their first free elections in the Soviet era for their own national legislatures in 1990. Many of these legislatures proceeded to produce legislation contradicting the Union laws in what was known as the "War of Laws".

In 1989, the Russian SFSR, which was then the largest constituent republic (with about half of the population) convened a newly elected Congress of People's Deputies. Boris Yeltsin was elected its chairman. On 12 June 1990, the Congress declared Russia's sovereignty over its territory and proceeded to pass laws that attempted to supersede some of the USSR's laws. The period of legal uncertainty continued throughout 1991 as constituent republics slowly became de facto independent.

A referendum for the preservation of the USSR was held on 17 March 1991, with the majority of the population voting for preservation of the Union in nine out of the 15 republics. The referendum gave Gorbachev a minor boost. In the summer of 1991, the New Union Treaty, which would have turned the Soviet Union into a much looser federation, was agreed upon by eight republics.

The signing of the treaty, however, was interrupted by the August Coup—an attempted coup d'état by hardline members of the government and the KGB who sought to reverse Gorbachev's reforms and reassert the central government's control over the republics. After the coup collapsed, Yeltsin was seen as a hero for his decisive actions, while Gorbachev's power was effectively ended. The balance of power tipped significantly towards the republics. In August 1991, Latvia and Estonia immediately declared the restoration of their full independence (following Lithuania's 1990 example), while the other twelve republics continued discussing new, increasingly looser, models of the Union.

On 8 December 1991, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the Belavezha Accords, which declared the Soviet Union dissolved and established the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in its place. While doubts remained over the authority of the accords to do this, on 21 December 1991, the representatives of all Soviet republics except Georgia signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, which confirmed the accords. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev yielded to the inevitable and resigned as the President of the USSR, declaring the office extinct. He turned the powers that had been vested in the presidency over to Yeltsin, the President of Russia.

The following day, the Supreme Soviet, the highest governmental body of the Soviet Union, dissolved itself. This is generally recognized as marking the official, final dissolution of the Soviet Union as a functioning state. Many organizations, such as the Soviet Army and police forces, continued to remain in place in the early months of 1992, but were slowly phased out and either withdrawn from or absorbed by the newly independent states.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991, Russia was internationally recognized as its legal successor on the international stage. To that end, Russia voluntarily accepted all Soviet foreign debt and claimed overseas Soviet properties as its own. Since then, the Russian Federation has assumed the Soviet Union's rights and obligations.

Politics

There were three power hierarchies in the Soviet Union: the legislative branch represented by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, the government represented by the Council of Ministers and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only legal party and the ultimate policymaker in the country.

Communist Party

At the top of the Communist Party was the Central Committee, elected at Party Congresses and Conferences. The Central Committee in turn voted for a Politburo (called the Presidium between 1952–1966), Secretariat and the General Secretary (First Secretary from 1953 to 1966), the highest office in the USSR. Depending on the degree of power consolidation, it was either the Politburo as a collective body or the General Secretary, who always was one of the Politburo members, that effectively led the party and the country (except for the period of the highly personalized authority of Stalin, exercised directly through his position in the Council of Ministers rather than the Politburo after 1941). They were not controlled by the general party membership, as the key principle of the party organization was democratic centralism, demanding strict subordination to higher bodies, and elections went uncontested, endorsing the candidates proposed from above.

The Communist Party maintained its dominance over the state largely through its control over the system of appointments. All senior government officials and most deputies of the Supreme Soviet were members of the CPSU. Of the party heads themselves, Stalin in 1941–1953 and Khrushchev in 1958–1964 were Premiers. Upon the forced retirement of Khrushchev, the party leader was prohibited from this kind of double membership, but the later General Secretaries for at least some part of their tenure occupied the largely ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the nominal head of state. The institutions at lower levels were overseen and at times supplanted by primary party organizations.

In practice, however, the degree of control the party was able to exercise over the state bureaucracy, particularly after the death of Stalin, was far from total, with the bureaucracy pursuing different interests that were at times in conflict with the party. Nor was the party itself monolithic from top to bottom, although factions were officially banned.

Government

The Supreme Soviet (successor of the Congress of Soviets and Central Executive Committee) was nominally the highest state body for most of the Soviet history, at first acting as a rubber stamp institution, approving and implementing all decisions made by the party. However, the powers and functions of the Supreme Soviet were extended in the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, including the creation of new state commissions and committees. It gained additional powers when it came to the approval of the Five-Year Plans and the Soviet state budget. The Supreme Soviet elected a Presidium to wield its power between plenary sessions, ordinarily held twice a year, and appointed the Supreme Court, the Procurator General and the Council of Ministers (known before 1946 as the Council of People's Commissars), headed by the Chairman (Premier) and managing an enormous bureaucracy responsible for the administration of the economy and society. State and party structures of the constituent republics largely emulated the structure of the central institutions, although the Russian SFSR, unlike the other constituent republics, for most of its history had no republican branch of the CPSU, being ruled directly by the union-wide party until 1990. Local authorities were organized likewise into party committees, local Soviets and executive committees. While the state system was nominally federal, the party was unitary.

The state security police (the KGB and its predecessor agencies) played an important role in Soviet politics. It was instrumental in the Stalinist terror, but after the death of Stalin, the state security police was brought under strict party control. Under Yuri Andropov, KGB chairman in 1967–1982 and General Secretary from 1982 to 1983, the KGB engaged in the suppression of political dissent and maintained an extensive network of informers, reasserting itself as a political actor to some extent independent of the party-state structure, culminating in the anti-corruption campaign targeting high party officials in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Separation of power and reform

The Soviet constitutions, which were promulgated in 1918, 1924, 1936 and 1977, did not limit state power. No formal separation of powers existed between the Party, Supreme Soviet and Council of Ministers that represented executive and legislative branches of the government. The system was governed less by statute than by informal conventions, and no settled mechanism of leadership succession existed. Bitter and at times deadly power struggles took place in the Politburo after the deaths of Lenin and Joseph Stalin, as well as after Khrushchev's dismissal, itself due to a coup in both the Politburo and the Central Committee. All Soviet party leaders before Gorbachev died in office, except Georgy Malenkov and Khrushchev, both dismissed from the party leadership amid internal struggle within the party. In 1988–1990, facing considerable opposition, Mikhail Gorbachev enacted reforms shifting power away from the highest bodies of the party and making the Supreme Soviet less dependent on them. The Congress of People's Deputies was established, the majority of whose members were directly elected in competitive elections held in March 1989. The Congress now elected the Supreme Soviet, which became a full-time parliament, much stronger than before. For the first time since the 1920s, it refused to rubber stamp proposals from the party and Council of Ministers. In 1990, Gorbachev introduced and assumed the position of the President of the Soviet Union, concentrated power in his executive office, independent of the party, and subordinated the government, now renamed the Cabinet of Ministers of the USSR, to himself.

Tensions grew between the union-wide authorities under Gorbachev, reformists led in Russia by Boris Yeltsin and controlling the newly elected Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR, and Communist Party hardliners. On 19–21 August 1991, a group of hardliners staged an abortive coup attempt. Following the failed coup, the State Council of the Soviet Union became the highest organ of state power "in the period of transition". Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary, only remaining President for the final months of the existence of the USSR.

Judicial system

The judiciary was not independent of the other branches of government. The Supreme Court supervised the lower courts (People's Court) and applied the law as established by the Constitution or as interpreted by the Supreme Soviet. The Constitutional Oversight Committee reviewed the constitutionality of laws and acts. The Soviet Union utilized the inquisitorial system of Roman law, where the judge, procurator, and defense attorney collaborate to establish the truth.

Political divisions

Constitutionally, the Soviet Union was a union of Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs) and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), although the rule of the highly centralized Communist Party made the union merely nominal. The Treaty on the Creation of the USSR was signed in December 1922 by four founding republics, the RSFSR, Transcaucasian SFSR, Ukrainian SSR and Belorussian SSR. In 1924, during the national delimitation in Central Asia, the Uzbek and Turkmen SSRs were formed from parts of the RSFSR's Turkestan ASSR and two Soviet dependencies, the Khorezm and Bukharan SSR. In 1929, the Tajik SSR was split off from the Uzbek SSR. With the constitution of 1936, the constituents of the Transcaucasian SFSR, namely the Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijan SSRs, were elevated to union republics, while the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSRs were split off from the RSFSR. In August 1940, the Soviet Union formed the Moldavian SSR from parts of the Ukrainian SSR and parts of Bessarabia annexed from Romania. It also annexed the Baltic states as the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian SSRs. The Karelo-Finnish SSR was split off from the RSFSR in March 1940 and merged back in 1956. Between July 1956 and September 1991, there were 15 union republics (see map below).

On 16 November 1988, the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR passed the Estonian Sovereignty Declaration that asserted Estonia's sovereignty and declared the supremacy of Estonian laws over those of the Soviet Union. In March 1990, the newly-elected Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR declared independence, followed by the Georgian Supreme Soviet in April 1991. Although the symbolic right of the republics to secede was nominally guaranteed by the constitution and the union treaty, Soviet authorities at first refused to recognize it. After the August coup attempt, most of the other republics followed suit. The Soviet Union ultimately recognized the secession of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on 6 September 1991. The remaining republics were recognized as independent with the Soviet Union's final dissolution in December 1991.

! #	! Republic	! Map of the Union Republics between 1956–1991
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Economy

The Soviet Union became the first country to adopt a planned economy, whereby production and distribution of goods were centralized and directed by the government. The first Bolshevik experience with a command economy was the policy of War Communism, which involved nationalization of industry, centralized distribution of output, coercive requisition of agricultural production, and attempts to eliminate the circulation of money, as well as private enterprises and free trade. As it had aggravated a severe economic collapse caused by the war, in 1921, Lenin replaced War Communism with the New Economic Policy (NEP), legalizing free trade and private ownership of smaller businesses. The economy recovered fairly quickly.

Following a lengthy debate among the members of Politburo over the course of economic development, by 1928–1929, upon gaining control of the country, Joseph Stalin abandoned the NEP and pushed for full central planning, starting forced collectivization of agriculture and enacting draconian labor legislation. Resources were mobilized for rapid industrialization, which greatly expanded Soviet capacity in heavy industry and capital goods during the 1930s. Preparation for war was one of the main driving forces behind industrialization, mostly due to distrust of the outside capitalistic world. As a result, the USSR was transformed from a largely agrarian economy into a great industrial power, leading the way for its emergence as a superpower after World War II. During the war, the Soviet economy and infrastructure suffered massive devastation and required extensive reconstruction.

