The Soviet Union emerged as a major power in the early 1900s after the Russian Revolution, and it became a driving force behind several important events in the world. However, after the Germans crushed the Soviets in World War II, the nation struggled to retain its new territories, which it eventually lost in the Aggression Wars, and it struggled to remain intact as a nation. During World War III, a civil war broke out in the Soviet Union, resulting in the dissolution of the union and the creation of the nation of the Communist Republic of Siberia in 2001.