It was quite common "back in the day" to call what was properly "the Soviet Union" just "Russia". And it wasn't just pure sloppiness, either; the Soviet Union and its predecessor Russian Empire both had Russia as their heart and soul.

Also, everything in this article has been well known for ages. No need to hold back your trust. It's a nice writeup though!

https://deportetie.kartes.lv is but one illustration of Soviet != Russia for history buffs. An empire's heart and soul is usually black ice. The USSR was not an exception.

no more "sloppiness" than to refer to the USSR as just "Moscow", as that's where the majority of important decisions, the kinds that nuclear weapon would fall into, were made.

Russia is historical name of Ukraine before Moscow renamed their empire into Russian Empire. Ethnic Russians took meeting in 1910 and rebranded themselves into Ukrainians, to avoid confusion with bloody empire, then started Great Ukrainization, to separate themselves from enslaved and erased nations, which ended with mass murder of millions of Ukrainians by Russians in 1932-1934.

Russian Empire died and buried in a grave in 1917. Don't dig it up, please.