By the early 1940s, the Soviet economy had become relatively self-sufficient; for most of the period up until the creation of Comecon, only a very small share of domestic products was traded internationally. After the creation of the Eastern Bloc, external trade rose rapidly. Still the influence of the world economy on the USSR was limited by fixed domestic prices and a state monopoly on foreign trade. Grain and sophisticated consumer manufactures became major import articles from around the 1960s. During the arms race of the Cold War, the Soviet economy was burdened by military expenditures, heavily lobbied for by a powerful bureaucracy dependent on the arms industry. At the same time, the Soviet Union became the largest arms exporter to the Third World. Significant amounts of Soviet resources during the Cold War were allocated in aid to the other socialist states.

From the 1930s until its collapse in the late 1980s, the way the Soviet economy operated remained essentially unchanged. The economy was formally directed by central planning, carried out by Gosplan and organized in five-year plans. In practice, however, the plans were highly aggregated and provisional, subject to ''ad hoc'' intervention by superiors. All key economic decisions were taken by the political leadership. Allocated resources and plan targets were normally denominated in rubles rather than in physical goods. Credit was discouraged, but widespread. Final allocation of output was achieved through relatively decentralized, unplanned contracting. Although in theory prices were legally set from above, in practice the actual prices were often negotiated, and informal horizontal links were widespread.

style="background:#d3d3d3;" colspan="3"	Comparison between USSR and US economies (1989)according to 1990 CIA World Factbook
!	USSR
GNP (Purchasing power parity	PPP adjusted, 1989)	US$2.6595 trillion
Population (July 1990)	290,938,469
GNP	GNP per capita (PPP adjusted)	US$9,211
Labour force (1989)	152,300,000

A number of basic services were state-funded, such as education and healthcare. In the manufacturing sector, heavy industry and defense were assigned higher priority than the production of consumer goods. Consumer goods, particularly outside large cities, were often in short supply, of poor quality and limited choice. Under command economy, consumers had almost no influence over production, so the changing demands of a population with growing incomes could not be satisfied by supplies at rigidly fixed prices. A massive unplanned second economy grew up alongside the planned one at low levels, providing some of the goods and services that the planners could not. Legalization of some elements of the decentralized economy was attempted with the reform of 1965.

Although statistics of the Soviet economy are notoriously unreliable and its economic growth difficult to estimate precisely, by most accounts, the economy continued to expand until the mid 1980s. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Soviet economy experienced comparatively high growth and was catching up to the West. However, after 1970, the growth, while still positive, steadily declined, much more quickly and consistently than in other countries, despite a rapid increase in the capital stock, (the rate of increase in capital was only surpassed by Japan).

Overall, between 1960 and 1989, the growth rate of per capita income in the Soviet Union was slightly above the world average (based on 102 countries). However, given the very high level of investment in physical capital, high percentage of people with a secondary education, and low population increase, the economy should have grown much faster. According to Stanley Fischer and William Easterly, the Soviet growth record was among "the worst in the world". By their calculation, per capita income of Soviet Union in 1989 should have been twice as high as it was, if investment, education and population had their typical effect on growth. The authors attribute this poor performance to low productivity of capital in the Soviet Union.

In 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform and revitalize the economy with his program of ''perestroika''. His policies relaxed state control over enterprises, but did not yet allow it to be replaced by market incentives, ultimately resulting in a sharp decline in production output. The economy, already suffering from reduced petroleum export revenues, started to collapse. Prices were still fixed, and property was still largely state-owned until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For most of the period after World War II up to its collapse, the Soviet economy was the second largest in the world by GDP (PPP), though in per capita terms the Soviet GDP was behind that of the First World countries.

Energy

The need for fuel declined in the Soviet Union from the 1970s to the 1980s, both per ruble of gross social product and per ruble of industrial product. At the start, this decline grew very rapidly, but gradually slowed down between 1970 and 1975. From 1975 and 1980, it grew even slower, only 2.6 percent. David Wilson, a historian, believed that the gas industry would account for 40 percent of Soviet fuel production by the end of the century. His theory did not come to fruition because of the USSR's collapse. The USSR, in theory, would have continued to have an economic growth rate of 2–2.5 percent during the 1990s because of Soviet energy fields. However, the energy sector faced many difficulties, among them the country's high military expenditure and hostile relations with the First World (pre-Gorbachev era).

In 1991, the Soviet Union had a pipeline network of for crude oil and another for natural gas. Petroleum and petroleum-based products, natural gas, metals, wood, agricultural products, and a variety of manufactured goods, primarily machinery, arms and military equipment, were exported. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet Union heavily relied on fossil fuel exports to earn hard currency. At its peak in 1988, it was the largest producer and second largest exporter of crude oil, surpassed only by Saudi Arabia.

Science and technology

The Soviet Union placed great emphasis on science and technology within its economy, however, the most remarkable Soviet successes in technology, such as producing the world's first space satellite, typically were the responsibility of the military. Lenin believed that the USSR would never overtake the developed world if it remained as technologically backward as it was. Soviet authorities proved their commitment to Lenin's belief by developing massive networks, research and development organizations. By 1989, Soviet scientists were among the world's best-trained specialists in several areas, such as energy physics, selected areas of medicine, mathematics, welding and military technologies. Due to rigid state planning and bureaucracy, the Soviets remained far behind technologically in chemistry, biology, and computers when compared to the First World.

Project Socrates, under the Reagan administration, determined that the Soviet Union addressed the acquisition of science and technology in a manner that was radically different than what the US was using at that time. In the case of the US, economic prioritization was being used for indigenous R&D; as the means to acquire science and technology in both the private and public sectors. In contrast, the Soviet Union was offensively and defensively maneuvering in the acquisition and utilization of the worldwide technology, to increase the competitive advantage that they acquired from the technology, while preventing the US from acquiring a competitive advantage. However, in addition, the Soviet Union's technology-based planning was executed in a centralized, government-centric manner that greatly hindered its flexibility. It was this significant lack of flexibility that was exploited by the US to undermine the strength of the Soviet Union and thus foster its reform.

Transport

Transport was a key component of the nation's economy. The economic centralisation of the late 1920s and 1930s led to the development of infrastructure on a massive scale, most notably the establishment of Aeroflot, an aviation enterprise. The country had a wide variety of modes of transport by land, water and air. However, due to bad maintenance, much of the road, water and Soviet civil aviation transport were outdated and technologically backward compared to the First World.

Soviet rail transport was the largest and most intensively used in the world; it was also better developed than most of its Western counterparts. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Soviet economists were calling for the construction of more roads to alleviate some of the burden from the railways and to improve the Soviet state budget. The road network and automobile industry remained underdeveloped, and dirt roads were common outside major cities. Soviet maintenance projects proved unable to take care of even the few roads the country had. By the early to mid-1980s, the Soviet authorities tried to solve the road problem by ordering the construction of new ones. The underdeveloped road network led to a growing demand for public transport.

Despite improvements, several aspects of the transport sector were still riddled with problems due to outdated infrastructure, lack of investment, corruption and bad decision-making. Soviet authorities were unable to meet the growing demand for transport infrastructure and services.

The Soviet merchant fleet was one of the largest in the world.

Demographics

The first fifty years of the 20th century in tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union were marked by a succession of disasters, each accompanied by large–scale population losses. Excess deaths over the course of World War I and the Russian Civil War (including the postwar famine) amounted to a combined total of 18 million, some 10 million in the 1930s, and more than 26 million in 1941–5. The postwar Soviet population was 45 to 50 million smaller than it would have been if pre-war demographic growth had continued.

The crude birth rate of the USSR decreased from 44.0 per thousand in 1926 to 18.0 in 1974, largely due to increasing urbanization and the rising average age of marriages. The crude death rate demonstrated a gradual decrease as well – from 23.7 per thousand in 1926 to 8.7 in 1974. In general, the birth rates of the southern republics in Transcaucasia and Central Asia were considerably higher than those in the northern parts of the Soviet Union, and in some cases even increased in the post–World War II period, a phenomenon partly attributed to slower rates of urbanization and traditionally earlier marriages in the southern republics. Soviet Europe moved towards sub-replacement fertility, while Soviet Central Asia continued to exhibit population growth well above replacement-level fertility.

The late 1960s and the 1970s witnessed a reversal of the declining trajectory of the rate of mortality in the USSR, and was especially notable among men of working age, but was also prevalent in Russia and other predominantly Slavic areas of the country. An analysis of the official data from the late 1980s showed that after worsening in the late-1970s and the early 1980s, adult mortality began to improve again. The infant mortality rate increased from 24.7 in 1970 to 27.9 in 1974. Some researchers regarded the rise as largely real, a consequence of worsening health conditions and services. The rises in both adult and infant mortality were not explained or defended by Soviet officials, and the Soviet government simply stopped publishing all mortality statistics for ten years. Soviet demographers and health specialists remained silent about the mortality increases until the late-1980s, when the publication of mortality data resumed and researchers could delve into the real causes.

Education

Prior to 1917, in the Russian Empire, education was not free, and was therefore either inaccessible or barely accessible for many children from lower-class working and peasant families. Estimates from 1917 recorded that 75–85 percent of the Russian population was illiterate.

Anatoly Lunacharsky became the first People's Commissariat for Education of Soviet Russia. At the beginning, the Soviet authorities placed great emphasis on the elimination of illiteracy. People who were literate were automatically hired as teachers. For a short period, quality was sacrificed for quantity. By 1940, Joseph Stalin could announce that illiteracy had been eliminated. In the aftermath of the Great Patriotic War, the country's educational system expanded dramatically. This expansion had a tremendous effect. In the 1960s, nearly all Soviet children had access to education, the only exception being those living in remote areas. Nikita Khrushchev tried to make education more accessible, making it clear to children that education was closely linked to the needs of society. Education also became important in creating the New Soviet Man.

Access to higher education was restricted, however; only 20 percent of all applicants were accepted. The rest entered the labor market or learned a skill at a vocational technical school or technicum. Students from families of dubious political reliability were barred from higher education. The Brezhnev administration introduced a rule that required all university applicants to present a reference from the local Komsomol party secretary. According to statistics from 1986, the number of students per 10,000 population was 181 for the USSR, compared to 517 for the US.

Ethnic groups

The Soviet Union was a very ethnically diverse country, with more than 100 distinct ethnic groups. The total population was estimated at 293 million in 1991. According to a 1990 estimate, the majority were Russians (50.78%), followed by Ukrainians (15.45%) and Uzbeks (5.84%).

All citizens of the USSR had their own ethnic affiliation. The ethnicity of a person was chosen at the age of sixteen by the child's parents. If the parents did not agree, the child was automatically assigned the ethnicity of the mother. Partly due to Soviet policies, some of the smaller minority ethnic groups were considered part of larger ones, such as the Mingrelians of the Georgian SSR, who were classified with the linguistically related Georgians. Some ethnic groups voluntarily assimilated, while others were brought in by force. Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians shared close cultural ties, while other groups did not. With multiple nationalities living in the same territory, ethnic antagonisms developed over the years.

