August 1991 Soviet Coup a success?

[ShadowCommunist2009]

What if the August 19, 1991 coup by hardline Communists in Moscow in an attempt to undo Gorbachev's reforms had succeeded? I.e., Yeltsin was unable or simply didn't organize mass opposition, Gorbachev supported the coup, and/or the people didn't react as violently as they did?
I realize the improbability of this considering the youth who were enjoying Glasnost and Perestroika, but what if the general public had been less-than-happy in the 1980's to hear of all this reform and had been anti-Gorbachev instead of pro?

[Anaxagoras]

I don't know if much would have changed in the long-run. The success of the coup would obviously do nothing to resolve the longstanding economic and social problems of Soviet society.

[King Thomas]

Yeltsin could have been drunk on the day of the coup.To suceed the coup plotters would have had to have arrested more people and/or been ready to use deadly force and quickly, before the armed forces splintered. Crime would not have exploded, but by itself Communism was failing. If the coup plotters had allowed peristroika without glasnost, like China in OTL, then the USSR could have remained a Great Power.

[DMA]

I see two dangers emerging threatening peace.

The first is violence bordering on civil war within the USSR. Already the republics were wanting to leave. Having a successful coup in Moscow could have ensured that several of the republic left in protest ensuring that the coup leaders send in the Red Army. This could have split the army causing civil war &/or caused the local populations to rise up again causing civil war. In other words imagine the situation Chechnya spread across much of the USSR.

The second are the Soviet satellite countries in eastern Europe. Again they were pretty much getting ready to break away if they hadn't already. Some of these countries may have kept in line with the Moscow coup leaders, but it's probably safe to say several others wouldn't. Ultimately this would put West Germany in a bind as East Germany could have appealed for help - especially if Soviet troops leave their barricks to impose orders from Moscow. Hungry & Czechoslovakia could have been in the same situation. So expect "wars of independence" of one type or other in eastern Europe at the very least, which may involve NATO at some point.

[Nicole]

Hadn't the Baltics already seceded by then? Technically the Soviet Constitution granted all SSRs the right to secede, but that doesn't mean that the new USSR can't find some justification to invade Talinn, Riga, and Vilnius...

[DMA]

Hadn't the Baltics already seceded by then? Technically the Soviet Constitution granted all SSRs the right to secede, but that doesn't mean that the new USSR can't find some justification to invade Talinn, Riga, and Vilnius...


Well we're talking the hardliners involved with the coup, so it's highly likely that they'd want them back. Needless to say, it would have to be done by force of arms.

[Wendell]

Maybe what happens is that the Russian Federation emerges with its soviet-era name, the RSFSR, and a (more) hard-line government, and fewer friends in the world. 1991 is too late to keep the Cold War going, Even if the RSFSR stays officially Communist, it is in no shape to fight 14 breakaway republics, and possibly even the Americans at the same time.

[DMA]

Maybe what happens is that the Russian Federation emerges with its soviet-era name, the RSFSR, and a (more) hard-line government, and fewer friends in the world. 1991 is too late to keep the Cold War going, Even if the RSFSR stays officially Communist, it is in no shape to fight 14 breakaway republics, and possibly even the Americans at the same time.


Yes, but would the hardliner coup members realise this? I get the impression that they wanted the good old times back, meaning the USSR the way it was. As you point out, that probably couldn't come about. And yet if they continued to try, regardless of the true situation, it would probably mean a civil war, at least among the republics, which could spill over into eastern Europe & possibly involve NATO intervention at some point.

[Wendell]

Yes, but would the hardliner coup members realise this? I get the impression that they wanted the good old times back, meaning the USSR the way it was. As you point out, that probably couldn't come about. And yet if they continued to try, regardless of the true situation, it would probably mean a civil war, at least among the republics, which could spill over into eastern Europe & possibly involve NATO intervention at some point.
True, but chances are they would nuke each other out before they could NATO. I do think NATO might intervene into the WP, but it would only come following a complete breakdown of order in the U.S.S.R. One wonders what China would do....

[DMA]

True, but chances are they would nuke each other out before they could NATO. I do think NATO might intervene into the WP, but it would only come following a complete breakdown of order in the U.S.S.R. One wonders what China would do....


Well that's one of the great dangers of such a Soviet civil war - especially if somewhere like the Ukraine decides it's going to resist.

I'd dare say NATO would want to keep out of it at first, but if troubles commence between East German & Russian troops, or if there's repeats of Soviet intervention in Hungary &/or Czechoslovakia, it makes it awfully hard for NATO not to get involved I would think.

And yeah, China could be the scary one. What with the USSR imploding it could well march into Sibera which, in turn, could see parts of China nuked in retaliation by a rump USSR.

