Stalnoivolk

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Background

Powers & Abilities

Back in WWII, Stalnoivolk was a powerful, towering superhuman with astounding strength and durability. Though standards have evolved since — “Class 50” strength is no longer the top shelf — Gort remains a large, dangerous strongman.

He can :

• Throw a man a block away.
• Take armour-piercing .44 magnum bullets at close range without damage.
• Jump from planes without the benefit of a parachute.
• Make titanic jumps.
• Snap a man’s neck with one hand.
• Punch through solid stone walls.
• Pick up and throw American police cruisers.
• Easily create his own handholds in façades and quickly scale buildings.
• Etc..

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Although he’s now a centenarian (or close to it), Stalnoivolk is kept vital by his powers. He ages at maybe a fifth or sixth of the normal pace. He does not feel the cold, and could operate bare-chested in the Siberian winter without any discomfort.

Gort often uses pieces of rock, concrete, asphalt, etc. as thrown weapons. If need be he can easily rip out a large chunk out of a nearby structure for this. Examples have included :

• Crushing a handful of concrete into dust to blind an opponent.
• Picking gravel and using them as a sort of long-ranged shotgun blast.
• Throwing a large chunk of masonry then leap and attack right behind it as the opponent is distracted.
• Etc..

Other assets

Stalnoivolk is a ruthless, well-trained, very experienced special agent, fighter and killer. He definitely can threaten even the most formidable hand-to-hand fighters in the world, such as Batman and the Bronze Tiger, and he doesn’t need to land many blows to prevail.

Against very fast opponents he will often use sweeping attacks to force them on the defensive. To do so, he’ll often pick a convenient object such as a lamplight. In DC Heroes these are Flailing attacks to force to spend HPs on OV, in DC Adventures he subs 2 points of Damage for Offence.

Though he’s a bit too confident, he fights smart and hard. He’s also remarkably agile and athletic. Stalnoivolk can :

• Jump with great precision to attack flying enemies.
• Jump between buildings.
• Scale sheer obstacles with great power.
• Etc..

Stalnoivolk can be hurt by the strongest and most martially adept humans. But this means people like Batman or the Bronze Tiger, who can apply powerful blows in an extremely precise fashion. Though he can survive bursting shells, Stalnoivolk can be hurt by certain energy weapons such as lasers. Even a laser handgun can inflict burns on him, provided the shooter is a precise enough marksman.

Minor assets

Stalnoivolk has been taught English. While the post-Revolutionary education system was pretty good, it’s unlikely that Gort learned a foreign language in school. He probably attended a vocational school to learn agricultural skills.

One may assume that the KGB taught him early during the Cold War, circa 1948. It was traditional for some intelligence and military units in the USSR to be fluent with the language spoken by their opponents.

Gort’s clothes seemed unusually resistant to stress and damage. It seems likely that the USSR had special suits, shoes, etc. made in the 1950s for Stalnoivolk to wear in the field and that he still uses those.

History

Ivan Illyich Gort is a Soviet peasant born around 1910. He grew up in post-revolutionary Russia. During the late 1920s developed a lifelong admiration for Josef Stalin .

In the summer of 1941, during Operation Barbarossa , two things happened to Mr. Gort.

• His admiration for Stalin became uncompromising fanaticism, as the motherland was once again threatened.
• He was picked as one of the test subjects for special experiments designed to create superhuman troopers for the Red Army.

The Great Patriotic War

What happened during the project remains unrevealed. But once one man — Gort — was successfully enhanced, Stalin had the formula destroyed and the scientists executed. Their deaths were blamed on foreign agents.

While the Great Patriotic War could have been much shorter had the USSR had an unit of such men, Stalin was extremely wary about the post-war consequences. He could easily see such a vanguard  taking power. The isolated, uneducated, fanatically Stalinist Gort did not pose any such threat.

