Black Widow

Context

This is the first of a chronological series of profiles for the Black Widow (Natalia Romanova, a.k.a. Natasha Romanoff).

This one covers her tangled origins and the numerous flashbacks to her early life. It incorporates and extensively discusses all known retcons as of the Spring of 2012.

Sequencing

The Black Widow (Natalia Romanova) chronological series of profiles is best read in order. The sequence goes :

1. 1927/1946. Origins and childhood. This here profile.
2. 1946/1965. Early adventures, marriage, femme fatale missions.
3. Second half of the 1960s. Minor super-heroine with ties with the Avengers.
4. 1970s. Dark blue jumpsuit. Strong debut, then classic Daredevil era.
5. 1980s. Light grey jumpsuit. Transitional era.

There’s also a disambiguation guide to the characters named “Black Widow” that you can use.

Advertisement

The Black Widow is the product of a secret Soviet program to produce extraordinarily skilled female spies, with a slightly superhuman metabolism. This program is called the Red Room. Since our profiles traditionally start by discussing powers and abilities, we’ll start by reviewing the Red Room enhancements and techniques.

Notes

• We haven’t yet run extensive research to recoup Natalia’s past with flashbacks for James “Bucky” Barnes career as the Winter Soldier.
• The summary in Marvel’s Black Widow Saga (appended to the first issue of Black Widow (2010 miniseries)) doesn’t quite match the flashbacks in Wolverine : Origins and Black Widow: Deadly Origin. Not knowing whether that was a mistake or an unusual retcon, we’ve stuck with the flashbacks.
• Our writeups describe Natalia as a KGB agent since that is what was in the Cold War comic books, back when the KGB was the great boogeyman. In actuality she was presumably a GRU operative.

Background (at this point)

Advertisement

Powers and Abilities

Natalia was trained since childhood as a spy, actress, martial artist, athlete, acrobat, pilot, markswoman, assassin, special operations soldier, survival expert, etc..

She was already an excellent actress and manipulator, and a proficient killer and shooter, by age 10 or 11.

Her full skills roster as an agent during the 1940s and 1950s is not really documented.

Kudrin enhancements

The girls in the Black Widow program, including Natalia, received extensive biochemical treatments. These were designed by a Soviet genius, professor Kudrin. They bolster the subject’s constitution to peak human levels. Meaning maxed out endurance, pain resistance, temperature extremes tolerance, power of recovery, etc..

They constantly repair the subject’s body:

• Wounds close at four times the human norm and heal without a trace.
• Toxins and pathogens are attacked by a superhumanly efficient immune system.
• Infection is much less likely to occur than it should.
• Ageing is constantly erased.
• Malady seldom if ever occurs.
• The subject effortlessly retains good looks. Hair never falls out and always remains shiny, skin cannot be damaged by wind or sun and always remains healthy, etc..
• Pregnancies are also immediately miscarried.

Kudrin enhancements – concealement

Psychotechnical means were employed to make the Widows unaware that they were slightly superhuman. Until 2004 Natalia didn’t know that she had powers.

Yes, by the 1970s it had become obvious that she wasn’t ageing normally. But that’s normal in a super-heroes world – see our Leòn genetic sequence article.

Our hypothesis is that the manifest benefits from the Kudrin treatment are only active when the Widow is sleeping or unconscious. She cannot use them consciously, since she doesn’t know these exist. Yet she underwent several miraculous recoveries, all her wounds kept healing without a trace, etc..

So this is an inobstrusive approach that melds with genre conventions.

Kudrin enhancements, part 3

Kudrin was also forced to add a failsafe to her enhancements. All women who received the treatment have a psychological susceptibility toward persons wearing a specific chemical scent. They also have a compulsion not to attack them (in DC Heroes RPG terms, a CIA not to attack and a -2 CS OV/RV Vulnerability vs Persuasion attempts). This scent can credibly be worn as an aftershave.