Health

In 1917, before the Bolshevik uprising, health conditions were significantly behind the developed countries. As Lenin later noted, "Either the lice will defeat socialism, or socialism will defeat the lice". The Soviet principle of health care was conceived by the People's Commissariat for Health in 1918. Health care was to be controlled by the state and would be provided to its citizens free of charge. Article 42 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution gave all citizens the right to health protection and free access to any health institutions in the USSR. However, the Soviet Union's health care system was not able to fulfill all the needs of its people. Before Leonid Brezhnev rose to power, Soviet socialised medicine was held in high esteem by many foreign specialists. This changed however, from Brezhnev's accession and Mikhail Gorbachev's tenure as leader, the Soviet health care system was heavily criticised for many basic faults, such as the quality of service and the unevenness in its provision. Minister of Health Yevgeniy Chazov, during the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, while highlighting such Soviet success as having the most doctors and hospitals in the world, recognised the system's deficiencies and felt that billions of Soviet rubles were squandered.

After the communist takeover, the life expectancy for all age groups went up. This statistic was used by authorities to "prove" that the socialist system was superior to the capitalist system. These improvements continued into the 1960s, when the life expectancy in the Soviet Union surpassed that of the United States. It remained fairly stable during most years, although in the 1970s, it went down slightly, probably because of alcohol abuse. Most western sources put the blame on growing alcohol abuse and poor health care; this theory was also implicitly accepted by the Soviet authorities. At the same time, infant mortality began to rise. After 1974, the government stopped publishing statistics on this. This trend can be partly explained by the number of pregnancies rising drastically in the Asian part of the country where infant mortality was highest, while declining markedly in the more developed European part of the Soviet Union.

Language

The Soviet government headed by Vladimir Lenin gave small language groups their own writing systems. The development of these writing systems was very successful, even though some flaws were detected. During the later days of the USSR, countries with the same multilingual situation implemented similar policies. A serious problem when creating these writing systems was that the languages differed dialectally greatly from each other. When a language had been given a writing system and appeared in a notable publication, that language would attain "official language" status. There were many minority languages which never received their own writing system, therefore their speakers were forced to have a second language. There are examples where the Soviet government retreated from this policy, most notable under Stalin's regime, where education was discontinued in languages which were not widespread enough. These languages were then assimilated into another language, mostly Russian. During the Great Patriotic War (World War II), some minority languages were banned, and their speakers accused of collaborating with the enemy.

As the most widely-spoken of the Soviet Union's many languages, Russian ''de facto'' functioned as an official language as the "language of interethnic communication" (), but only assumed the ''de jure'' status of the official national language in 1990.

Religion

Christianity and Islam had the greatest number of adherents among the Soviet state's religious citizens. Eastern Christianity predominated among Christians, with Russia's traditional Russian Orthodox Church being the Soviet Union's largest Christian denomination. About 90 percent of the Soviet Union's Muslims were Sunnis, with Shiites concentrated in the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic. Smaller groups included Roman Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, and a variety of Protestant sects.

Religious influence had been strong in the Russian Empire. The Russian Orthodox Church enjoyed a privileged status as the church of the monarchy and took part in carrying out official state functions. The immediate period following the establishment of the Soviet state included a struggle against the Orthodox Church, which the revolutionaries considered an ally of the former ruling classes.

In Soviet law, the "freedom to hold religious services" was constitutionally guaranteed, although the ruling Communist Party regarded religion as incompatible with the Marxist spirit of scientific materialism. Among further restrictions, those adopted in 1929, a half-decade into Stalin's rule, included express prohibitions on a range of church activities, including meetings for organized Bible study.

Convinced that religious anti-Sovietism had become a thing of the past, the Stalin regime began shifting to a more moderate religion policy in the late 1930s. Soviet religious establishments overwhelmingly rallied to support the war effort during the Soviet war with Nazi Germany. Amid other accommodations to religious faith, churches were reopened, Radio Moscow began broadcasting a religious hour, and a historic meeting between Stalin and Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Sergius I of Moscow was held in 1943.

The Soviet establishment again clashed with the churches under General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev's leadership in 19581964, a period when atheism was emphasized in the educational curriculum, and numerous state publications promoted atheistic views. The number of working mosques also declined, falling from 1,500 to 500 within a decade. Official relations between the Orthodox Church and the Soviet government again warmed to the point that the Brezhnev government twice honored Orthodox Patriarch Alexey II with Soviet decorations, including the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

Culture

The culture of the Soviet Union passed through several stages during the USSR's 70-year existence. During the first eleven years following the Revolution (1918–1929), there was relative freedom and artists experimented with several different styles in an effort to find a distinctive Soviet style of art. Lenin wanted art to be accessible to the Russian people. On the other hand, hundreds of intellectuals, writers, and artists were exiled or executed, and their work banned, for example Nikolay Gumilev (shot for conspiring against the Bolshevik regime) and Yevgeny Zamyatin (banned).

The government encouraged a variety of trends. In art and literature, numerous schools, some traditional and others radically experimental, proliferated. Communist writers Maksim Gorky and Vladimir Mayakovsky were active during this time. Film, as a means of influencing a largely illiterate society, received encouragement from the state; much of director Sergei Eisenstein's best work dates from this period.

Later, during Stalin's rule, Soviet culture was characterised by the rise and domination of the government-imposed style of socialist realism, with all other trends being severely repressed, with rare exceptions, for example Mikhail Bulgakov's works. Many writers were imprisoned and killed.

Following the Khrushchev Thaw of the late 1950s and early 1960s, censorship was diminished. Greater experimentation in art forms became permissible once again, with the result that more sophisticated and subtly critical work began to be produced. The regime loosened its emphasis on socialist realism; thus, for instance, many protagonists of the novels of author Yury Trifonov concerned themselves with problems of daily life rather than with building socialism. An underground dissident literature, known as ''samizdat'', developed during this late period. In architecture the Khrushchev era mostly focused on functional design as opposed to the highly decorated style of Stalin's epoch.

In the second half of the 1980s, Gorbachev's policies of ''perestroika'' and ''glasnost'' significantly expanded freedom of expression in the media and press.

See also

Index of Soviet Union-related articles

Evil empire

Notes

Bibliography

Madhavan K. Palat, Social Identities in Revolutionary Russia, ed. (Macmillan, Palgrave, UK, and St Martin’s Press, New York, 2001)

Further reading

;Surveys

''A Country Study: Soviet Union (Former)''. Library of Congress Country Studies, 1991.

Brown, Archie, et al., eds.: ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union'' (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

Gilbert, Martin: ''The Routledge Atlas of Russian History'' (London: Routledge, 2002).

Goldman, Minton: ''The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe'' (Connecticut: Global Studies, Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc., 1986).

Grant, Ted: ''Russia, from Revolution to Counter-Revolution'', London, Well Red Publications,1997

Howe, G. Melvyn: ''The Soviet Union: A Geographical Survey'' 2nd. edn. (Estover, UK: MacDonald and Evans, 1983).

Pipes, Richard. ''Communism: A History'' (2003), by a leading conservative scholar

;Lenin and Leninism

Clark, Ronald W. ''Lenin'' (1988). 570 pp.

Debo, Richard K. ''Survival and Consolidation: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1918–1921'' (1992).

Marples, David R. ''Lenin's Revolution: Russia, 1917–1921'' (2000) 156pp. short survey

Pipes, Richard. ''A Concise History of the Russian Revolution'' (1996) excerpt and text search, by a leading conservative

Pipes, Richard. ''Russia under the Bolshevik Regime.'' (1994). 608 pp.

Service, Robert. ''Lenin: A Biography'' (2002), 561pp; standard scholarly biography; a short version of his 3 vol detailed biography

Volkogonov, Dmitri. ''Lenin: Life and Legacy'' (1994). 600 pp.

;Stalin and Stalinism

Daniels, R. V., ed. ''The Stalin Revolution'' (1965)

Davies, Sarah, and James Harris, eds. ''Stalin: A New History,'' (2006), 310pp, 14 specialized essays by scholars excerpt and text search

De Jonge, Alex. ''Stalin and the Shaping of the Soviet Union'' (1986)

Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed. ''Stalinism: New Directions,'' (1999), 396pp excerpts from many scholars on the impact of Stalinism on the people (little on Stalin himself) online edition

Hoffmann, David L. ed. ''Stalinism: The Essential Readings,'' (2002) essays by 12 scholars

Laqueur, Walter. ''Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations'' (1990)

Kershaw, Ian, and Moshe Lewin. ''Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison'' (2004) excerpt and text search

Lee, Stephen J. ''Stalin and the Soviet Union'' (1999) online edition

Lewis, Jonathan. ''Stalin: A Time for Judgement'' (1990)

McNeal, Robert H. ''Stalin: Man and Ruler'' (1988)

Martens, Ludo. ''Another view of Stalin'' (1994), a highly favorable view from a Maoist historian

Service, Robert. ''Stalin: A Biography'' (2004), along with Tucker the standard biography

Trotsky, Leon. ''Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence,'' (1967), an interpretation by Stalin's worst enemy

Tucker, Robert C. ''Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929'' (1973); ''Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1929–1941.'' (1990) online edition with Service, a standard biography; online at ACLS e-books

;World War II

Bellamy, Chris. ''Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War'' (2008), 880pp excerpt and text search

Broekmeyer, Marius. ''Stalin, the Russians, and Their War, 1941–1945.'' 2004. 315 pp.

Overy, Richard. ''Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941–1945'' (1998) excerpt and text search

Roberts, Geoffrey. ''Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953'' (2006).

Seaton, Albert. ''Stalin as Military Commander,'' (1998) online edition

;Cold war

Brzezinski, Zbigniew. ''The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century'' (1989)

Edmonds, Robin. ''Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years'' (1983)

Goncharov, Sergei, John Lewis and Litai Xue, ''Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War'' (1993) excerpt and text search

Gorlizki, Yoram, and Oleg Khlevniuk. ''Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953'' (2004) online edition

Holloway, David. ''Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956'' (1996) excerpt and text search

Mastny, Vojtech. ''Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941–1945'' (1979)

Mastny, Vojtech. ''The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years'' (1998) excerpt and text search; online complete edition

Nation, R. Craig. ''Black Earth, Red Star: A History of Soviet Security Policy, 1917–1991'' (1992)

Sivachev, Nikolai and Nikolai Yakolev, ''Russia and the United States'' (1979), by Soviet historians

Taubman, William. ''Khrushchev: The Man and His Era'' (2004), Pulitzer Prize; excerpt and text search

Ulam, Adam B. ''Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1973'', 2nd ed. (1974)

Zubok, Vladislav M. ''Inside the Kremlin's Cold War'' (1996) 20% excerpt and online search

Zubok, Vladislav M. ''A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev'' (2007)

;Collapse

Beschloss, Michael, and Strobe Talbott. ''At the Highest Levels:The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War'' (1993)

Bialer, Seweryn and Michael Mandelbaum, eds. ''Gorbachev's Russia and American Foreign Policy'' (1988).

