- "Faint traces of your accent suggest that Stalingrad was your birthplace, but I sense that you have not seen a home in many years, my child."
- ―Samuel Sterns to Black Widow[src]
Stalingrad, now known as Volgograd, is an important industrial city and the administrative center of one of the federal subjects or oblasts in Russia.
History
In 1945, a battalion of Allied Troops were trapped by a blizzard and were pinned down by Hydra forces just outside Stalingrad until being rescued by Steve Rogers. One of the men rescued would later go onto be Peggy Carter's, future husband.
Stalingrad is the birthplace of Natasha Romanoff, who went to become one of the world's most talented spies, first for the Soviet KGB and, eventually, for S.H.I.E.L.D.
Samuel Sterns, mutated by Bruce Banner's blood, requested Romanoff's assistance in escaping the authorities and securing his work. In order to convince her, he correctly guessed her birthplace as Stalingrad, recognizing faint traces of her accent, and offered her the home she hadn't had in many years.[1]
Trivia
- In a deleted scene from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Peggy Carter's full interview as shown in the Smithsonian has the interviewer refer to Stalingrad as Volgograd despite the interview taking in place in 1953. Stalingrad was not renamed Volgograd until 1961.