Christened “Stalnoivolk” (“the Steel Wolf”) to mark his personal loyalty toward Stalin, Gort fought hard during the war. One account mentions that he was a symbol of patriotism around whom soldiers could rally. Perhaps he was comparable to what Alexey Stakhanov  had been a few years prior for Soviet workers.

As soon as the war was over, Stalin made Stalnoivolk his personal executioner. Stalnoivolk was heavily involved in horrifically bloody purges in Ukraine, Georgia and Vlatava after the war. However, historically this is a bit perplexing – see the “Bring your doctor to the slaughter” section for a discussion of this.

In 1953, after Stalin’s death, Stalnoivolk was discredited. He was exiled to Siberia by Khrushchev . The USSR did not dabble again in the creation of superhumans for decades, due to the purges that closed Stalin’s reign . Stalnoivolk was now a symbol of the horrors super-human soldiers could commit, rather than a war hero.

As to Gort his Stalinism ossified. He came to consider each new leader of the Soviet Union as being weak, and but a shadow compared to Stalin. Still, he reportedly remained for decades in a small dacha  lost in the wilderness.

Reactivation

It eventually became clear that the USSR needed more superhuman assets. In 1987, during the Millennium crisis , it was decided to reactivate Stalnoivolk, who hadn’t aged much.

The KGB sent Zastrow, arguably their most brilliant officer, to become his new handler. This, Zastrow did with a certain lack of enthusiasm. However, Zastrow was more successful than he expected to be, and Gort slowly came to follow his orders.

In 1988, Zastrow sent Stalnoivolk to Nicaragua . The capture of the American vigilante Hawk had resulted in a tense situation, with some American and Soviet interests vying to recover the prisoner.

An ambitious Soviet officer and politician sent the Rocket Red Brigade on a discreet mission to secure Hawk from the Sandinistas. Zastrow saw a clear opportunity in that. While the capture of Hawk would be an almost negligible success for the USSR, making the Rocket Red unit look bad was important in Zastrow’s long-term vision of what the Union should be.

In Nicaragua, Stalnoivolk simply walked into the prison, killed interfering guards and hurled Hawk away from his cell. This way, his fellow Soviet operatives would not find him. Hawk was recovered by American agents, and Stalnoivolk was exfiltrated. The officer who had sent the Rocket Red Brigades was soon killed while trying to murder Zastrow in revenge.

Union

After Firestorm came to clash with the alien Zuggernaut in the middle of Moscow, the KGB stepped up their investigation of him. As a result, Zastrow came to the US to interrogate Ron Raymond, who was suspected of having ties with Firestorm.

He took Gort with him in case an enforcer was necessary. But the testy old man decided that it was too complicated. He just jumped from a building into the Raymonds’s apartment, crashing through the wall and demanding that Firestorm be handed over to him.

Gort was faced by Raymond’s grandfather. It was Richard Dare, formerly known as Captain X and as the Aviator. A wartime hero, Dare knew Stalnoivolk from then and assumed the worst. Dare attempted to delay Gort by shooting him, and the Russian fatally backhanded him. Seconds later, Raymond managed to manifest Firestorm at last.

The fight swiftly escalated, with Stalnoivolk dispersing intervening police. Though Stalnoivolk was much more experienced Firestorm was too powerful and too flexible – and won. Appalled at the disaster, Zastrow invoked diplomatic immunity. He pulled Stalnoivolk out. Stalnoivolk had nearly been killed by Firestorm and was left in a coma for several months.

Invasion, part 1

Stalnoivolk was shipped back to the USSR, and healed. However, Earth was then invaded by a coalition of alien forces. All available operatives had to be scrambled. Zastrow had Stalnoivolk sent into the field though he obviously had not really recovered from his coma. Gort was, in fact, hallucinating that he was back in WWII and that Zastrow was Stalin.

Despite these significant problems, the steel wolf viciously attacked and killed off scores of alien invaders, whom he thought were SS soldiers. Reportedly, Stalnoivolk killed a number of Okaaran master fighters as well as Thanagaran flying troops.