Garthoff, Raymond. ''The Great Transition: American–Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War'' (1994), detailed narrative

Grachev, A.S. ''Gorbachev's Gamble: Soviet Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War'' (2008) excerpt and text search

Hogan, Michael ed. ''The End of the Cold War. Its Meaning and Implications'' (1992) articles from ''Diplomatic History''

Kotkin, Stephen. ''Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000'' (2008) excerpt and text search

Matlock, Jack. ''Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union'' (1995)

Pons, S., Romero, F., ''Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War: Issues, Interpretations, Periodizations'', (2005) ISBN 978–0–7146–5695–X

Remnick, David. ''Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire'', (1994), ISBN 978–0–679–75125–4

;Specialty studies

Armstrong, John A. ''The Politics of Totalitarianism: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1934 to the Present.'' New York: Random House, 1961.

Katz, Zev, ed.: ''Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities'' (New York: Free Press, 1975).

Moore, Jr., Barrington. ''Soviet politics: the dilemma of power.'' Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950.

Dmitry Orlov, ''Reinventing Collapse'', New Society Books, 2008, ISBN 978–0–86571–606–3

Rizzi, Bruno: "The Bureaucratization of the World : The First English edition of the Underground Marxist Classic That Analyzed Class Exploitation in the USSR", New York, NY : Free Press, 1985.

Schapiro, Leonard B. ''The Origin of the Communist Autocracy: Political Opposition in the Soviet State, First Phase 1917–1922.'' Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955, 1966.

External links

Impressions of Soviet Russia, by John Dewey.

Documents and other forms of media from the Soviet Union: 1917–1991.

A Country Study: Soviet Union (Former)

Soviet Union Exhibit at Global Museum on Communism with essay by Richard Pipes

The Soviet Union

Category:History of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia Category:Communism in Russia Category:Communist states Category:Early Soviet republics Category:States and territories established in 1922 Category:Former Slavic countries Category:Single-party states Category:History of Russia Category:Former polities of the Cold War Category:Superpowers Category:Former member states of the United Nations

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Unit name	Военно-морской флот СССР''Voyenno-morskoy flot SSSR''
Dates	1917–1991
Country	Soviet Union
Anniversaries	}}

The Soviet Navy (, literally "Military Maritime Fleet of the USSR") was the naval arm of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy would have played an instrumental role in a Warsaw Pact war with NATO, where it would have attempted to prevent naval convoys from bringing reinforcements across the Atlantic Ocean from North America to Western Europe. Such a conflict never occurred, but the Soviet Navy still saw considerable action during the Cold War.

The Soviet Navy was divided into four major fleets, the Northern, Pacific, Black Sea, and Baltic Fleets, and commanded separately, the Leningrad Naval Base. The Caspian Flotilla was a smaller force operating in the land-locked Caspian Sea. The Mediterranean Squadron drew its units from the Black Sea, Baltic, and Northern Fleets; the Indian Ocean Squadron primarily from the Pacific Fleet. Other components included Naval Aviation, Naval Infantry (the Soviet equivalent of marines), and Coastal Artillery.

According to a 1980 ''Time'' article citing analysts from RAND Corporation, non-Slavs were generally prohibited from joining elite or strategic positions in the armed forces like the Navy, Strategic Rocket Forces and the Soviet Air Force because of suspicions of the loyalty of ethnic minorities.

Most of the Soviet Navy was reformed into the Russian Navy after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

History

Early history

The Soviet Navy was based on a republican naval force formed from the remnants of the Imperial Russian Navy, which had been almost completely destroyed during the Revolution of 1917, the Russian civil war, and the Kronstadt rebellion. During the revolution, sailors deserted their ships at will and generally neglected their duties. The officers were dispersed (some were killed by the Red Terror, some joined the "White" (anti-communist) armies, and others simply resigned from the Navy) and most of the sailors left their ships. Work stopped in the shipyards, where uncompleted ships deteriorated rapidly.

The Black Sea Fleet fared no better than the Baltic. The Bolshevik revolution entirely disrupted its personnel, with mass murders of officers; the ships were allowed to decay to unserviceability. At the end of April 1918, German troops entered the Crimea and started to advance towards the Sevastopol naval base. The more effective ships were moved from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk where, after an ultimatum from Germany, they were scuttled by Vladimir Lenin's order. The ships remaining in Sevastopol were captured by the Germans and then, after November 1918, by the British. On 1 April 1919, when Red Army forces captured Crimea, the British squadron had to withdraw, but before leaving they damaged all the remaining battleships and sank thirteen new submarines. When a White Army captured Crimea during 1919, it rescued and reconditioned a few units. At the end of the civil war, Wrangel's fleet, a White fleet, moved to Bizerta in French Tunisia, where it was interned.

The first ship of the revolutionary navy could be considered the rebellious Imperial Russian cruiser , whose crew joined the Bolsheviks. Sailors of the Baltic fleet supplied the fighting force of the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution. Some imperial vessels continued to serve after the revolution, albeit with different names.

The Soviet Navy, established as the "Workers' and Peasants' Red Fleet" (Russian: Рабоче-Крестьянский Красный флот, ''Raboche-Krest'yansky Krasny Flot'' or RKKF) by a 1918 decree of the Soviet government, was not very service-ready during the interwar years. As the country's attentions were largely directed internally, the Navy did not have much funding or training. An indicator of its reputation was that the Soviets were not invited to participate with the Washington Naval Treaty, which limited the size and capabilities of the most powerful navies. The greater part of the old fleet was sold by the Soviet government to Germany for scrap. In the Baltic Sea there remained only three much-neglected battleships, two cruisers, some ten destroyers, and a few submarines. Despite this state of affairs, the Baltic Fleet remained a significant naval formation, and the Black Sea Fleet also provided a basis for expansion. There also existed some thirty minor-waterways combat flotillas.

During the 1930s, as the industrialization of the Soviet Union proceeded, plans were made to expand the Soviet Navy into one of the most powerful in the world. Approved by the Labour and Defence Council during 1926, the Naval Shipbuilding Program included plans to construct twelve submarines; the first six were to become known as the ''Dekabrist'' class. Beginning 4 November 1926, ''Technical Bureau Nº 4'' (formerly the Submarine Department, and still secret), with the management of B.M. Malinin, managed the submarine construction works at the Baltic Shipyard. During subsequent years, 133 submarines were built to designs developed during Malinin's management. Additional developments included the formation of the Pacific Fleet during 1932 and the Northern Fleet during 1933. The forces were to be built around a core of powerful ''Sovetsky Soyuz''-class battleships. This building program was only in its initial stages by the time the German invasion forced its suspension during 1941.

The Soviet Navy had some minor action during the Winter War of 1939–1940 on the Baltic Sea, limited mainly to cruisers and battleships fighting artillery duels with Finnish forts.

The Second World War

After the beginning of the Second World War, many sailors and naval guns were detached to reinforce the Red Army; these reassigned naval forces participated with every major action on the Eastern Front. Soviet naval personnel had especially significant roles on land in the battles for Odessa, Sevastopol, Stalingrad, Novorossiysk, Tuapse, and Leningrad. The composition of the Soviet fleets in 1941 included:

7 cruisers (including 4 modern ''Kirov''-class heavy cruisers),

59 destroyer-leaders and squadron-destroyers (including 46 modern Type 7 and Type 7U destroyers),

218 submarines,

269 torpedo boats,

22 patrol vessels,

88 minesweepers,

77 submarine-hunters,

and a range of other smaller vessels.

In various stages of completion were another 219 vessels including 3 battleships, 2 heavy and 7 light cruisers, 45 destroyers, and 91 submarines.

Included in the totals above are some pre-WWI ships (''Novik''-class destroyers, some of the cruisers, and all the battleships), some modern ships built in the USSR and Europe (like the Italian-built destroyer ''Tashkent'' and the partially completed German cruiser ). During the war, many of the vessels on the slips in Leningrad and Nikolayev were destroyed (mainly by aircraft and mines), but the Soviet Navy received captured Romanian destroyers and Lend-Lease small craft from the U.S., as well as the old Royal Navy battleship (renamed ''Arkhangelsk'') and the United States Navy cruiser (renamed ''Murmansk'') in exchange for the Soviet part of the captured Italian navy.

Baltic Fleet

In the Baltic Sea, after Tallinn's capture, surface ships were blockaded in Leningrad and Kronstadt by minefields, where they participated with the anti-aircraft defense of the city and bombarded German positions. One example of Soviet resourcefulness was the battleship ''Marat'', an aging pre-WWI ship sunk at anchor in Kronstadt's harbor by German ''Stukas'' during 1941. For the rest of the war, the non-submerged part of the ship remained in use as a grounded battery. Submarines, although suffering great losses due to German and Finnish anti-submarine actions, had a major role in the war at sea by disrupting Axis navigation in the Baltic Sea.

Other Theaters of Operation

In the Black Sea, many ships were damaged by minefields and Axis aviation, but they helped defend naval bases and supply them while besieged, as well as later evacuating them. Heavy naval guns and courageous sailors helped defend port cities during long sieges by Axis armies. In the Arctic Ocean, Soviet Northern Fleet destroyers (''Novik''-class, Type 7, and Type 7U) and smaller craft participated with the anti-aircraft and anti-submarine defense of Allied convoys conducting Lend-Lease cargo shipping. In the Pacific Ocean, the Soviet Union was not at war with Japan before 1945, so some destroyers were transferred to the Northern Fleet.

From the beginning of hostilities, Soviet Naval Aviation provided air support to naval and land operations involving the Soviet Navy. This service was responsible for the operation of shore-based floatplanes, long-range flying boats, catapult-launched and vessel-based planes, and land-based aircraft designated for naval use.

As post-war spoils, the Soviets received several Italian warships and much German naval engineering and architectural documentation.

Cold War

During February 1946 the Red Fleet was renamed the Soviet Navy (), literally the ''Soviet Military Naval Fleet''. After the war, the Soviets concluded that they needed to be able to compete with the Western powers at all costs, and began a program to achieve parity. The Soviet shipbuilding program kept yards busy constructing submarines based upon World War II German ''Kriegsmarine'' designs, and were launched with great frequency during the immediate post-war years. Afterwards, through a combination of indigenous research and technology obtained through espionage from Nazi Germany and the Western nations, the Soviets gradually improved their submarine designs, though they initially lagged the NATO countries by a decade or two.