The Widow only encountered this scent twice. Nick Fury has been wearing it since the 1960s, and a Red Room enforcer later used it against her.

No equivalent enhancement program could be developed for male agents. It seems that those attempts that were made turned the agents into sociopathic killers. Perhaps for hormonal reasons.

Pchelintsov conditioning

All Black Widow agents also received extensive psychotechnical conditioning designed by Professor Pchelintsov. This gave them false sets of memories so they could operate under very deep cover.

The conditioning wasn’t perfect though. Conflicts and inconsistencies could be noticed by the smartest (and/or unluckiest) ones.

Thus, another subconscious programming was added. If a Black Widow tries to think logically, rationally about her past and detects contradictions and inconsistencies she feels unease, then confusion, then pain, then severe pain.

Usually, this functions at an undetectable level. Some random idea association that, explored further, might make the agent realise that something about her past seems off will be associated with slight anxiety. As a result, the agent will change her train of thought without consciously realising what happened.

In a comic book world, one suspects that this conditioning might also overcome a telepath attempting to mind-probe the past of a Black Widow, through sympathetic pain.

Pchelintsov conditioning can also simulate physical training. For instance, Romanova is an excellent ballerina. Yet her memories of having studied ballet dancing for years are now thought to all have been fictional memory implants.

Soundtrack

This profile and the next use the lyrics of classic goth rock tune Dominion/Mother Russia by the Sisters of Mercy for the subheadings. So for those few who do not have it stuck in their head as a result…

Journey into mystery – the Red Room

Espionage training program the Red Room played a critical role in Natalia Romanova’s life. We have little idea of what it is.

For decades the Black Widow program was thought to have been a Cold War program to train the deadliest female spy in the world. It eventually emerged that some sort of training facility called the Red Room was behind the Black Widow program. But back then it was assumed to have been a collection of KGB experts training and mentoring the most promising girls the KGB could recruit.

In more recent years four things became obvious :

1. The Red Room and its Black Widow program are significantly older than the Cold War.
2. A mysterious person called Romulus was behind it. Romulus is apparently an ancient, inhuman mastermind with some sort of ties with Wolverine. But this is exceptionally unclear.
3. The Red Room wasn’t simply a training facility. It also employed biochemical enhancements for its agents. Furthermore, it implanted them with false memories reminiscent of those used by the Weapon Plus program in NATO countries.
4. “Who runs the Red Room and what is their agenda” apparently has a very complicated answer. In part because the answer apparently changed several times over the decades. It is even possible that there are several organisations called the Red Room. Or that changes were so sweeping on one or more occasion that the organisation was completely transformed.

You want the truth ?

Based on 2004 information, it seems that the Red Room enlisted 27 or 28 little girls. The goal was to make them undetectable deep-cover agents to infiltrate China and the West.

The core methodology was designed by Gregor Ivanovich Pchelintsov, professor of psychotechnics. It allowed for imprinting people with almost completely fabricated memories.

Furthermore, the girls all received a special treatment designed by Lyudmila Antonovna Kudrin, a biochemist. The Kudrin treatment could make women stay young for many decades, as well as superhumanly healthy and resilient. It apparently was meant as an asset both for agent-type work and for seduction.

The Black Widow program was apparently meant for realistic espionage and infiltration. As opposed to the the far more kinetic pursuits of Natalia Romanova in more recent decades.

You can’t handle the truth !

As we labour to reconcile as many accounts as possible, we reach the hypothesis that the Red Room training took place in several distinct stages. Not because it is stated – it certainly wasn’t. But because it allows various, superficially contradictory accounts to all be true.