At the tail end of the Invasion, Stalnoivolk ran into Firestorm. The super-hero was in Russia since back then one of his components was the Russian superhuman Pozhar. However, the telepath Firebird, of the young Russian superhuman team Soyuz, stopped the fight and tranquillised Gort so he could finish healing from his coma.

Pozhar required that Stalnoivolk be treated as a war hero. In his view, no matter what his past deeds had been, he had fought fiercely for Russia against the aliens.

Invasion, part 2

At the conclusion of the Invasion, the Gene Bomb was detonated. This resulted in a heightened pace of spontaneous appearance of superhumans worldwide. Dealing with these (and the possibility of further alien invasions) meant that the State had to develop its superhuman assets.

Under Gorbachyov ’s leadership, the so-called New Day Policy was to actively develop superhuman agents, including within the KGB.

The wily Zastrow was to head the KGB’s part in this effort. But one of his conditions was that the fully-recovered Stalnoivolk be made a member of the KGB’s superhuman division, called the Red Shadows.

As Zastrow and Gort worked together, Zastrow came to have a better handle on Stalnoivolk. Still, the old peasant remained a serious discipline problem.

Elimination, part 1

In 1990, an extreme right-wing revolution erupted in Vlatava. The blood-soaked tradition of Vlatavan vendetta demanded vengeance against the Soviet Union that had long dominated the country. A key supporter was Vlatavan-American arms dealer Nikolas Varga. Along with a small network of Vlatavan-Americans, he also tried to manoeuvre the US into a conflict with the USSR to make the Soviets pay.

The Red Shadows were tasked with preventing any damage to Soviet interests. Zastrow decided to eliminate Varga first. Thus, he arranged for Gort to clearly appear on US television as a bodyguard during a diplomatic event conveniently taking place in Gotham, Varga’s town of residence.

Varga bit the bait and, true to Vlatavan blood feud traditions, personally confronted Stalnoivolk. The arms dealer believed that a modern armour-piercing .44 magnum bullet at close range would do the job. It didn’t, and Stalnoivolk killed him.

Batman deduced what had happened and fought Stalnoivolk, but the Russian was on a time table. Gort jumped away from the fight and returned to Vlatava. There, he helped the much less experienced Red Shadows deal with the manipulated and delusional head of the Vlatavan revolution, Count Vertigo.

Elimination, part 2

A Suicide Squad unit also came to Vlatava, and ended up fighting the Red Shadows. The Bronze Tiger engaged Stalnoivolk. This would likely have turned sour without the backing of his ex-lover Vixen, who knocked Stalnoivolk out from behind.

Suicide Squad leader Amanda Waller and Red Shadows leader Zastrow brokered a deal. Both teams got out of Vlatava after Count Vertigo was taken out of the picture.

However, Waller arranged for the unconscious Gort to be snatched by her operatives. Presumably, he was tried and imprisoned in the US for the death of Varga, as part of a deal Waller had made with Batman. Stalnoivolk ended up imprisoned in Belle Reve for several months.

Operation

Waller wished to use Stalnoivolk as a Suicide Squad agent. After a Yakuza clan hired the Squad, she thus had Gort released from prison. But she knew that he would never serve willingly. Thus, Waller had Deadshot keep Stalnoivolk under the threat of a laser pistol that could actually kill the Russian.

Since this had its limits, she promised Stalnoivolk she’d let him go when the mission was over. She knew that the Russians had little interest in negotiating a prisoners exchange to get Stalnoivolk back, since Zastrow considered him to be too problematic.

While a Suicide Squad team flown to Cambodia  was preparing for infiltration via parachute, Gort decided to leave. He jumped out of the plane without a ’chute. Deadshot jumped after him and forced him to put on and use a parachute, and they both landed deep in Khmer Rouge  turf.

Though the Khmer Rouge were a regime Gort could approve of, he was forced by Deadshot to kill many soldiers. The Russian couldn’t signal for a way out since he didn’t know a single word of Khmer.

