Soviet Faction Bible

If the world is a dark mystery, let us build a fire. This article (Soviet Faction Bible), is part of the Faction Bible series, and shows the inner workings of the faction so writers can better understand it. It is not to be changed in any way, as it is from the ample genius of one Open Sketchbook. By its nature, it's also one large spoiler to the lore behind the Paradox universe. Read no further if you prefer the mystery.

Map of the soviet-aligned countries all over the world.

Who Are They

• The Soviet Union is a group of countries united as a single superstate under a single-party union socialist government.
• After two decades being the aggressive element in the conflict with the Allies, the situation is reversed; having made gains, they now seek to defend them and find themselves having to redefine themselves and their philosophies to their new acquisitions after two decades of wartime policy and attitudes.
• The Soviet Union, being an autocratic society, has their tone heavily influenced by their leaders.
• The Soviet Union is on par with the Atomic Kingdom for second place in terms of superpowers. The Soviets are masters of industrial science and their sheer production output means they can outproduce the Allied Nations per capita with ease. The Soviet Union is also currently in first place in the Space Race, with the largest orbital facility, the most tons delievered to orbit per year, and the largest astromilitary.

Logo of the USSR : Red, color of the workers, with the hammer and the sickle, representing agricultural and factory workers together.

The Leaders

• The WW2 era leader of the Soviet Union was Joseph Stalin. Under his rule, the Soviet Union was a malicious and villainous power, and had a cultural impact on the world similar to Nazi Germany in our own. When writing about the Soviet Union from when he took power to his death in 1956, pull no punches; the Soviet Union was a miserable nation of fanatical political officers and half-starved, undereducated peasent conscripts under an increasingly paranoid and insane dictator.
• The Cold War and WW3 era premier was Anatoly Cherdenko, who is something along the lines of the Western image of Nikita Khrushchev mixed with a silver-age comic-book supervillain. As he was basically acting out a power fantasy of being in charge and doing all the things evil overlords were supposed to do, like making sweeping battle plans, creating insane superweapons, and betraying underlings, he left the day to day running of the Soviet Union to officials who molded the nation into an industrial complex capable of backing his schemes. Under his rule, the Soviet Union was dastardly but their villainy was of the "well intentioned extremist" sort. If you might, imagine the Soviet government as people playing very hard to look like the villains while at the same time not actually being terrible people; they'll use Desolators to slow the Allied advance in Normandy, but they'll make damn sure everyone is evacuated first.
• The current Soviet Premier is more like who Khrushchev actually was, with a dash of the idealised image of Lenin; a reformist looking to move the Soviet Union away from the wartime policies, and one who actually cares about the internal operation of the Soviet Union. Generally speaking, Khrushchev real life reforms are a good place to base these changes, as well as going back to 1910s/1920s era "revolutionary" interpretations of communism, pre-Stalin. In her Soviet Russia, things might be more grey and less incessently cheerful the the Allied view, but for all the blunders and errors, the system is working as intended. And Russians were never much for smiling anyway.

What they Want

• The morality of the Soviet Union is based on Egalitarianism, the belief that all people are to be treated equally, for better or worse.
  • However, they are smart enough to know that treated equally doesn't mean that everyone is equal; but rather that the ideal communist society would try to deal fairly with all things. They try to reward merit and punish injustice, but believe the playing field should be smoothed, eliminating class systems, prejudice and nepotism, for example.
    • Of course, the Soviet Union has spent much of the past four decades being completely hypocritical about this. While the average citizen of the Soviet Union believes heavily in egalitarian principles, their leaders are more cynical; Davidova's main priority at the moment is fighting that cynicism and corruption.
• The long-term goal of the Soviet Union is World Revolution, so everyone can share in the glorious communism, comrade!
  • Thus, their priorities are survival (to ensure communism stays alive) and then spreading communism, through force if necessary (and it is necessary).
• Contrary to popular belief, the Soviet Union does try to keep its population happy. Unlike the Allies, who go for minimalization of suffering without really concerning themselves with happiness, the Soviet Union believes these things are a trade-off; a person will put up with a little bit of suffering if they get a lot of stuff to keep them distracted. So while a Soviet citizen might have to put up with crappy living conditions, omnipresent surveillence, and long work hours, he's all about the free television, food, and place to stay from the government, all fitting his needs; citizens in rural areas even have a car from the government, with their day-to-day gas costs covered!

Soviet Technology

• Soviet technology may look crude, but it's just as good or better than its Allied analogs. Though the Soviets might not know as much wussy math science as the Allies, they make up for it with excellent engineering and design chops.
  • Soviet stuff often seems overengineered (walkers or offset guns, for example) but it's actually considerably underengineered by their standards for easier production and maintenance. None of it is particularly advanced in terms of science doodads, but each is a marvel of mechanical design. The Allies know most of the technologies that go into making a Soviet vehicle, but could not hope to produce something as elegantly simple and functional; their engineers just aren't good enough.
    • In other words, Soviet spies try to steal Allied science publications, and Allied spies try to steal Soviet blueprints.
• The Soviets lead the space race by a considerable margin. They send more people and more tonnes into space than everyone else combined.
• Areas of Soviet strength include material sciences, engineering (particularly at larger scales), intelligence, electromagnetic research, rocketry, robotics, industry, and chemistry. Weaknesses include conventional ballistics, environmentalism, bureaucracy, and prioritizing. They have a definite bias towards creating oversized but robust solutions even when something smaller or more delicate is called for.