The Soviets were quick to equip their surface fleet with missiles of various sorts. Indeed it became a feature of Soviet design to place large missiles onto relatively small, but fast, missile boats, while in the West such an approach would never have been considered feasible tactically. The Soviet Navy did also possess several very large and well-armed guided-missile cruisers, like those of the ''Kirov'' and ''Slava'' classes. By the 1970s, Soviet submarine technology was in some respects more advanced than in the West, and several of their submarine types were considered superior to their American rivals.

The 5th Operational Squadron (:ru:5-я Средиземноморская эскадра кораблей ВМФ) operated against the NATO naval forces in the Mediterranean Sea, especially the U.S. Sixth Fleet.

Carriers and aviation

Although the Soviet Union's wartime naval commander-in-chief, Admiral Kuznetsov, actively promoted the building of aircraft carriers after the war, Communist Party ideology termed them "instruments of capitalist imperial aggression" and accordingly deemed them unsuitable for the USSR. Moreover, among the armed services the Navy was lowest in priority in the consideration of the Party's management. Premiers Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev considered aircraft carriers overly expensive, time-consuming, and vulnerable to attack.

The Soviet Navy still had the mission of confronting Western submarines, creating a need for large surface vessels to carry anti-submarine helicopters. During 1968 and 1969 the ''Moskva''-class helicopter carriers were first deployed, succeeded by the first of four aircraft-carrying cruisers of the ''Kiev'' class during 1973. Both of these types were capable of operating ASW helicopters, and the ''Kiev'' class also operated V/STOL aircraft (''e.g.'' the Yak-38 'Forger'); they were designed to operate for fleet defense, primarily within range of land-based Soviet Naval Aviation aircraft.

During the 1970s the Soviets began Project OREL, whose stated purpose was to create an aircraft carrier capable of basing fixed-wing fighter aircraft in defense of the deployed fleet. The project was canceled during the planning stages when strategic priorities shifted once more. It was during the 1980s that the Soviet Navy acquired its first true aircraft carrier, ''Tbilisi'', subsequently renamed ''Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov'', which carries Sukhoi Su-33 'Flanker-D' and MiG-29 fighters, and Ka-27 helicopters. A distinctive feature of Soviet aircraft carriers has been their offensive missile armament (as well as long-range anti-aircraft warfare armament), again representing a fleet-defense operational concept, in distinction to the Western emphasis on shore-strike missions from distant deployment. A second carrier (pre-commissioning name ''Varyag'') was being constructed when the Soviet Union disintegrated. Construction stopped and the ship was sold, incomplete, to China by Ukraine. Soon after the launch of this second ''Kuznetsov''-class ship, the Soviet Navy began the construction of an improved aircraft carrier design, , which was to have been slightly larger than the ''Kuznetsov'' class and nuclear-powered. The project was terminated, and what little structure had been initiated in the building ways was scrapped.

In part to perform the functions usual to carrier-borne aircraft, the Soviet Navy deployed large numbers of strategic bombers in a maritime role, with the ''Aviatsiya Voenno-Morskogo Flota'' (AV-MF, or Naval Aviation service). Strategic bombers like the Tupolev Tu-16 'Badger' and Tu-22M 'Backfire' were deployed with high-speed anti-shipping missiles. The primary role of these aircraft was the interception of NATO supply convoys traveling the sea lines of communication between Europe and North America, and thus countering Operation REFORGER.

Submarines

Due to the USSR's geographic position, submarines were considered the capital ships of the Navy. It was submarines that could penetrate attempts at blockade, either in the constrained waters of the Baltic and Black Seas or in the remote reaches of the USSR's western Arctic. Surface ships clearly were much easier to find and attack. The USSR had entered WWII with more submarines than Germany, but geography and the speed of the German attack precluded it from effectively using its more numerous fleet to advantage. Because of its opinion that "quantity had a quality of its own" and the insistence of Fleet Admiral Gorshkov, the Soviet Navy continued to operate many first-generation missile submarines, built during the early 1960s, until the end of the Cold War during 1991.

In some respects, including speed and reactor technology, Soviet submarines achieved unique successes, but for most of the era lagged their Western counterparts in overall capability. In addition to their relatively high speeds and great operating depths they were difficult Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) targets to destroy because of their multiple compartments, their large reserve buoyancy, and especially their double-hulled design. Their principal shortcomings were insufficient noise damping (American boats were quieter) and primitive sonar technology. Acoustics was a particularly interesting type of information that the Soviets sought about the West's submarine-production methods, and the long-active John Anthony Walker spy ring may have made a major contribution to their knowledge of such.

The Soviet Navy possessed numerous purpose-built guided missile submarines, such as the Oscar class, as well as many ballistic missile and attack submarines; their Typhoon-class boats are the world's largest submarines. The Soviet attack-submarine force was, like the rest of the Navy, designed for interception of NATO convoys, but also targeted American aircraft-carrier battle groups.

Over the years Soviet submarines suffered a number of accidents, most notably on several nuclear boats. The most famous incidents include the Yankee-class ''K-219'', and the Mike-class ''Komsomolets'', both lost to fire, and the far more menacing nuclear reactor leak on the Hotel-class K-19, narrowly averted by her captain. Inadequate nuclear safety, poor damage control, and quality-control issues during construction (particularly on the earlier submarines) were typical causes of accidents. On several occasions there were alleged collisions with American submarines. None of these, however, has been confirmed officially by the U.S. Navy, which maintains a policy of secrecy regarding nuclear incidents.

Transition

After the dissolution of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Navy, like other branches of Armed Forces, eventually lost some of its units to former Soviet Republics, and was left without funding. The Black Sea Fleet in particular spent several years in reserve, until 1997 when an agreement that ceded some of its ships to Ukraine was made.

Heads of the Soviet Naval Forces

Commanders of Naval Forces of the RSFSR ("KoMorSi")

Vasili Mikhailovich Altfater (15 October 1918 – 22 April 1919),

Yevgeny Andreyevich Berens (24 April 1919 – 5 February 1920),

Aleksandr Vasiliyevich Nemits (5 February 1920 – 22 November 1921).

Commander-in-Chief's Assistant for Naval Affairs (from 27 August 1921)

Commanders-in-Chief of the Naval Forces of the U.S.S.R. ("NaMorSi") (from 1 January 1924)

Eduard Samoilovich Pantserzhansky (22 December 1921 – 9 December 1924),

Vyacheslav Ivanovich Zof (9 December 1924 – 23 August 1926),

Romuald Adamovich Muklevich (23 August 1926 – 11 June 1931),

Fleet Flag-officer 1st Rank Vladimir Mitrofanovich Orlov (11 June 1931 – 15 August 1937),

Fleet Flag-officer 1st Rank Mikhail Vladimirovich Viktorov (15 August 1937 – 30 December 1937).

People's Commissars for the U.S.S.R. Navy ("NarKom VMF USSR") (from 1938)

Army Commissar 1st Rank Pyotr Alexandrovich Smirnov (30 December 1937 – 5 November 1938),

Army Commander 1st Rank Mikhail Petrovich Frinovsky (5 November 1938 – 20 March 1939),

Admiral Nikolai Gerasimovich Kuznetsov (from 27 April 1939).

Commanders-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy ("GlavKom VMF") (from 1943)

Fleet Admiral Nikolai Gerasimovich Kuznetsov (to January 1947),

Admiral Ivan Stepanovich Yumashev (17 January 1947 – July 1951),

Fleet Admiral of the Soviet Union Nikolai Gerasimovich Kuznetsov (20 July 1951 – 5 January 1956), second term,

Fleet Admiral of the Soviet Union Sergey Georgyevich Gorshkov (5 January 1956 – 8 December 1985), considered the officer most responsible for reforming the Soviet Navy,

Fleet Admiral Vladimir Nikolayevich Chernavin (8 December 1985 – December 1991; CIS Navy through August 1992).

See also

1966 Soviet submarine global circumnavigation

List of ships of the Soviet Navy

List of USSR navy flags

Morskaya Aviatsiya WWII Soviet Naval Air Service

List of Russian admirals

References

Bibliography

Sontag, Sherry; Drew, Christopher; Drew, Annette Lawrence (1998). ''Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage''. Harper. ISBN 0-06-103004-X.

Nilsen, Thomas; Kudrik, Igor; Nikitin, Aleksandr (1996). ''Report 2:1996: The Russian Northern Fleet''. Oslo/St. Petersburg: Bellona Foundation. ISBN 82-993138-5-6. Chapter 8, "Nuclear submarine accidents".

Oberg, James (1988). ''Uncovering Soviet Disasters''. New York, NY: Random House. ISBN 0-394-56095-7.

Goldstein, Lyle; Zhukov, Yuri (2004). ''A Tale of Two Fleets: A Russian Perspective on the 1973 Naval Standoff in the Mediterranean''. Naval War College Review.

Goldstein, Lyle; John Hattendorf; Zhukov, Yuri. (2005) ''The Cold War at Sea: An International Appraisal''. Journal of Strategic Studies. ISSN 0140-2390

External links

Russian Navy

Globalsecurity.org page on the Soviet Navy.

Admiral Gorshkov and the Soviet Navy

Soviet Submarines

Red Fleet

Flags & Streamers

Warship Listing

Russian Navy Weapons

All Soviet Warships - Complete Ship List (English)

All Soviet Submarines - Complete Ship List (English)

ca:Marina Soviètica cs:Sovětské námořnictvo de:Sowjetische Marine es:Armada Soviética fr:Marine soviétique ko:소비에트 연방 해군 id:Angkatan Laut Uni Soviet it:Voenno Morskoj Flot SSSR he:הצי הסובייטי nl:Marine van de Sovjet-Unie no:Den sovjetiske marine pl:Radziecka Marynarka Wojenna pt:Marinha Soviética ru:Военно-Морской Флот СССР fi:Neuvostoliiton laivasto tr:Sovyet Deniz Kuvvetleri uk:Військово-морський флот СРСР zh:苏联红海军

War Machine (James Rupert Rhodes) is a fictional character, a comic book superhero appearing in comic books set in the Marvel Comics universe. The character of James Rhodes first appeared in ''Iron Man'' #118 (January 1979) by David Michelinie, John Byrne and Bob Layton. The War Machine armor, which became Rhodes' signature armored battlesuit, was designed by Len Kaminski and Kevin Hopgood.

Also known by his nickname Rhodey, Rhodes has been a featured character in the ''Iron Man'' animated series, ''Iron Man: Armored Adventures'' and ''The Invincible Iron Man'' animated film. He was played by actor Terrence Howard in the 2008 film ''Iron Man'' and by Don Cheadle in the sequel ''Iron Man 2''.

