BIOGRAPHY
Natalia Alianonva Romanova was born in 1928 in Stalingrad of the former Soviet Union. During an attack launched on the city by Imperialists, a soldier named Ivan Petrovich Bezukhov was searching for his missing sister in a burning building. A woman trapped in the rubble handed Ivan 
a baby in her care, named Natalia. The woman’s last words to Ivan were, “She’s a Romanov, but…,” before the building collapsed on top of her. No further records could be found of Natalia’s family in the chaos that engulfed the city. Ivan took care of the orphaned Natalia, adopting her as his own to help replace the family which he lost. [Daredevil (1st series) #88, Black Widow: Deadly Origin #1]
[Note: When originally told in Daredevil (1st series) #88, Ivan finding the baby Natasha took place in 1942, during the Nazi siege of Stalingrad from World War II. At the time of the issue’s release, in 1972, this made Natasha a reasonable 30 years old. Subsequent stories would retroactively establish Natasha was far older than she appeared, and Deadly Origin #1 pushed the date back even further.]
Ivan did his best to care for young Natalia and saw to her schooling and education. Natalia was an apt pupil, excelling in all classes once she entered school, showing a gifted mind and athletic ability. By the time she was ten years old, Ivan pressed for Natalia’s entry in a special academy run by Taras Romanoff. Ivan was about to be deployed for an extended period and didn’t want 
Natalia to lapse in her education in the state-funded schools and orphanage. As he was pleading his case, Comrade General Secretary Josef Stalin happened to overhear while passing by. Stalin enjoyed the sight of Communism in action, as he put it, and instructed Taras to accept Natalia to his academy. It amused Stalin to have a Romanova, named for the former imperialist family, training under his watchful eye. [Black Widow: Deadly Origin #1]
Over the next two years, Natalia was indoctrinated in the ways of Taras’ school. Taras Romanoff was one of the elite spymasters of the Soviet Union, instructing his students in espionage, counter-intelligence and assassination. Still, Natalia demonstrated an independent streak which was recognized by her controllers. At one point, Natalia and a friend Marina ran away from the Academy and lived on the streets of Russia. They marveled at the girls dancing in a ballet studio, 
and Natalia clearly picked her favorite as the best girl in the class. The dancer had an abusive lover, though, and the man roughly took her out of the class one day. She later returned with her leg broken, unable to dance and forced to clear out her things at the studio. Little Natalia was furious at the man and attacked his car with a rock. His hired thug chased her into an alley to beat her, but Natalia had hidden a discarded gun there days earlier. She pulled the gun and killed the man in self-defense. After that, the Red Room recovered her from the police and brought her back into the academy. It was revealed the academy allowed novitiates to escape occasionally as a test to see how they operated in the real world. [Black Widow (5th series) #16]
For a time, Natalia trained directly under the Headmistress of the Red Room with many other girls. 
She was the woman’s favorite pupil and sought to please her mistress. Among her instructors was a sharpshooter named Iosef, who also favored Natalia for her innate skill. Natalia took her work seriously, despite her young age, and refused to let the headmistress’ daughter Anya tag along with her. Anya was not officially part of the Red Room and did not receive the training that her mother gave the other girls. Because of this, Natalia did not take her seriously and rebuked Anya as “mother’s little recluse” when she tried to get involved in Natalia’s missions. [Black Widow (6th series) #3-4]
Still, Natalia’s independent streak led her to act on her own, without a handler or back-up. When given her first kill mission for the Red Room, Natalia snuck out to prove she could handle it herself. She brazenly attacked the Yugoslavian target with a knife on the streets, diving into his moving vehicle. Several times her size, the big man managed to stab Natalia with her own knife once, but she regained the upper hand and killed him. Without hesitation, she attacked the 
Yugoslavian’s son in the front seat and delivered severe wounds to him as well, to ensure there were no witnesses. Because of her own injuries, however, Natalia had to leave before confirming the second kill… or noticing the man’s nephew asleep in the back seat. [Black Widow (6th series) #3, 7]
At one point in her training, Taras took a more personal interest in Natalia’s development. Given their coincidental surnames, Taras chose to present Natalia as his own daughter to those who asked. Through behavioral programming, he believed he had wiped Ivan from her memory and convinced Natalia she WAS his natural daughter. Natalia’s strong will had actually defied his 
efforts, but she kept this information to herself. During her training, Natalia met a man named Logan. Sent by his handler, the mysterious power broker known as Romulus, Logan was meant to learn spycraft from Taras. Logan and Taras befriended each other during his studies, and he also became close to Natalia, who took to calling him her “Little Uncle.”
Natalia had already surpassed many of her instructors, and so Logan privately gave her combat lessons at night to improve upon her impressive skills. Taras knew about these “secret” lessons and implicitly encouraged them in order for Natalia to get the most use out of Logan. However, he intended for her to graduate from his school by killing Logan as her final test of skill and loyalty. At the same time, Logan had a secondary mission to determine if Taras knew too much about Romulus. Once he uncovered this was the case, Logan killed Taras first. As the twelve-year-old Natalia faced off against Logan, she chose not to fulfill her mission, even knowing he had killed Taras. Logan 
passed on word that Taras’ daughter was dead too, hoping to give Natalia a chance at her own life. She lived off the wilderness for three months after Taras’ academy was destroyed until Ivan found her there. Natalia told Ivan that, in the end, she chose Logan simply because she liked him more than Taras. Ivan regretted the situation he had left Natalia in, and so he went AWOL from the Army to remain by her side from that point forward. [Wolverine: Origins #9, Black Widow: Deadly Origin #1]
[Note: Black Widow’s 5th and 6th series contain multiple scenes indicating Natalia grew up in the Red Room, an orphaned child trained to be an assassin and espionage agent before graduating as an adult. This is significantly at odds with previous continuity from Black Widow: Deadly Origin, Wolverine: Origins and other sources which have her raised by Ivan, attending Taras Romanov’s academy from about 10-12 years old, then operating independently until entering the Red Room at 28 years old. It’s possible to make this all work – Taras’ school could be part of the Red Room, Natalia isn’t explicitly seen in the Red Room between ages 12 and 28, memory implants after her return can fog over the details… but it’s rough.]
Natalia and Ivan retreated into the shadow world of spycraft, selling their services to those willing to pay. By the next year, 1941, they crossed paths with Romulus’ network again. Baron Wolfgang von Strucker of the Nazi party was orchestrating an alliance with the Hand ninja clan. They had learned of the surviving Romanoff and hoped to brainwash Natalia into service of the Hand, using her as a spy and weapon to kill the Russian leadership. In fact, Natalia and Ivan had been hired to assassinate the jonin, a Hand leader who would only surface for the ceremony necessary to indoctrinate Natalia. Their mission was assisted by Romulus’ agents Logan and Seraph, as well as manipulating the Americans into sending their new Sentinel of Liberty, Captain America, to “rescue” the girl. The other players were meant to serve as a distraction while Natalia (who had 
already demonstrated a resistance to brainwashing) ambushed the jonin. Logan was surprised to see Natalia, as he thought he had freed her from the world of shadow ops back at the academy, not realizing she would willingly choose to return to it. The ceremony was interrupted, and Logan himself delivered the killing blow in Natalia’s place. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #268, Wolverine: Origins #16]