The Soviet Union Was Bigger Than Pluto

At its largest, the Soviet Union covered about 22 million km². Pluto's entire surface is only about 17.7 million km². Placed on Pluto at true size, the Soviet Union would be about 124% of the dwarf planet, so it would cover every part of Pluto and then some. Even modern Russia alone covers about 96% of it.

The Soviet Union does not fit on Pluto, so here it is on Saturn, a planet about 9 times as wide as Earth, where it is only a small patch.

Open this map in TrueSize

The numbers

Pluto has a radius of 1,188.3 km, so it is about 0.19 times as wide as Earth. Its surface area is about 17.7 million km².

Region	Area	Compared with Pluto's surface
Soviet Union, 1945 to 1990	22.02 million km² (measured in TrueSize)	about 124%
Russia	about 17.1 million km²	about 96%
Africa	about 30.37 million km²	about 171%
United States	about 9.83 million km²	about 55%
Australia	about 7.7 million km²	about 43%

The Soviet Union figure is measured from the map outline in TrueSize. The other country areas are well-known published totals.

Why this works

A region keeps its true area in TrueSize, whichever world you put it on. Surface area depends on the square of the radius, so a world only 19% as wide as Earth has a surface of only about 3.5% of Earth's. Pluto's surface is about the size of Russia and smaller than Africa.

The Soviet Union is a historical entity. TrueSize has a timeline of historical borders, so you can load the Soviet Union as it existed in a chosen year. Outlines and years come from the app's historical data, and published estimates of its area differ slightly.

What you see when you try it

A shape larger than the world it sits on cannot be drawn without overlapping itself. When you put the Soviet Union or Russia on Pluto, TrueSize warns that the region may look distorted and that its shown area is approximate. Smaller regions such as the United States fit cleanly. To see the whole Soviet Union, put it on a bigger world: the picture above shows it on Saturn.

Try it yourself

1. On the Home tab, switch the map to Historical, set the year to 1960 with Go to year, and search for the Soviet Union. To try a modern country instead, stay in Modern and search for it.
2. Open the Fun tab, click Planets, and choose Pluto in the picker. Choose Saturn to see the whole Soviet Union.
3. Drag the region around Pluto. Click Return to Earth to go back.

The Pluto map uses a NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI image. Planet mode and the timeline both work on the web version.

Open this map in TrueSize

More comparisons

• How big is the USA on the Moon?
• How big is Russia on Mars?
• Soviet Union vs USA: how much bigger?
• Historical Borders Map: See Any Country's Borders by Year

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