 The destruction of many of the USSR’s resources after WW2, but perhaps more importantly its desire to become an industrial giant to overtake and surpass its Western adversaries during the Cold War, caused the Soviets to consider a rapid expansion of natural resource harvesting, with special interest paid to the whaling industry.A former German factory ship, named "Wikinger" (Viking) was given to the Soviets as a prize of war and renamed "Slava" (fame) and first whaled in the Antarctic during the 1946–47 season from its base in Odessa on the Black Sea, and during this first season killed 384 whales.In the next season, 1947–48, a new captain, Alexei Solyanik, was hired to command the fleet, and for the next 18 seasons he would command "Slava" and later the "Sovetskaya Ukraina", becoming the most successful (and most notorious) whaling captain in Soviet history.