The team including Stalnoivolk eventually located their objective in Cambodia – a huge cache of smuggled Soviet weapons. This happened at about the same time as a team of Red Shadows did. Stalnoivolk was ordered by Deadshot to engage his Russian colleagues, and the Suicide Squad exfiltrated the area – though Stalnoivolk was too caught up in the fight to notice.

Presumably, the situation was deescalated in some fashion, though the body count and conclusion of that situation remains unrevealed.

Continuation

Stalnoivolk was spotted again a few months or years later – the flashback is hard to place.

He was still a Red Shadows agent under Zastrow, and part of a team that clashed briefly and unsuccessfully with the then-current version of the Suicide Squad. This time around, Stalnoivolk was defeated by the Bronze Tiger.

Bring your doctor to the slaughter

Stalnoivolk is variously known as “the butcher of Ukraine”, “the butcher of Georgia” and “the butcher of Vlatava”. He is presented as the reason why the Soviet government took a hardline stance against superhumans during much of the Cold War, not relaxing its policies until the mid-1980s.

But historically, such purges/massacres are not really present in the years between the Great Patriotic War and the death of Stalin. There were massive deportations, but at this point that didn’t have quite the same impact on the various Soviet populations. Thus, it would not be sufficient to evoke horrified reactions decades later.

There were also smaller purges, like the Leningrad Affair in 1949 . But the body count of these is modest by Soviet standards. Thus, it seems that the history of the DCU’s USSR may diverge slightly from our own.

Some possible hypotheses are:

1/ Nationalist movements

While there were nationalist independence movements in the closing years of the Great Patriotic War, especially in Ukraine (the UPA ) and the Baltic Countries, these do not quite fit the bill. Their role remains very controversial today (especially in Ukraine). Thus it is unlikely that large populations would remember actions taken against them with horror, especially in Russia.

It is also unlikely that the Soviet government would have considered war crimes against, say, the UPA as anything other than a solution to a difficult situation. As to the Baltic countries, they are simply too small for much of note to have occurred. Further, in some of those, the nationalist movement was as controversial as the Ukrainian UPA.

2/ The Vlatavan connection

The simplest hypothesis is that it was a Vlatavan thing. Since Vlatava doesn’t exist in the real world, it could easily have resulted in some additional historical events on DC Earth.

Vlatava is known for its bloody, unending culture of vendettas and conspiracies. A Fascist nationalist movement could certainly have arisen in Vlatava circa 1944, with large contingents of Vlatavans in Georgia and Ukraine agitating and rioting in solidarity.

In this scenario Stalnoivolk is sent in Vlatava by Stalin to kill the leaders. The clash between ruthless, fanatical killers escalates into a carnage. Later massacres occur in Georgia and Ukraine where Valatavan communities riot in the hope that Stalnoivolk will be sent against them so they can kill him, but get massacred by Gort instead.

3/ Archipelago

A simple hypothesis is that the massacres actually took place in gulags. In this take, the prisoners of several large gulags revolted, and Stalin, in a fit of rage, ordered Gort to kill everyone in there.

Since political prisoners in the gulag were often regrouped by regional provenance, it would be easy for Stalnoivolk to be remembered by Ukrainians, Georgians and Vlatavans as the butcher of a large number of their own who had been deported for their political stance. Or simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

4/ The Doctors’ Plot

It is possible that, on the DC Earth, the Doctors’s Plot purges of 1952/53  were more extensive than in the real world. On Earth, Stalin’s paranoid accusations against imaginary Jewish machinations resulted in a low number of executions by Soviet standards. Most of the bodycount was caused by allowing pogroms against random Jews.

However, on DC Earth, there might have been an actual conspiracy behind the hapless Jewish physicians. Perhaps it was backed by Vlatavan terrorists or unrevealed Soviet super-villains, and led to more extensive massacres against Georgians, Vlatavans and Ukrainians.

Stalin, only trusting the faithful Gort, would have vaguely denounced nationalists from these areas as agents of the CIA and left Stalnoivolk to zealously purge these supposed “nationalists”. This would have included many doctors well-regarded by the population whose only fault was to have met innocent Jewish physicians during medical congresses.

