Russian Confederated Union (IS: Chaos & Resolve)

The Russian Confederated Union (RCU), also referred to as the Russian Union, or simply Russia, was a Totalitarian Quasi-Federal Union made up of 65 Oblasts (i.e. States tightly controlled by Moscow) and a single Free City. This super-state encompasses all of northern Asia and 45% of continental Europe. This is where 64 of its contiguous mainland Oblasts lie, with the Sakhalin oblast being the only one found off the mainland. The nation's semi-autonomous city - the Free City of Stalinsk, is also found in the mainland, namely in the southern parts of the Primorsky Krai oblast in far eastern Siberia.

With a total land area of 22,402,000 km², the RCU was by far the largest nation in the world. This nation also had the globe's third largest populous, with early 2011 census data revealing a population size of about 395,000,000 people. With such a huge population, the RCU is one of the most diverse nations in the world, with about 20% of the said population composing of a wide variety of ethnicities, cultures and races. Its large population size is thus not only due to the nation's resurging birth rate, but immigration as well, particularly when the RCU began opening up its borders to the rest of the world.

Although the nation is largely considered a cold country, it's geography is massive and diverse, and is thus home to a wide variety of wildlife. Although Siberia was largely uninhabited before the RCU's creation, the new government had emphasized the maximization of labour and land use, and had thus not only built up Siberia's infrastructure to world class proportions, but had also built up Siberian metropolitan areas via a long list of expensive mega-projects in order to push people from the European part of Russia and deeper into the country. Development mega-projects meant specifically for public transit infrastructure in Siberia were particularly staggering, as the government wished to link the European part of Russia to the rest of Siberia in order to achieve the latter goal. These infrastructure projects not only bolstered the Siberian population, but improved logistics immensely, allowing the RCU to have the world's most efficient resource extraction apparatus for the distillation and trading of the country's natural resources.

Although the rulers of the RCU had taken over Russia Proper (considered the most integral part of the Union) on the 23rd July 1996 during the Coup of Revolyutsiya, the union itself was officially formed a year later on the 25th of July 1997, as a direct successor to the short-lived Russian Federation. After the Great Reunification had been a success, the Russian Federation had finally been reunified with its former Soviet Republics, paving way for the creation of what would be the RCU, and with the union formalized, all power had virtually been handed over to the UFAR (United Fascist Alliance of Russia). The UFAR Party's founder and Supreme leader - Maksym Orlov, instantly became the Premier Supreme of the RCU, and his word was law. Although the Russia was a union again, the nation's Dictator was supreme.

The creation of the RCU would signal an end to Russia's short-lived democracy under Anatoly Popov and his Nationalist Party. The Constitution of the Russian Federation had been annulled, and the adoption of the nation's new one - The Constitution of the Russian Union, eliminated many of the individual privileges many Russians had enjoyed under the Russian Federation, and absolute obedience to the state was expected, demanded and in many cases enforced. Although freedom of speech, expression and assembly among other things was heavily regulated and controlled by the state, the respect of fundamental human rights of minorities, including immigrants, were heavily protected so as to curb persecution. Even so, due to the Totalitarian Federation's policies, the RCU has clashed with the UN on multiple occasions, and as it rapidly grew wealthy, many Western countries had demanded free and fair elections (which the Constitution of the RCU did not permit) as well as democratic human rights for all, particularly when many Westerners chose to relocate to the RCU in search of untold riches in the Motherland.

After a multitude of powerful and efficient economic policies from the Premier Supreme and his party, the nation's economy had immediately exploded. The nation had discovered an extremely valuable brand new resource - Rareethrum, after all. With an instant international addiction to Rareethrum as an alternative to oil, which was far more expensive and pollution-prone in comparison, the RCU had amassed massive amounts of wealth in a short space of time, and the Rareethro-Ruble (Rareethrum sales denominated in Russian currency) had played an integral role in this as the international sales of Rareethrum (a bright blue liquid energy source) had to be done using Russian currency due to how the Central Reserve Bank of the Russian Union controlled international prices. Russia was by far the world's largest producer of the energy source after all.

After strategically stimulating the different sectors of the RCU economy, allowing it diversify and move away from its absolute reliance on oil, gas, arms and now Rareethrum, the country's GDP rapidly skyrocketed in what was known as the RCB Era of the late 1990s and early 2000s, a time of bustling prosperity and record setting astronomical economic growth in the RCU. By the year 2011 (the year in which the Union was finally being converted into a new Russian Empire), this boom had culminated in Russia's rise as the world's foremost dominant economic power, with trading agreements and partnerships with almost every nation on earth. By the time the Russian Union was declared an Empire, the nation's quality of life was literally one of the highest in the whole world, with the globe's third largest GDP per capita and an extremely low poverty rate. Due to this success, for many countries around the globe, the RCU had become a model of rapid development, and an inspiration to the world.

