Official Name: Rossiyskaya Federatsiya
Capital City: Moscow
Border Countries: Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Norway, Poland, Ukraine

Background: The defeat of the Russian Empire in World War I led to the seizure of power by the communists and the formation of the USSR. The brutal rule of Josef STALIN (1924-53) strengthened Russian dominance of the Soviet Union at a cost of tens of millions of lives. The Soviet economy and society stagnated in the following decades until General Secretary Mikhail GORBACHEV (1985-91) introduced glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) in an attempt to modernize communism, but his initiatives inadvertently released forces that by December 1991 splintered the USSR into 15 independent republics. Since then, Russia has struggled in its efforts to build a democratic political system and market economy to replace the strict social, political, and economic controls of the communist period. A determined guerrilla conflict still plagues Russia in Chechnya.

Above information from http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/russia.htm

Significant Places:
Kuybyshev
- Birthplace of Crimson Dynamo

Moscow
- Birthplace of Red Guardian III
- Birthplace of Darkstar
- Birthplace of Red Guardian II

St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad)
- Birthplace of Red Ghost

Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad)
- Birthplace of Kraven the Hunter
- Birthplace of Black Widow

Ust-Ordynski Collective
- Birthplace of Colossus
- Birthplace of Magik