Perhaps Stalin’s paranoia was exacerbated by elements unique to the DC Universe, for instance a CIA psychic. This would ironically have made Stalin’s raving accusations of American assassins correct to some extent.

In this context, Gort’s exile is a logical consequence of Stalin’s successors immediately putting an end to the lunacy of the Doctors’s Plot affair.

5/ Thieves in honour

Georgia and Ukraine (and fictional Vlatava, I’d bet) are two of the traditional homelands of specific brand of criminals, the vory v zakone. This underworld is not unlike the thieves’ and assassin’ guilds in medieval fantasy worlds.

By the end of the Great Patriotic War, it was sundered between the “collaborators” (who had agreed to serve in the Red Army in return for their possible freedom) and the “pure“ (who had refused the deal). When the “collaborators” were thrown back in prison at the end of the War, this triggered years of brutal prison war between the two over matters of thieves’ guild rules and honour.

In this hypothesis, one of the men angling to succeed Stalin (perhaps Viktor Abakumov , best known as the former head of SMERSH) saw an opportunity to cripple the Soviet crime syndicates while they were at their lowest ebb and take over.

Given the stringent and bloody code of honour of the vory v zakone, targeted executions conducted by Gort may easily have escalated into an interminable vendettas and shadow wars against Georgian vory, Ukrainian vory, etc.. That would further result in retaliatory strikes intending to punish supporters and families of the underworld until this circle of blood was broken by Stalnoivolk’s exile.

6/ Purges taking place earlier

There are strong suspicions that Stalin was preparing a new round of great purges just before his death. In the DC Universe they might actually have been carried out. Here’s one scenario.

As Marshall Zhukov  returns a triumphant war hero, Stalin starts plotting. Zhukov, the most decorated general in the history of Russia and the USSR, was well known for being headstrong and willing to stand up to Stalin. He even forced him to ascede on certain military issues.

The paranoid Stalin grew convinced that Zhukov was planning to gun for the for leadership of the party, but couldn’t hope to get rid of him via a show trial. And there was a definite possibility of a military coup if Zhukov was seized.

On DC Earth, Stalin wouldn’t have bid his time – since he had Stalnoivolk who could kill Zhukov’s supporters base and was only loyal to him. Stalnoivolk went out to murder Zhukov’s officers whilst they were in remote outposts, killing the soldiers as well. He would also massacre some civilians so the blame could be laid at the feet of Zhukov’s closest lieutenants.

Howbeit, Stalin died midway through the operation. His successors blew open the conspiracy and exiled Stalnoivolk – if only because they feared that Gort had been left with post-mortem orders by Stalin involving their death at the steel wolf’s hands.

7/ Pure propaganda

It is possible that Stalnoivolk never actually massacred anyone in the early 1950s and it was all purely propaganda and false accusations, as was the style of the day. Such a show trial may easily have marked the population, especially since Stalnoivolk was never rehabilitated until, at the very least, the Invasion.

The most likely scenario for this hypothesis is that Khrushchev decided, during the closing year of Stalin’s reign, that Stalnoivolk was more likely to side with Beria  on Stalin’s death. This would of course have been a huge menace for Khruschchev, his supporters, and other senior leaders allied with Khrushchev in order to get Beria.

Thus Khruschchev’s immediate action upon taking power might have been to exile Stalnoivolk, then stage a show trial in absentia, accusing Gort of made-up but quite believable massacres.

An intermediary hypothesis is that there were actual massacres in Vlatava, but the ones in Georgia and Ukraine were invented for the trial.

8/ Keelhaul

Lastly, it is possible that, starting in 1945, Stalnoivolk was detailed to Operation Keelhaul . This was the forced repatriation of many Soviet troops and refugees abroad that was conducted in coordination with the Allied powers. There were numerous massacres during Keelhaul, especially of Cossacks who had enrolled with the armies of the Reich, some White Russian emigrants, etc..