Publication history

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Fictional character biography

Origins

James Rupert Rhodes, an African-American from the South Philadelphia section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force who served tours of duty in Southeast Asia. A combat pilot, he was stranded in the jungle behind enemy lines after his helicopter was shot down by Viet Cong rocket fire. He encounters Iron Man, who escaped from Wong-Chu's prison camp in his prototype suit of powered armor, for the first time. Defeating the Viet Cong soldiers that ambushed them, Rhodes and Iron Man discovered an enemy rocket base that was the origin of the rocket fire that grounded Rhodes in the first place. Destroying the base with a stolen Viet Cong helicopter, Rhodes and Iron Man flew the helicopter back to the American defense perimeter. At the base hospital in Saigon, Stark arrives in person to thank Rhodes for helping Iron Man and to offer Rhodes a job as his personal pilot. After the Vietnam War was over and after taking several career paths including mercenary work, Rhodes finally took Stark's offer and became Stark's personal pilot, chief aviation engineer for Stark International, and one of Stark's closest friends.

The all new Iron Man

Due to Obadiah Stane's actions, Stark International was losing foreign contracts and going into heavy debt. With Stark's company and personal life in disarray, Stark relapsed into alcoholism. After an intoxicated Stark was defeated by Magma, Rhodes donned the Iron Man armor for the first time and defeated Magma. Stark asked Rhodes to be Iron Man while Stark continued his life of alcoholism. Rhodes, along with scientist Morley Erwin, quits Stark International and sent the remaining Iron Man armors into the ocean to protect Stark’s technology from Stane and S.H.I.E.L.D., who monitored the Stane takeover. Morley Erwin maintained the Iron Man armor and served as Rhodes’ technical support while Rhodes fought villains such as the Mandarin, Thunderball, the Zodiac, and the Radioactive Man as Iron Man. He became a charter member of the West Coast Avengers and fought in the Beyonder's "Secret Wars". Rhodes, Morley Erwin, and Morley's sister Dr. Clytemnestra Erwin planned to create a new electronics firm based in California. Rhodes took mercenary jobs to provide money for the armor's upkeep and to fund the company. Recovering from his alcoholism, Tony Stark joined the three and they formed the company Circuits Maximus. Due to the armor’s helmet being tailored to Stark’s brainwaves, Rhodes developed headaches and grew more erratic and aggressive. Stark helped Rhodes maintain the armor, but Rhodes' paranoia and hatred made him believe that Stark wanted to retake the armor. During a battle with Vibro, Rhodes went on a rampage to capture the villain and Stark was forced to wear his new testbed armor (resembling Stark's first Iron Man armor) to stop Rhodes and talk him out of his rage.

Rhodes sought help from Dr. Henry Pym to cure his headaches while Stark delivered Rhodes’ resignation to the Avengers and revealed his identity to Hawkeye and Mockingbird. Pym sent Rhodes to Dr. Michael Twoyoungmen (Shaman of Alpha Flight) and Rhodes cured himself of his headaches via a journey through a mystic dimension called "The Gorge" that revealed Rhodes’ guilt of feeling unworthy of the armor. While Rhodes was finally at peace and left his armor behind in the dimension, the armor was empowered by The Omnos, a being of extra-dimensional energy, and was returned to Rhodes. Rhodes resumed operating as Iron Man with Stark using his own testbed armor to assist Rhodes. Due to a bomb sent by Stane to Circuits Maximus that injured Rhodes and killed Morley Erwin, Stark became active as Iron Man again, donning his newly-completed "Silver Centurion" model, and defeated Stane.

Out of the armor

Rhodes remained at Stark's side as Stark regained his personal fortune and built a new corporation, Stark Enterprises, remaining in California. Rhodes donned the red-and-gold armor once more when A.I.M. attacked the under-construction Stark space station. However, the armor's seals had been damaged in a shuttle explosion, causing Rhodes to suffer severe burns upon reentry; he survived only by Stark using his own armor as a heat shield to minimize Rhodes' exposure. After Rhodes recovered, he continued to play a key role in assisting Stark, particularly during the first ''Armor Wars'' storyline.

When Stark was shot by Kathy Dare and left paralyzed, he needed a fill-in for the role of Iron Man. Rhodes refused, citing the history between him and the armor, "not all of it good". Stark would call upon the former Force, Clay Wilson (known as Carl Walker at this point), to fill in, wearing the modified Stealth armor, until Stark could modify his regular armor to allow him to function normally inside the suit. Rhodes would reluctantly return to the armor to fight the Mandarin at the behest of the Chinese government, in order to allow Stark to seek medical assistance in their country. In the end, Stark (using a remote-control set of armor) and Rhodes team up with the Mandarin to stop the larger threat of the Makulan dragons.

Iron Man once again and the birth of War Machine

The Masters Of Silence, three Japanese warriors tricked by Justin Hammer into attacking Iron Man, defeated Stark with technology that enabled them to not be affected by repulsors or unibeams. To combat the threat, Stark designed the "Variable Threat Response Battle Suit, Model XVI, Mark I" (nicknamed "War Machine"), a more heavily armed version of the Iron Man armor designed for all-out warfare. After Stark's apparent death in the comic book, he left Rhodes in control of Stark Enterprises as its new CEO, along with a new Variable Threat Response Battle Suit designed especially for Rhodes to continue the Iron Man legacy. As Iron Man once again, Rhodes used the armor and fought against threats such as the Living Laser, the second Spymaster, Blacklash, the Beetle, and Atom Smasher.

Upon the revelation that Stark was alive, Rhodes quit Stark Enterprises and the friendship between the two was fractured. After teaming with Iron Man against battledroids programmed to kill Rhodes, Stark wanted Rhodes to keep the Variable Threat Response Battle Suit stating that the armor always belonged to Rhodes. Rhodes eventually kept the armor and later adopted the name of War Machine. When the robot Ultimo went on a rampage, Rhodes called together Harold "Happy" Hogan, Bethany Cabe, Eddie March, "Carl Walker" and Michael O'Brien to pilot various Iron Man armors to take down Ultimo as the Iron Legion. He rejoined the West Coast Avengers as War Machine and served with the team until he resigned after an argument with Iron Man during an Avengers team meeting. During the beginning of the ''War Machine'' series, Rhodes was approached by Vincent Cetewayo, noted activist from the African country of Imaya and founder of the human rights organization Worldwatch Incorporated. Cetewayo offered Rhodes the position of Worldwatch's Executive Director, but the offer was declined. Cetewayo was kidnapped by Imayan forces led by the dictator President Eda Arul. Receiving no aid from S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Avengers, Rhodes traveled to Imaya as War Machine to free Cetewayo. Joined by Deathlok, the two evaded capture from a S.H.I.E.L.D. unit led by Major Bathsheva "Sheva" Joseph and joined the fight to liberate Imaya. Rhodes successfully led Imayan rebels into combat against Arul's forces, but failed to save Cetewayo from being killed by the Advisor, the apparent mastermind of Arul's rise to power. Shaken by the death of Cetewayo and finding something worth fighting for, Rhodes takes the position of Worldwatch's Executive Director and hired Sheva Joseph, who left S.H.I.E.L.D. after her assignment in Imaya.

During the ''Hands of the Mandarin'' crossover, Stark disapproved of the actions of War Machine in Imaya and demanded that Rhodes relinquish the armor when he returned to Stark Enterprises to get the specifications for his armor. The two men battled each other until the fight was stopped by Bethany Cabe, the Head Of Security for Stark Enterprises. While their armor was rebooting, the Mandarin captured Rhodes and Stark, discovering their identities. Century of the superhero team Force Works rescued Rhodes, but his armor was useless thanks to the Mandarin’s anti-technology field. Rhodes and Stark reconciled and joined with Force Works to stop the Mandarin and his Avatars from using the Heart Of Darkness for their plans of conquest. Stark gave Rhodes the blueprints to the War Machine armor and a fully upgraded armor with new armaments was made. Rhodes continued to use the War Machine armor in a solo superhero career, occasionally fighting alongside Stark and Force Works.

The Warwear

After the events of the ''Time War'' storyline, in which Rhodes teamed up with Captain America, Bucky and Sgt. Nick Fury & his Howling Commandos to stop Neo-Nazis from sending modern weaponry to Nazi Germany, the War Machine armor was lost in the time stream. Rhodes returned to civilian life, but he ended up acquiring a brand new alien armor known as the Eidolon Warwear after meeting a mysterious woman named Skye and fighting an alien known as a Lictor. Skye was sent to teach Rhodes to use the Warwear and revealed that Rhodes was chosen to fight against Stark (who was under the control of Immortus disguised as Kang the Conqueror). Skye was fatally wounded by Dirge, another Eidolon Warrior sent by Immortus, and Rhodes defeated him in combat. Stark eventually breaks free of Immortus' control and sacrificed his life while Rhodes foiled Immortus' plot by using Dirge's Warwear to destroy the Starcore satellite armed with a chronographic weapon. S.H.I.E.L.D. was made aware of Rhodes' alien armor and hunted him down, but Rhodes evaded capture. To protect Worldwatch, he resigns as Executive Director.

In ''Tales of the Marvel Universe'', Rhodes rejoined Stark Enterprises to protect his friend's legacy while the Japanese company Fujikawa Industries bought out Stark Enterprises. Rhodes was kept around to help with the transition to Stark-Fujikawa. He was offered the job of President Of Corporate Liaison Operations, but kept away from Fujikawa's attempt to discover the secrets to Stark's Iron Man armor technology contained in a single gauntlet. Rhodes infiltrated the security system at Stark-Fujikawa's Research and Development facility, recovered the gauntlet, and purged the Fujikawa database of all Iron Man armor technology data by downloading the Eidolon Warwear directly into the Fujikawa computers to attack the system. Losing the armor as a result of the sabotage mission, Rhodes quits Stark-Fujikawa. After serving as one of Stark's trustees when Iron Man was presumed dead after the final battle with Onslaught, Rhodes starts his own marine salvage business called "Rhodes Recovery" and retires from superheroics.

Post War Machine

Despite staying in retirement and focusing on his salvaging company, Rhodes assisted Stark on occasion. In volume three of ''Iron Man'', He helped Stark defeat freelance mercenary and arms dealer Parnell Jacobs, who was masquerading as a villainous War Machine. A former friend and mercenary partner of Rhodes, Jacobs was under the employ of Sunset Bain and piloted a version of the War Machine armor based on armor parts that Jacobs found from the discarded original and reverse engineering by Stuart Clarke.