The History section will use this sequencing without further comments. But, again, this is hypothetical. The rough stages are :

• 1934-1938. The girls are trained as child assassins and child spies, using then-traditional methods.
• 1938-1939/40. Natalia (and presumably the others) receive their first infiltration mission, perhaps as a sort of exam or weeding out process.
• 1940-1941. The least problematic dates for the first stages of the Kudrin treatments and first stages of the Pchelintsov conditioning to take place.
• 1941-1945. The program is interrupted by the Great Patriotic War . The young Black Widows are deployed among the Red Army as irregular assets. During the war Natalia becomes pregnant but spontaneously aborts. This miscarriage is our main reason to suspect that she has received at least part of the Kudrin treatment just before the war.
• 1945-late 1940s. The least problematic dates for the remainder of the Kudrin treatments and the remainder of the Pchelintsov conditioning to take place.
• The activities of the Red Room past that point are very much unclear.

Later on

Further confusing the issue, the GRU developed another Red Room program in the late 1970s. It was intended to produce a Black Widow patterned after Natalia Romanova – a super-agent lady. Basically, this new Black Widow program was making a reality out of the disinformation. Thus, it also helped hide what the real project had been.

This Red Room program successfully trained their agent, Yelena Belova. But she soon left the service.

Part of the original Red Room program survive nowadays as the research company 2R. It develops cosmetics and drugs – chiefly for American firms.

History

The Widow’s biography is a borscht . And it is likely to remain that way.

The situation is very similar to Wolverine’s :

• She’s been around for quite a while.
• Many of her memories are fabricated and much of the rest is suspect.
• Her age is impossible to determine as she ages very slowly.
• Everything about her is wrapped in lies, manipulations and secrets from powerful conspiracies.

There are conflicting accounts about her life. Even her likely date of birth ranges from the 1920s to the 1940s. Within her biography, the lines between continuity problems and in-universe disinformation blurs in an amusing way. And things that were thought true were later contradicted then revealed to have been deliberate manipulations of Natalia’s memories.

In this section, we’ll see how the various accounts can be reconciled.

We serve an old man in a dry season

Natalia was reportedly born in Stalingrad (now Volgograd). An unidentified woman in a destroyed building handed the baby over to a Red Army soldier named Ivan Petrovitch. She asked him to take care of the infant. She also told Ivan that she was a Romanova, with the implication that she was a relative to the Imperial family  that ruled until 1917.

The building then collapsed, killing all occupants.

The incident was originally thought to have taken place in late 1942, early during the Battle of Stalingrad. More recent accounts state that it took place in 1928, during some unspecified terrorist raid by “imperialists”. The chronology in this article uses the 1928 date.

Ivanovna

Ivan was reportedly searching the ruins for his kid sister, whom he never found. He instead essentially adopted the baby he had been entrusted with.

How old Natalia was when she was thrusted into Ivan’s hands depends on the accounts. These range from a baby to a girl looking about five or six. We will assume here that she was about one year old.

Government researchers stated that Natalia was an orphan. It seems likely that Ivan attempted to locate her parents early on. But –presumably — nobody ever found them and the kid was declared an orphan in Ivan Petrovitch’s care.

Ivan Petrovitch Bezukhov was some sort of two-fisted pulps  adventurer. A strongman, a brawler, an engineer, an inventor, a soldier and a well-connected patriot. He also had many secrets… including which organisation he approached in the 1930s to raise and train little Natalia.

Enchanted

Our interpretation is that Natalia began training with the Red Room since before she was 10. 1934 would be a credible recruitment date.

According to one flashback, the Red Room was already using the black widow symbol — a red hourglass logo, like the marking on a black widow spider  — when Natalia was a child.

It *might* be during this era that Natalia had a brief run-in with the Enchantress (Amora of Asgard). The bored immortal cast spells that made it possible for the kid to try and escape from the Red Room training/torture camp. Then Amora cruelly took her down to be recaptured when Natalia reached the outer fence.

This incident likely saved the child’s life. She had previously been failing her grades and would have been put to death. But while under the spell she fought with the skulls she would have years later, which greatly intrigued the faculty. She was thus again considered a high potential.