As the nation began to exhibit a high standard of living, a largely capitalist orientated economy and a strong rule of law, the West had designated the RCU as a "Special First World Country" during a NATO conference in New York City, USA in 2007, with the reasons for not giving the nation the First World status outright being due to its "lack of a stable democracy, being a successor to the Soviet Union, and due to its non-alliance policy against the United States of America and its Western Allies" according to the papers of the conference. Even so, the RCU was largely unwilling to accept this status, reluctantly recognizing it on the 2nd of February 2008, during the World Economic Conference in Berlin, Germany. Although the RCU had accepted this status, like in the country's Soviet era, it was far from being friends with the West, and had maintained a foreign policy that clashed with "Western Interests" inside Russia and around the world.

As a Totalitarian Federation, the nation maintains a federal system under the complete control of Moscow, although oblasts are expected to take a wide variety of decisions independently. The nation encompasses all the former territories of what was the USSR, and although it has been further subdivided (from being 15 Soviet Republics to being 65 Oblasts), similar to the Soviet era, it remains under the complete control of one political party - the UFAR (United Fascist Alliance of Russia), the only legal political party inside the RCU. Although the nation's ruling party refers to itself as fascist, it is largely more absolutist than that as its policies differ with those of fascism in many areas, which is why its policies are referred to as "Refined Fascism" and Socialist Maksymism (named after the RCUs founding father, and a regularly used representation of the RCUs national ideology and political system). Even so, the nation is considered more Socialist than Fascist, particularly due to the fact that the nation's leadership is staunchly opposed to Fascist figures like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, as well as many policies related to them.

Although the nation has largely been at peace considering its short existence, large scale invasions, brinksmanship and aggression are the reason why the RCU came about, and although it largely avoided conflicts with foreign nations afterwards, it has been involved in a number of military skirmishes with other countries, particularly in Europe, with the most prominent being the invasion of Finland during the Finnish Missile Crisis of 2007. But its most daring and notorious military expedition is the simultaneous invasion of Eastern Europe and the Scandinavian Peninsula during The Great Trap. Due to a resurgence in military tensions with the West, the RCU has maintained massive military spending for a majority of its existence, and due to the fact that in comparison to the USA, it did not necessarily maintain a huge global military presence, let alone use it to fight endless wars, the RCU had thus been able to maximise the benefits of its massive spending more effectively by allowing more money to spare for the development of new and existing military technology, the production of way more military assets, and the secret expansion of its strategic offensive nuclear capabilities. This effectively allowed the nation to not only vastly improve their military infrastructure, but to expand the already huge indigenous military-industrial complex of the RCU in an effort to rapidly enhance and stimulate the Russian military's capabilities. By the time the Russian Union was being converted into an empire, it possessed one of the largest fighting forces in the whole world, so much so that by 2011, the Russian Confederated Armed Forces (RCAF) was literally the world's foremost military power, rivalled only by the United States of America.

Dissolution of the USSR and the Creation of the Russian Federation
The defeat of Nazi Germany after the invasion of Berlin by the Soviet Red Army in 1945, had not only brought the Axis rampage in Europe to an end, but had also brought to an end, the wartime alliance between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the Western Allies. Due to ideological differences and opposing military, economic and geopolitical interests, it had become very apparent that the Allies would not get along with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy gone, and by 1947, they had reached a dead end. What followed next was a nearly five decade long conflict that would not only shape the modern world of post-WW2, but the era that would follow after it. The Cold War would see the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc embroiled in an ideological showdown with the United States and its Western Bloc. The Space Race would see both sides spend billions of dollars a year funding aerospace research and development in an effort to outcompete the other, thus achieving scientific dominance and worldwide prestige. Ultimately, the Americans made it to the Moon first, signalling an end to that scientific adventure. Another component of direct competition between the two sides was the Arms Race, which was far more deadly and serious. This apocalyptic contest would see both sides build up massive nuclear arsenals, with the United States fielding 70,000 nuclear warheads whilst the Soviets commissioned about 57,000 warheads at the height of the arms race before the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) and INF (Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty) treaties de-escalated nuclear tensions.

All in all, the Cold War had collectively cost both sides about US$8 Trillion, and by the late 1980s, the USSR had been clearly exhausted. The war in Afghanistan had become another Vietnam, and the USSR was at the receiving end of it, its effect on the economy of the Soviet Union was also becoming very apparent, and the boom in oil production in Middle East was not making things any better. Corruption within the Soviet Communist party was out of control, shortages had become very rampant, and the economic stagnation which began during the Brezhnev Era, was showing its ugly fangs. By the early 1990s, the USSR maintained the world's largest standing Army and Air force, and up until 1987, had spent about 25% of the Soviet National GNP on defence, and even after defence spending was cut, the government still spent an exuberant 17-18% of the Soviet GNP on defence, which continued to have a crippling effect on the Soviet economy. As a result of the Cold War bleeding Soviet coffers dry via endless expenditure on foreign policy and defence, the quality of life inside the Soviet Union had become relatively bad, and a multitude of Soviet citizens dreamt of what life was life beyond the Iron Curtain, regardless of what Soviet propaganda instructed. After decades of Cold War tensions, in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev would become the General-Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and the Premier of the USSR. It would be his policies of Perestroika and Glasnost that would put the final nail on the coffin, and after a flurry of events, unknowingly lead to the dissolution of the USSR.