Soviet Superscience: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:TeslaTrooper1900x1200 8544.png|link=Command and Conquer Red Alert Series|frame|[[A Worldwide Punomenon|Resistance]] [[Resistance Is Futile|is futile]], Capitalist Pig-Dog!]]

 

The tendency to give those [[Dirty Commies]] technologies far beyond their Western counterparts. After the end of the [[Cold War]] this is something of a [[Discredited Trope]] and usually only played for laughs. Although "abandoned Soviet experiments" seems to be a fairly common trope.

 

[[Stupid Jetpack Hitler]] is a [[Sister Trope]], giving [[Those Wacky Nazis]] things like [[Powered Armor]] and [[Cool Airship]]s, while [[Ghostapo]] could be a "cousin trope", in that it's a more mystical version of [[Stupid Jetpack Hitler]]. All of these are culture-specific [[Sub-Trope|sub-disciplines]] of [[Mad Science]].

{{examples}}

* ''[[Full Metal Panic!]]'' is set in an alternate reality where the Cold War never ended and both the United States and the Soviet Union have developed [[Humongous Mecha|Arm Slave]] technology.

 

* The [[Marvel Universe]] has its share of Soviet experiments gone awry, particularly from the days of the Cold War.

** Crimson Dynamo is a Soviet scientist who invents an armored suit which also allows to control electricity.

* In ''[[Judge Dredd]]'', the [[Spiritual Successor]]s of the Soviet Union are the [[Mega City|megacities]] East-Meg One and Two, which are at par with [[Superweapon Surprise|and occasionally ahead of]] western technology.

 

 

* In ''[[Dr. Strangelove]]'' the Soviets build a Doomsday Device after the U.S. had already considered a similar device ("Our source was the ''New York Times''"). [[Superweapon Surprise|They neglected to tell anyone about it]].

* ''[[Firefox]]'' has the Soviets build a new superplane, the MiG-31 (not to be confused with the [[Real Life]] MiG-31). This plane is capable of Mach 6 and has thought-launched weapons, technologies that still don't fully exist today.

* ''[[Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull]]'' has the Soviet search party in the jungle riding a huge truck that clears its path by mowing down trees like grass.

* ''[[The Hunt for Red October]]'' is a pretty well-done thriller about, well, the hunt for the ''Red Oktober'', a highly-advanced Soviet ballistic missile submarine, the so-called "stealth-bomber" of submarines. Instead of the traditional propeller-driven sub, this one had one that sucked in water, compressed it, and shot it out, like a jet engine. The result is a sub with nearly zero-sound, meaning active Sonar will be almost the only thing able to detect it; making it virtually impossible to track, due to the danger of using active Sonar often. That doesn't stop Seaman Jones from inventing a way to track it though.

 

* In [[Dale Brown]]'s books, while the former-Soviets-now-Russians needed to reverse-engineer American tech for most of their new toys, they did come up with powerful anti-satellite lasers on their own.

* Pops up in some of Charles Stross' stories. In the novelette ''A Colder War'', set in an [[Alternate History]] where the Cold War was fought with the powers of the [[Cthulhu Mythos|Great Old Ones]], the Soviets not only weaponize shoggoths and deployed them in Afghanistan, but they have an ultimate doomsday weapon called 'K-Thulu' in a giant concrete bunker in the Ukraine. ''Missile Gap,'' set in a world where Earth of 1962 was duplicated and laid on a gigantic disc, has the Soviet Union exploring the new world in a giant nuclear-powered ekranoplan.

* ''Red Plenty'' by Francis Spufford is an [[Alternate History]] novel in which the Soviet Union decides to outdo capitalism by creating a proper planned economy with the help of computers and cybernetics. The novel is based on actual work being done at the time behind the Iron Curtain but, as in real life, cynical realism triumphs over communist idealism and only token reforms are made.

* The Russian multi-writer series called ''Death Zone'' is about the aftermath of a strange event involving a [[Negative Space Wedgie]] that wipes out several major Russian cities and creates five anomalous areas roughtly 50 kilometers in diameter separated from the rest of the world by gravity bubbles. One of the novels eventually reveals that the so-called Catastrophe was, in fact, caused by the second activation of a device that was originally developed by a Soviet scientist to allow instantaneous hyperdimentional transportation. The first activation of the device on April 26, 1986, caused the 4th reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant to meltdown.

 

* Recently, played straight in the ''[[Fringe]]'' episode "Earthling".

* A less antagonistic variety in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'': the Russians are the only other nation on Earth that has a working Stargate program and even gets a couple of starships. Of course, that's because a Stargate just happened to fall into their laps, which they combined with a DHD they had taken from the Nazis. Technically, the United States is paying rent to Russia for the use of their Stargate when the one the US had at the time was lost, and the Russians asked if they could take some of that rent in the form of a cool starship.