This facility and its head, Gregor Ballant, were still active in the late 2000s. But they had long-since pivoted to selling arms to terrorists and paramilitaries. Mr. Ballant was assassinated by the Widow in 2010.

The infiltration of the Romanoff network, part 1

Natalia’s first known mission started in early 1938 when she was about 11. She was to infiltrate the espionage network of one Taras Romanoff. He was a redoubtable Russian spymaster, coincidentally sharing her last name.

It was Ivan who approached Taras. He explained that he was looking for a good place to raise his little Natalia. Bezukhov knew that Romanoff was running some sort of espionage academy in Moscow, where young girls were trained to become spies and agents.

This institution thus resembled the Red Room. But whether there was a connection between the two is unrevealed.

The infiltration of the Romanoff network, part 2

Mr. Romanoff was reluctant to take the girl under his wing. But Joseph Stalin himself encouraged him, amused by the idea of a Soviet spy being a purported relative of Nikolai II.

(The Secretary General’s sudden appearance, conveniently forcing Romanoff’s hand, seems rather suspect. It may have been engineered – for instance using an impostor.)

Natalia studied under Taras from 1938 until late 1939 or early 1940. She simulated growing attached to him as if he were her father, calling him “dad”. She even claimed not to remember about Ivan Petrovitch.

Some months after taking Natalia in, Taras Romanoff faked his death and disappeared. He took Natalia with him. At this point, he was calling her his daughter, and seemed to treat her as such. Taras took Natalia on a train, and had his men attack it. They killed everyone aboard so Taras and Natalia would be presumed dead at the hand of merciless bandits.

As the attack took place Taras approached a Canadian traveller called Logan. The Russian told the Canuck to join him and be given safe passage. Logan sensibly took the offer.

Dreams of sleepers…

Logan was then a quasi-amnesiac, and unknowingly an agent of Romulus. He had been sent to establish how much Taras knew about his master.

Taras seemed to know this. Yet he took Logan in and made him his apprentice. Romanoff apparently thought that he could turn Logan into a close ally. Perhaps he and the diminutive Canadian shared a past Logan couldn’t remember.

Taras Romanoff cryptically stated that Logan had been “sent [to him] to learn”. Natalya would later also state that she had been “sent [to Taras] to learn”. This reinforces our impression that both Logan and Natalia were working for Romulus.

However, both the Canadian and the kid had secret orders to kill each other. As far as Logan knew, Natalia was Taras’ little protégée and was to be eliminated if Taras was. As far as Natalia knew, eliminating Logan was a test she had to pass – presumably to graduate to the next step of her training program.

It is possible that she knew from the beginning that a man called Logan would be sent to approach Romanoff.

… and White treason

Both Natalia and Logan trained extensively under Taras, who seemingly trusted them both. He taught them his body of techniques, which Wolverine later described as one of the birthplaces of modern espionage.

Logan and Natalia bonded during these two years. He discreetly taught the girl hand-to-hand combat. That made Taras jealous, as Natalia took to calling Logan “little uncle”. While this is a common term of endearment in Russia, Romanoff felt that the Canadian was displacing him in his paternal role.

It was Natalia who struck first – in 1939 or 1940. She killed Taras’ guards to simulate her own kidnapping. Then she laid in ambush in the woods nearby. Her strategy was to wait for Logan and Taras to discover the bodies and rush out to locate and rescue her. At this point she would snipe Logan.

However, Logan realised what was going on. He warned Taras that it was a trap. As Taras hesitated Logan shot him dead.

(The exact reason is unclear. Perhaps Logan had determined that Romanoff knew too much. Or perhaps he realised at this point that the trap was set for him rather than Taras.)

Logan then located Natalia. But neither could bring themselves to pull the trigger. Logan found a way out by taking the medallion Taras had given Natalia. He brought it back to his masters as a “proof” of her death.