Due to mismanagement by his accountant and an extravagant lifestyle, Rhodes is left with depleted funds and files for bankruptcy. He is informed by the New York Police Department that his sister Jeanette "Star" Rhodes was killed in a notorious section of Brooklyn overridden with crime and drugs known as "Little Mogadishu". During a fight with some local thugs, he is helped by Josiah el Hajj Saddiq a.k.a. Josiah X, a local minister who is the son of the black Captain America. Josiah X helped Rhodes obtain footage of Jeanette's killers. With the police unable to apprehend, Rhodes captured his sister's murderers with NYPD narcotics officer Kevin "Kasper" Cole making the arrests. He discovers that the criminals that killed Jeanette were drug dealers working for the 66 Bridges, a powerful street gang with a big percentage of East Coast criminal operations. Rhodes unknowingly invested in the 66’s front company Grace & Tumbalt, a black-owned corporation that created Little Mogadishu due to their gentrification efforts. During his campaign against the 66 Bridges, Rhodes crosses paths with Cole, who secretly fights crime as The White Tiger in order to gain arrests for a promotion to detective, and Danny Vincent (Manuel Vincente), an ex-spy known as Junta with allegiance only to himself. Joining forces with these two men along with Josiah X as Justice, Rhodes and The Crew took on the 66 Bridges gang and their CEO Nigel "Triage" Blacque.

Rhodes later becomes a key member of the Office of National Emergency (O*N*E) and the head combat instructor for Sentinel Squad O*N*E. He began developing doubts about the nature of his job, such as being ordered to arrest the Black Panther and Storm when they refused to sign SHRA.

Return

When Rhodes served as a military consultant at a base in Dubai, a terrorist attack left Rhodes severely injured. Stark arrived in Dubai and rebuilt him with new limbs, bionics, and cybernetics. Rhodes once again becomes War Machine and was made field commander and a director of Camp Hammond to help train SHRA registered recruits of the Fifty State Initiative program. When the Skrulls invaded earth and unleashed a virus that disabled all Starktech systems along with Rhodes' life-support systems, he is forced to rely on Baron Von Blitzschlag's electrical powers to keep him alive while managing to activate a cluster of emergency generators in his armor that incorporated Stanetech parts in its design.

In the ''War Machine: Weapon Of S.H.I.E.L.D.'' storyline, Rhodes received a secret holographic message with coordinates after the global Starktech failure. Despite an intercepting Skrull fleet, Rhodes found a secret cloaked satellite in outer space with Suzanne "Suzi" Endo at the satellite ahead of him. Endo was there to help because of her background in cybernetics and Rhodes viewed another message from Stark revealing that Rhodes' armor, as well as the satellite, was independent from all Earth systems with Rhodes himself as a part of Stark's contingency plan. A Skrull fleet followed Rhodes to the satellite and Endo revealed that the satellite is a functional weapon with Rhodes being the key to its activation. With the satellite linked to Rhodes, it transformed into a giant "War Machine" robotic form. Destroying the Skrull fleet, he left the satellite to Russian airspace to destroy an escaping Skull ship. He made his way to a weapons depot in Tatischevo where the Winter Guard was protecting the nuclear weapons from the Skrulls. The Winter Guard ordered him to leave under the orders of the Russian military, but Rhodes ignored and was captured on a Skrull warship. He escaped and with Endo's help, used the warship to destroy the Skull fleet with the Winter Guard disobeying orders so that they could aid Rhodes. The last Super-Skrull attempted to detonate the nuclear warheads by turning himself into energy, but Rhodes used his armor's capabilities to absorb the energy.

Dark Reign

In ''Dark Reign: New Nation'', Rhodes faced Anton Aubuisson, a corrupt former French soldier with the Roxxon Energy Corporation in negotiations with the Anunquit tribe in western Canada. Rhodes defeated Aubuisson and discovered the use of Ultimo technology given to Aubuisson by Eaglestar International, a corrupt paramilitary defense contracting firm. This led to Rhodes traveling to Santo Marco and finding Parnell Jacobs, once believed to be killed by Stuart Clarke,. Rhodes recruits Jacobs to be his "one-man pit crew" to stop Eaglestar's efforts after informing him that Jacobs' estranged wife Dr. Glenda Sandoval, a medic with Eaglestar, was in forced imprisonment. In a side story, a team under the direction of Bethany Cabe developed a clone body for Rhodes to take over. The team's facility was attacked and the clone body was taken by Norman Osborn. Rhodes, with support from Jacobs and Cabe, invades the Eaglestar headquarters in the nation of Aqiria. Rescuing Sandoval and dealing with threats such as the Dark Avenger Ares and civilians infected with Ultimo technology, Rhodes deduced that the Ultimo technology came from the United States where Ultimo was last seen. Rhodes took on the mission of destroying the Ultimo components with Sandoval, Cabe, Jacobs, former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jake Oh, and a returning Suzi Endo as "Team War Machine". The team faced the threat of Ultimo in the form of Morgan Stark, Tony Stark's cousin, with the help of Rhodes' former West Coast Avengers teammates and Norman Osborn in a temporary alliance. While Rhodes was captured after ruining Osborn's plan to make Ultimo his weapon, his team exposed the "Bainesville Ten", a group of high ranking officials and industry captains responsible for worldwide crimes. Despite Osborn's efforts to distract from the indictment of the group by putting Rhodes on trial at The Hague for war crimes, Rhodes and his team foiled Osborn's scheme with Rhodes himself transferred to his clone body after saving the life of a child.

In the "Stark Disassembled" storyline, Rhodes went to Broxton, Oklahoma where Tony Stark was left in a persistent vegetative state. Following recorded instructions from Stark, Rhodes extracted wires from Pepper Potts' Rescue suit and connected Captain America's shield to the implant on Stark's chest, which would be started by Thor's lightning, in order to reboot Stark's brain.

Heroic Age

After the ''Siege'' storyline, War Machine joined the new Secret Avengers team, alongside Beast, Nova, Steve Rogers, Valkyrie, and Moon Knight.

Due to a government contract between Tony Stark's "Stark Resilent" company and The Pentagon, War Machine was assigned a new position as the US military's own "Iron Man". Now at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, Rhodes is under the command of General Babbage, who has a personal grudge against Rhodes for his actions when he battled Ultimo and Norman Osborn in the previous ''War Machine'' series. His first assignment was to track down Palmer Addley, a former weapons designer for DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Addley is committing terrorist acts around the world, despite having been dead for months. When War Machine confronts the alleged dead man, Addley's response is to drop a nuclear weapon on him. Rhodes survives, but this prompts Tony Stark to replace his armor with a far more advanced model: the "Iron Man 2.0" armor.

During the ''Fear Itself'' storyline, War Machine is seen in Washington DC helping Ant-Man and Beast. War Machine learns from the Prince of Orphans that the "Eighth City" has been opened.

Powers and abilities

Skills

Rhodes was trained as an aircraft pilot and studied aviation engineering while in service with the United States Marine Corps. He is knowledgeable in aircraft operation/maintenance and has piloted various aircraft at Stark Enterprises. Rhodes is an experienced soldier trained in unarmed combat and military weaponry such as small arms. In addition to being a pilot, engineer, soldier, and businessman, Rhodes derives multiple abilities from various hi-tech armors, either designed by Stark Industries or extraterrestrial in nature. With his years of experience with both the Iron Man and War Machine powered armors, Rhodes is skilled in armored combat and uses a more physical fighting style compared to Stark.

Armors

Iron Man Armor V

First Appearance: ''Iron Man'' #85 (April 1976)

Rhodes' first armor as Iron Man was a solar charged carbon-composite based steel mesh armor which provided him with superhuman-level strength and durability. It was armed with repulsors in each palm of the armor's gauntlets and a multifunctional unibeam projector in the chest.

War Machine Armor (Variable Threat Response Battle Suit Mark II, Model JRXL-1000)

First Appearance: ''Iron Man'' #284 (September 1992)

The original Variable Threat Response Battle Suit Mark I was a version of the Iron Man armor utilizing laser guided munitions. Stark gave Rhodes a modified version of the armor, Mark II Model JRXL-1000, created just for him with the inclusion of repulsors and a unibeam projector. The armor could be modified with various modular weapons and has an improved tactical computer system with automatic targeting. Additional weapons included pulse bolt generators, retractable shoulder minigun, variable-configured double-barrel cannons on each gauntlet, gauntlet mounted flamethrower, plasma blade on the left gauntlet, missile box launcher, micro-rocket launcher, particle beam discharger, and an electromagnetic pulse generator in the unibeam projector that could shut down any electronic device in a 50-mile radius. The armor also included a photon emitter that created a force shield, forcefield-based stealth technology, boot-jet propulsion, and a self-contained breathing system.

The second version of the armor, reconfigured by Stark, contained upgraded improvements such as heat seeking missile launchers, pulse cannon, and retractable weapon pods located on its back. Rhodes utilized different types of specialty ammunition as well as non-lethal weapons such as rubber bullets. Though Rhodes lost the original armor, he still possessed a functional prototype helmet and gauntlet.

Eidolon Warwear

First Appearance: ''War Machine'' #18 (September 1995)

The armor is a symbiotic bio-armor system of alien origin and provided Rhodes with superhuman strength, durability, and speed. The armor responded to Rhodes' commands and created weapons based on his thoughts and needs. When inactive, it was concealed inside a "mandala" or tattoo-like mark on Rhodes' chest. The left arm is capable of firing destructive energy blasts while the right arm is able to morph into a blade. The armor can "unskin" remote drones that are capable of feats such as discharging various types of energy, infiltrating electronic/computer systems, creating energy fields, and completing basic tasks. If the drone are destroyed, Rhodes feels pain due to the symbiotic connection. The armor can morph into a "full battle mode," which provided unspecified enhancement to both the armor and Rhodes himself. It was also capable of space travel with an unlimited life support system. During battle, the armor would have the strange ability to "sing" alien war songs.

Sentinel Squad Armor

First Appearance: ''Sentinel Squad O.N.E.'' #1 (March 2006)

During the ''Sentinel Squad O*N*E'' series, he used an armor that was similar to the design of previous Iron Man powered armors and was based on the primary Sentinel piloted armors that the squad used in combat. The armor was derived of S.H.I.E.L.D. technology and Stark-designed upgrades. Rhodes also piloted a larger advanced Sentinel model codenamed "War Machine". The armors were constructed of a unique mix of steel and fiberglass and contained many offensive and defensive improvements in weaponry and enhancements.