In the real world, the existence of Keelhaul was hidden for decades. On DC Earth, it is possible that one of the operations conducted by Stalnoivolk went out of hand. Perhaps some of the persons he fought turned out to be superhumans themselves.

As a result, as soon as Stalin died, Stalnoivolk was blamed for the most visible Keelhaul massacres. That was both in order to get rid of Gort and hide the nature of Operation Keelhaul by pretending that it was just about Stalnoivolk.

Description

Gort occasionally smokes a pipe, even in the field. He generally wears older, well out-of-fashion suits.

After his reactivation his English was rusty and included such Russianisms as overusing the present progressive even when inappropriate (“Do not make me repeating myself again”), but he soon became a bit more fluent. He’s probably too old and set in his ways to ever be fully fluent, though.

Gort’s hair (including his moustache) went from black to dark grey. This seems to be a result of the coma Firestorm once put him in.

Personality

Gort is generally the strong and silent type. This is mostly because he’s blasé about run-of-the-mill jobs. He has killed many, many people and he simply doesn’t care who or what he’s killing. Killing is a good, effective solution in his book.

Experience, old age and horse sense have made Gort a suspicious but cunning man. Furthermore, he’s used to conspiracies and the like. But he’s still trapped in his antiquated Stalinist beliefs, and will likely remain a hardliner and a Stalinist until he dies.

He would be very happy to see the old order restored to Russia, especially if that means the return of a “great patriotic leader” like Stalin and a sense of grandeur for his country.

Bad attitude

Gort is, at best, testy and murderous. He sees himself as a hard man making hard choices. His only loyalty is to the motherland, preferably under authoritarian leadership. While he’s certainly pragmatic, he has a definite temper and is impatient. Stalnoivolk prefers the direct approach and the brutal imposition of self-righteous, self-justifying force and authority.

Black people are still something new for Gort – he was in exile in Siberia during the Cold War. He tends to just address them as “Black“ and doesn’t seem quite sure what to think of them. His only cultural context for them is presumably from the 1930s. He’ll thus generally come across as racist, though it’s probably more complicated than that.

As long as something is authoritarian, determined and vaguely Marxist, Gort likes it. For instance he thought that the Khmer Rouges were a good regime.

Quotes

(Upon being reactivated as an agent) “So. The dogs return, asking help of the wolf. But, then, I always knew someday they would.”

“I am Stalnoivolk. You will be surrendering to me the creature Firestorm.”

“You start to annoy me, little gnat. Time to swat you.”

“I will enjoy destroying you.”

“I go back to USSR. Red Shadows get in my way, I kill them. You get in my way, I kill you.”

“In second World War, I would pop Germans’s heads from their shoulders for fun.”

Post-Apocalyptic History

In writeups.org contributor Peter’s post-apocalyptic campaign, Stalnoivolk was a Commander in the East Russian Empire (i.e. the post-apocalyptic American eastern seaboard). He was an aging veteran, even more grey-haired than before, who had seen it all, but still possessed all of his impressive physical might.

Apparently he participated in the invasion in 2025 when World War III started. He went by the name of Commander Steelwolf in the year 2051.

He is considered a great hero of his people (the Americo-Russians that is, they have no contacts with the former Soviet Union) and inspires unity and leadership in the most glorious Communist style. His folks are among the first humans in the west one encounters as one leaves the ruins of New York where Kamandi lives.

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: DC Universe.

Helper(s): v1 was based on Mayfair’s Atlas of the DC Universe entry, and further had Philip John Mason and Bob da galactic bum as helpers. v2 is a much more developed rewrite, though the stats haven’t changed much ; helpers on that one are Darci, Capita_Senyera and Peter Piispanen. Rpg.net (namely Passengerpigeon, g026r, Smoot, Katsue, faeriesoph, Des, tomas, and Toxoplasma) greatly helped with the “Bring your doctor…” section.

Writeup completed on the 5^th of July, 2010.