(In 2007, Natalia and Logan reminisced about these events, and seemed to share the same recollections about what had happened.)

We dream of rain and the history of the gun

Natalia lived in the wilds close to the manor for three months, apparently waiting for Ivan. Ivan did find her, having learned of Taras’ death then having located the manor. He obviously knew that Natalia had not died in the train attack, and seemed to know what her mission was.

Natalia told Ivan that Logan’s mission had been to kill Romanoff all along. She added that she had let him go because she liked him better than Taras. Ivan immediately concluded that they had to flee, as “they” would blame Natalia and execute him.

(Apparently, he was referring to Taras Romanoff’s allies and network of informants, not the Red Room.)

Despite apparently failing her “test” Natalia continued to work for the Red Room. Or at least for Romulus, since one gets the impression that “who is running the Red Room” was a tortuous issue at this point.

What happened between 1939 and 1941 is unrevealed. But this is the least problematic span of time for Natalia to have undergone the next stage of Red Room preparation. Thus, this is likely when she was implanted with fake memories by the Red Room scientists in Moscow. If so, it is likely that the treatment was interrupted by the war – and resumed by 1945.

I’m living in films…

One “track” of artificial memories seems to have been given to all the Black Widow agents. Apparently, they all remember having been little ballerinas selected to join the Bolshoi  itself. They all remember training under its instructors to become star dancers.

They seemingly all remember studying under “Alex Sterelny”, who apparently never existed, and “Oksana Bolishinko”. Natalia would much later meet an Oksana Bolishinko who remembered her as a ballerina.

The ballerina memories were chosen as something most girls would like. They would find these slightly fairy-tale-ish childhood memories soothing, and remain fond of them. Which would make them reticent to consider they might be fakes even if presented with evidence or incongruities.

It was also meant for them to reflexively associate the Soviet Union with some of its most admirable features, such as the Bolshoi Ballet, to reinforce their patriotism.

… for the sake of Russia

For a gifted girl dancer, joining the Bolshoi as a trainee would likely take place circa age 9 or 10. Performing with the troupe would start circa 16 or 17.

Since Natalia remembers performing professionally with the troupe, it seems likely that the Bolshoi memory implants cover age 9 to 18 or so. They likely are intended to “overwrite” the time spent training and working for the Red Room, plus her activities during World War Two.

Natalia genuinely thought that she had spent her teens as a ballerina until an investigation in 2004.

(Out-of-universe, the vast majority of 1960s super-heroines were dancers, fashion designers, heiresses or models. This is because the list of prestigious, cool, independent occupations for women back then was rather short. That the Widow’s memories of being a ballerina were gendered mental conditioning was a sly way to acknowledge that dated aspect, without contradicting it).

Oksana

One suspects that the “Oksana Bolishinko” whom Romanova met was a Red Room deep cover control agent. The idea likely was that any Black Widow attempting to investigate her past would naturally look for Bolishinko. Oksana was the person with whom their fondest memories were associated.

“Oksana Bolishinko” did confirm the ballerina memories when Natalia Romanova encountered her. Years later, the Widow reached the conclusion that almost all her pleasant childhood memories had been fabricated. This all but confirmed that “Oksana” was a fake.

Natalia also deduced what the Pchelintsov failsafes had previously prevented her from realising. Her body did not bear any of the physical damage associated with intensive ballet training during childhood.

Madripoor 1941 (part 1)

In 1941, Natalia and Ivan were in Madripoor. Romulus’ long-standing alliance with the Hand had gone sour. Therefore, Romulus wanted to kill their current leader (solely known as “the jonin”) to make his point.

Romulus, who has been documented to psychically influence dreams, arranged for the jonin to mystically perceive that Natalia had an amazing talent for the martial arts. He would surely attempt to kidnap her and expose himself to being murdered by the kid.

Since the Hand wanted to capture Natalia then have her kill Ivan Petrovitch, they might have sought to use the process later employed to turn Drake and then Elektra.