 

* The video for [[Metallica]]'s "All Nightmare Long" gives Soviet scientists [[Applied Phlebotinum]] that is used as regenerative medicine... and to cause a [[Zombie Apocalypse]] on the North American continent.

 

** Don't forget the mancannon-equipped amphibious transports, which also function as AA support. They are quite capable of shooting the aforementioned armoured war bears. Talk about abnormal ammo...

** A mention should also be made of the mind-control radio towers that drive the plot of ''[[Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2|Red Alert 2]]''.

* In ''[[Call of Duty: Black Ops|Call of Duty Black Ops]]'' this is played straight both in the main storyline and partially in the Nazi Zombies mini-game. In the story-line the Russians are able to weaponize a highly lethal toxin that has been shown to kill men in mere minutes and is not easily dispersed by wind making it an effective area denial weapon and weapon of mass destruction. Furthermore they have access to anachronistic weapons that won't be introduced until the 70s or 80s, (the Americans showcase this too though) have mastered drug-induced brainwashing so advanced that you can program a man to do anything that you desire {{spoiler|even make Mason and/or Oswald kill John F. Kennedy,}} and have somehow found a way to create a base on the ocean floor without it being crushed from the sheer pressure it would faced with at such depths. Somewhat averted in the Nazi Zombies storyline as most of the technological achievements are actually achieved by Group 935 which is an international organization and have more or less equally introduced the same level of technological advancement to the Americans as they have to the Russians. However the Zombie map "Ascension" still showcases some pretty advanced technology on the Russians' part, they have created flying platforms, genetically enhanced monkeys, the Thunder Gun (a hand-held cannon that fires high-powered waves of compressed air) which contrary to Richtofen's beliefs was not made by Dr. Maxis but Dr. Gersh a Russian scientist, and Dr. Gersh as mentioned already created a small device which generates a miniature '''black hole'''.

 

** Another episode [[Weaponized Landmark|had the Kremlin domes doubling as ''missiles'']].

 

* ''[[SCP Foundation]]'':

** The GRU Division P is Russia's equivalent of the Foundation, meaning it's Soviet Superscience ''and'' Soviet Supernatural Research. Though, since the end of the Cold War, it's less "Soviet", of course.

** [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2273 SCP-2273], Major Alexei Belitrov is from the Soviet Union of an alternate version of Earth; he is a [[Super Soldier]] who wears [[Powered Armor]] that was constructed via [[Organic Technology]].

 

* There was an Soviet attempt to create [[Half-Human Hybrid|man-chimpanzee hybrids]] for use as workers. Didn't work, but explains the weird science aspect they get in fiction. The precise details of that infamous experiment, which is usually considered (understandably) little more than an [[Urban Legend]], is that the Soviet scientist who did it worked more or less alone, only got a grant from Stalin due to red tape (and probably would have been shot if Stalin had discovered what he was actually doing), the experiment consisted of trying to use human sperm to artificially inseminate orangutans (because they didn't know about the close genetic relationship between humans and chimps), and his actual goal was to "prove" evolution and use that to stymie the political power of the Russian Orthodox Church, not to make [[Super Soldier]]s.

* There are rumors about Soviet low-frequency Sonic Weapon devices at their borders, threatening to instill depression and anxiety in the whole population. Some even argued that this was already taking place...

* Some conspiracy theorists believe that the Soviets developed "[https://web.archive.org/web/20131025103840/http://mindjustice.org/golgotha.htm psychotronic]" weapons that could do tremendous damage (and other effects) at a great distance using technology that [[You Fail Physics Forever|violates the known laws of science]].

** [[Dragon (magazine)]] #204 had an article on Soviet psychotronic weapons.

** US worked on flying submarines too. But the Soviets took it [[Up to Eleven]] when they actually started cutting steel for a nuclear submarine aircraft carrier/amphibious warfare ship. Sadly, it was canceled immediately afterwards.

** WIG are mostly known in Anglosphere for "Caspian Sea Monster" photographs taken by American spy satellites, which was a test platform built in 1966. Later designs with actual purpose were built:

** [//military.wikia.org/wiki/Lun-class_ekranoplan Lun] ("Harrier"; NATO [[Reporting Name]] Duck) missile boat from Alexeyev (later medical variant was developed, but that's when the funding ended);

** [//military.wikia.org/wiki/Bartini_Beriev_VVA-14 Bartini Beriev VVA-14], submarine hunter prototype from another design bureau. Was optimistically planned to be full VTOL, but due to takeoff engines being not up to the task didn't go beyond prototypes. Featured in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 3''.