Aleksandr Tsarev was a Russian soldier who, just after World War II, entered into a secret Soviet project to create the perfect soldier. He was irradiated with energy from an ancient shard of dangerous power and miraculously survived. After recovering, he began to display powers of self-duplication—he could copy himself and control those copies. Each copy was still him, and the more copies he made, the harder it was to control them, let alone think. During the Cold War, he was literally put on ice—cryogenically frozen to be thawed out in the case of all out war. A war that never came.

Years later, Baron Blade found him and freed him. Giving Tsarev the name Proletariat, Blade convinced the soldier to fight on his villainous team against the capitalist government lapdogs, the Freedom Five. Later, Proletariat came to realize that Baron Blade was no champion of the people, and Tsarev disappeared into the frozen Siberian wastes to contemplate his existence.