Assassinating the jonin would also prevent an alliance of the Hand with the Nazis. Baron Wolfgang Strucker had been developing his ties with Japanese occult sects, and was already in talks with the Hand in Madripoor. These ties would later lead to the creation of Hydra.

(In the two known-as-of-this-writing depictions of these events, Natalia is once a little girl and once a young teenager. This is presumably a simple continuity fail.)

Madripoor 1941 (part 2)

Romulus’ local agent, Seraph, had her main enforcer Logan keep an eye on Strucker and Hand operatives. Captain America (Steve Rogers, then at the beginning of his career) was also present in Madripoor for unrevealed reasons.

The Hand and the Nazis kidnapped Natalia as planned, even though Captain America came to help when he saw Ivan fighting the kidnappers. Ivan, Logan and Cap fought to rescue Natalia, the last two not suspecting that she was an assassin.

Logan was successful. However, Natalia puzzlingly lashed out and stealthily shot the Canadian in the heart. Apparently there had been some sort of mind games. She now thought that she wasn’t actually a Romanova and resented Logan for having let her live.

Logan survived. He then killed the jonin himself so Natalia wouldn’t have to. Seraph came to the rescue and exfiltrated Ivan and Natalia back to Russia as planned.

(In 1990, Natalia and Logan reminisced about these events. But it is unclear whether Natalia remembered having been sent as an assassin rather than having been a kidnapping victim. No mention was made of Natalia shooting Logan during their conversations. They may not have remembered that part.)

The Great Patriotic War

Ivan and Natalia’s return to the Soviet Union likely was tied to Operation Barbarossa  and the war, Ivan being a Red Army serviceman.

(One assumes that whatever Ivan wanted to flee after Taras Romanoff’s death had been dealt with.)

Natalia thus served during the Great Patriotic War. One incident is documented, presumably set in early 1944 or late 1943 as she was aged about 16. The men in the unit were obviously very fond and protective of her. Perhaps the Red Room students had been deployed to both fight and bolster morale.

She seemed to be giving orders, and was wearing a efreitor insignia (a loose equivalent of a corporal). But the art may not be accurate though, as they are anachronistically wielding AK-47s.

Nikolai and Rose

Natalia fell in love with a soldier named Nikolai. He was but one year older than she was. In the throes of adolescence and battlefield emotions, the couple declared itself married and Natalia became pregnant.

She gave birth in Slovakia – back then the Slovak Republic. Thus, it seems that she kept fighting until water broke, and was part of the Red Army troops who drove German occupiers out of the Slovak Republic. Nikolai was killed some weeks or months before the pregnancy’s end.

A kind Slovak midwife helped the teenaged Soviet soldier through her labour. However, the baby was stillborn – presumably due to the Kudrin enhancements. The midwife and her family helped Natalia hold herself together. The corpse was buried in the nearby Dobročsky forest .

For years Natalia Romanova would regularly return to the midwife’s house to grieve alone in the forest. She’d also bury a rose near the grave. Apparently she had planned to name her stillborn daughter Rose.

When the midwife passed away during the 1950s, Romanova couldn’t find the strength to come back to Dobročsky. The midwife’s daughter kept mementos in case she’d return. One was the little ribbon Natalia and Nikolai had used as a make-do wedding ring.

Continued…

… in the 1946-1965 Black Widow character profile !

Description

For what it’s worth the illustration depicting her training with a H&K MP5 slung on her back is as much as an anachronism as the AK-47s during the Great Patriotic War. In the real world his couldn’t have happened before 1966. But perhaps some small arms research program went faster in the Marvel Universe as a side effect of all the super-weapons research during World War Two.

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Marvel Universe.

Helper(s): Mike Davis, Darci, Hrist, Joshua Dunlow, Woodclaw, Adam Fuqua.

Writeup reindoctrinated on the 17^th of May, 2012.