Stanetech Based War Machine Armor

First Appearance: ''Avengers: The Initiative'' #1 (March 2007)

Used during ''Avengers: The Initiative'' to volume two of ''War Machine'', this version of the War Machine armor shows all the abilities of the previous iterations with bleeding edge military ballistics and weaponry. Unlike previous War Machine armors, the armor incorporated advanced components derived from Obadiah Stane's reverse engineering of older Iron Man armor that made him immune to any Starktech based systems attack. Rhodes' bionics required an added life support system with cybernetic implants linked to the armor's systems. The armor is composed of alloys such as titanium and Wakandan vibranium, coated for stealth capabilities, and capable of space and underwater travel. Armaments included sonic generators, pulse bolts, a minigun, and a retractable unibeam projector. The armor can interface with any system and has interlocking capabilities that integrated mechanical constructs to repair and upgrade the armor. During the second ''War Machine'' series, Rhodes used this ability to merge with jet fighters and tanks deliberately to gain their technology and weapons. At the end of the series, Rhodes (Now in a cloned version of his body) is seen wearing a non-cybernetic version of the armor.

War Machine Armor V

First Appearance: ''Secret Avengers'' #1 (May 2010)

Used during issues of ''Secret Avengers'' and appearances in other comic series, this upgraded incarnation of the Variable Threat Response Battle Suit has a similar design to the movie version of the War Machine armor with armaments similar to previous incarnations such as a retractable shoulder minigun, repulsor technology, and shoulder missile launcher. The armor was destroyed by a nuclear attack in the first arc of the series ''Iron Man 2.0''.

"Iron Man 2.0" War Machine Armor

First Appearance: ''Iron Man 2.0'' #3 (April 2011)

Created in the series ''Iron Man 2.0'' by Tony Stark, this War Machine armor is a complete redesign after the destruction of the previous model. Designed by ''Iron Man 2.0'' artist Barry Kitson, the armor emphasizes stealth, recon, infiltration, and combat readiness. Unlike its predecessors, it is a slimmed down armor with no visible external weaponry such as shoulder miniguns or missile launchers. The armor's color scheme is gunmetal with black detailing and has two lines on the helmet's left eye area that glows according to the repulsor reactor's color. The armor utilizes upgraded technology such as an updated Chameleon Mode (previously a feature of the "Silver Centurion" Iron Man armor) for optical invisibility, holographic projection, and camouflage purposes. The armor also possesses Ghost technology to phase through solid objects, scanner invisibility to become undetectable to all targeting systems, and a Combat Mode that can deploy weaponry which is normally hidden and increase the size and bulk of the armor. But the armor has limitations such as strain of the armor's repulsor reactor, disorientation from the Chameleon Mode, and the inability to be both invisible and intangible at the same time due to a compatibility issue.

Other versions

1602

In ''Marvel 1602: New World'', there is a character named Rhodes, a Moor who is the engineer of the armor worn by the Spanish nobleman Lord Iron. Rhodes accompanied Lord Iron to the New World and assists in Lord Iron's mission to hunt down David Banner, former advisor to King James I of England and the man who tortured Lord Iron when he was captured by the British.

Amalgam Comics

In the Amalgam Comics Universe created by Marvel Comics and DC Comics, there is a character named Stewart Rhodes that appears in the comic ''Iron Lantern'' #1. A pilot and engineer employed at Stark Aircraft, he knows the secret of Hal Stark's double life as Iron Lantern. Stewart Rhodes is the amalgam of James Rhodes and John Stewart.

Marvel Zombies

In ''Marvel Zombies: Dead Days'', War Machine is seen amongst the crowd of heroes who have survived the Zombie plague so far. His fate is not depicted.

In ''Marvel Zombies Return'', Zombie Giant Man finds a way to enter parallel universes and invades a universe that resembles the time period in which Tony Stark was an alcoholic. Giant Man infected the parallel universe's Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts and a number of people at Stark Industries. The James Rhodes from the parallel universe finds the Iron Man armor located in a bathroom and puts it on to reach Stark. After Stark sacrifices himself to kill as many zombies as possible, Rhodes takes the name Iron Man and announces he will help the police fend off the zombies. He also becomes a member of this reality's Illuminati. Years later, Rhodes joins the New Avengers in a heavily armed suit reminiscent of the War Machine armor but in the Iron Man color scheme. This Rhodes is at least partly cybernetic, having escaped falling victim to the zombie virus himself by cutting off his limbs after being bitten in order to protect himself from the virus, the armor consisting at least partly of cybernetic limbs rather than a simple suit. The Avengers team assembled consists of Iron Man and the zombified Spider-Man, Hulk and Wolverine. Rhodes sacrifices one of his last three fingers to lure the Zombie Avengers to the Savage land. Then, using a nanite virus developed by Spider-Man, the team defeats the zombie Avengers, eradicating the zombie menace.

MC2

In the MC2 alternate future, Rhodes gained superhuman powers after exposing himself to experimental microscopic robots. While Tony Stark had intended to test them on himself, Rhodes did not feel it would be right for Stark to unnecessarily risk his life. Although now blessed with exponentially-increasing invulnerability and an impressive array of energy-based attacks, the nanites slowly corrupt Rhodes' mind, eventually destroying his personality and leaving him as little more than a very powerful, humanoid robot. He eventually works as a personal bodyguard for Tony Stark, and although he adopts a superhero uniform (vaguely reminiscent of Superman, though with a different color scheme and no chest insignia) neither he nor Stark bother to come up with a moniker for him. Spider-Girl refers to him as "Fred" for most of her series, for simple lack of anything else to call him.

U.S. War Machine

In the alternate-reality MAX imprint series ''U.S. War Machine'', Tony Stark announces he is retiring from developing weapons after he and his bodyguard James Rhodes, who had piloted the MPI-2100 Mobile Infantry Suit a.k.a. the "War Machine" armor, had used lethal force in the defeat of foreign tyrant Doctor Doom's armies. He stated he was mothballing the War Machine armor and presented the SI1-211 "Iron Man" as his new bodyguard. Rhodes, however, uses the War Machine armor to fight rogue agents of the terrorist group Advanced Idea Mechanics, and after killing two of them is fired by Stark. Afterward, former War Machine pilot Parnell Jacobs attacks Rhodes at home in an attempt to steal the War Machine armor. After Rhodes defeats Jacobs, Colonel Nick Fury, head of the espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D., has Rhodes and Jacobs brought in to the agency's headquarters, the Skycarrier.

Jacobs reveals that his wife, Glenda Sandoval, was taken hostage by A.I.M., with the promise of release if Jacobs delivered the original War Machine armor. But Jacobs had sold that armor to another terrorist group, HYDRA, to gain money when he learned his wife was pregnant. S.H.I.E.L.D. retrieves the armor from HYDRA and, with the guidance of 12-year-old-genius armament designer "Scotch", reverse-engineers its technology to create its own version of the War Machine armor for a planned Special Operations division, dubbed "U.S. War Machine", with Rhodes in charge. Targeting A.I.M., the team includes Jacobs, Dum Dum Dugan, and Sheva Josephs.

In the sequel series ''U.S. War Machine 2.0.'', Stark is furious that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s U.S. War Machine division exists and combats it as Iron Man accompanied by his own armored forces—Happy Hogan, Bethany Cabe, and Eddie March—in MPI-2100 Mobile Infantry Suits. Rhodes, now a major, and his division team with Captain America (James "Bucky" Barnes), Sam Wilson, and Clint Barton, to stop Doctor Doom from detonating stolen nuclear weapons planted on the Millennium Wheel in London.

Ultimate Marvel

James Rhodes first appears as a prep school student and the victim of frequent bullying at the school due to his ethnicity, that he comes from a poorer family and the fact that he's there because of the school's racial quota. He finds an unlikely friend in a young Tony Stark who defends him against the bullies - much to his dismay because it only serves to attract more attention to himself and, thus, increase his torment. Stark is keen on Rhodes being his friend, while Rhodes, initially, is uneasy about Stark and his burgeoning friendship. Later, after Stark is severely attacked at school and is aided by Rhodes (which turns out to be a peripheral attack on Stark's father), both leave the school and with Stark's father's help, are accepted into the Baxter Building's School for Exceptional Children along with Rhodes's sister, one, because they are all strikingly intelligent, but also for their own protection. Both begin work on different projects and eventually, Stark takes Rhodes into his confidence and allows Rhodes a chance to wear and help design some of the armor he and his father have innovated. Rhodes and Stark's friendship strengthens and Rhodes is later seen making another armor version named "War Machine" which he is going to trade with Stark's "Iron Man" armor when both are fully developed. A couple of years later, Stark and Rhodes, in their respective armor, team up as fake "Robots" to take out a terrorist group for the government. This origin, however, was retconned as being a fictionalized history of Tony Stark's early years. Years later, Rhodes, now a Colonel, is seen sporting a new War Machine armor created by Tony Stark's older brother Gregory Stark of which both are, for some reason, now estranged, which he uses to save two abducted U.S. army officers from the hands of the Taliban. Once the officers had been secured, Rhodes decides to kill the unarmed civils and the enemy after they surrendered, giving the first glimpse into a more ruthless, apathetic and even sadistic War Machine; a far cry from earlier views of Rhodes. Later, in France, he attempts to capture a seemingly rogue Captain America as part of the reactivated "Project Avengers" with new armor that is quite larger, is bloated with numerous ballistic weapons (far more than Tony Stark's Iron Man armor), and can also, evidently, even transform into a German sports car. Rhodes is almost able to capture Captain America, but their last confrontation involves Cap being in a room full of school children. Rhodes' ruthlessness is shown ever further as he contemplates continuing his attack, until Cap reminds him that any "Collateral Damage" involving school children would be a Public Relations and Political nightmare prompting War Machine to back off, but for all the wrong reasons. At this point, Rhodes' new mental, emotional or combat attitude has not been addressed or explained.

In other media

Collections

Iron Man: War Machine (''Iron Man'' #280-291)

War Machine Classic: Vol. 1 (''War Machine'' #1-7, and Ashcan)

Secret Invasion: War Machine (''Iron Man'' vol. 4, #33-35, and ''Iron Man'' #144)

War Machine Vol. 1: Iron Heart (''War Machine'' vol. 2, #1-5, and ''Dark Reign: New Nation'' #1)

War Machine Vol. 2: Dark Reign (''War Machine'' vol. 2, #6-12)

Iron Man 2.0 Vol. 1: Palmer Addley Is Dead (''Iron Man 2.0'' Prelude, and #1-7)

References

External links

World of Black Heroes: War Machine Biography

War Machine at Marvel.com

Category:Comics characters introduced in 1979 Category:Characters created by David Michelinie Category:Comic book sidekicks Category:Fictional African-American people Category:Fictional aviators Category:Fictional characters from Pennsylvania Category:Fictional characters from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Category:Fictional cyborgs Category:Fictional engineers Category:Fictional soldiers Category:Fictional United States Marines Category:Film characters Category:Iron Man Category:Marvel Comics superheroes

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