[ShadowCommunist2009]

Maybe what happens is that the Russian Federation emerges with its soviet-era name, the RSFSR, and a (more) hard-line government, and fewer friends in the world. 1991 is too late to keep the Cold War going, Even if the RSFSR stays officially Communist, it is in no shape to fight 14 breakaway republics, and possibly even the Americans at the same time.

Interestingly enough, the only republics Russia would have been fighting would have been Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Central Asia and Trans-caucasia relied too heavily on Soviet solidarity to prosper, which is why the all-Union treaty which Gorbachev had proposed (and indeed was the spark that lit the fire for the coup in the first place) would probably have succeeded in drawing the Baltics back into the Union.

Eastern Europe had collapsed in 1989, with nobody in the USSR really willing to go back in and "set things straight." While the USSR had adapted and changed to the world of detente and their own ideological evolution, the Eastern Bloc remained Stalinist to the last. The policies of Ceaucescu in Romania, Honecker in East Germany, and the others had remained entrenched in 1945 ideological thinking.

However, I feel that the civil war theory is possibly the most likely, considering the drive of the European Republics to secede and the desire of the Asian Republics to keep the Union in tact.

However, this brings another variable to the mix--Yeltsin was, even before the coup, President of the RSFSR. In Gorbachev's On My Country and the World he describes Yeltsin's declaration of Russian independence (post coup, of course) in which he says "Russia cannot secede from the Union. The Union is Russia. It is as if the Russians have declared independence from themselves." (sic)

So would Yeltsin, following a successful coup have declared Russian independence and aided the "Neo-Whites" against the "Neo-Reds?" I think so, which would have more completely torn the country apart than in the civil war immediately following the 1917 October Revolution.

But nukes? That's stretching things. The Sino-Soviet territorial dispute on the Ussuri river brought many questions of nuclear arsenals to the table, but, like most nuclear powers, I don't think any Russians short of the Chechens or post-Mujahaddin Afghanis would have used WMDs to tip the balance of power against Moscow. Even the most desparate probably would have shied away from it simply because the use of such weapons would have united the world against them and given more strength to Moscow.

[Michael B]

And yeah, China could be the scary one. What with the USSR imploding it could well march into Sibera which, in turn, could see parts of China nuked in retaliation by a rump USSR. Whether or not the rump USSR nuked it would depend on how much China grabbed. However, yes, it would move in if only to seize the territory that Beijing claims is China's.

Assuming that the exchange is limited to only a few cities, China is going concentrate on reconstruction not libralisation of its economy as on OTL. That is going have an impact on the early twenty first century. There would be no boom in its export drive and no large scale importing of raw materials to fuel it, ie not high oil prices 2005-6.

[DMA]

Well my thoughts about nukes are more so about the China issue, rather than a civil war issue. Nevertheless they are still lying around & ready to be used. Given a desperate last stand battle in a nasty Soviet civil war, I wouldn't dismiss their usage.


But leaving aside the issue of nukes being used in a Soviet civil war, it was a long held Soviet strategy that the only way to counter a Chinese invasion was to use nukes. This is why there had been a long history of Soviet IRBMs being deployed in the Asia region. Afterall, there's the old Red Army joke about a war with China: in the first week the Red Army kills millions of Chinese; but by the end of the second week, the USSR surrenders to China ;)

[NFR]

Well that's one of the great dangers of such a Soviet civil war - especially if somewhere like the Ukraine decides it's going to resist.

I'd dare say NATO would want to keep out of it at first, but if troubles commence between East German & Russian troops, or if there's repeats of Soviet intervention in Hungary &/or Czechoslovakia, it makes it awfully hard for NATO not to get involved I would think.

And yeah, China could be the scary one. What with the USSR imploding it could well march into Sibera which, in turn, could see parts of China nuked in retaliation by a rump USSR.

One needs to stop wondering about ludicrous agressiveness on the part of Russia or China... We had most of our nukes in Siberia and Far East, and China knew this. Whatever you can say of Deng and Jiang, insanely adventurisitic is not one of them.

[NFR]

Whether or not the rump USSR nuked it would depend on how much China grabbed. However, yes, it would move in if only to seize the territory that Beijing claims is China's.

Assuming that the exchange is limited to only a few cities, China is going concentrate on reconstruction not libralisation of its economy as on OTL. That is going have an impact on the early twenty first century. There would be no boom in its export drive and no large scale importing of raw materials to fuel it, ie not high oil prices 2005-6.

*sign* Beijing makes no such claim. The most they did was to harrangue us on taking the land back then (I recall something about Neo-Tsarism inheriting the old Tsar's spoils), however that isn't quite the same as claiming it to be Chinese territory. It's more like what California is to Mexico... they think it was theirs, but it's too late now. And knowing full well that we have many nuclear weapons, please remind again why China will deliberately slow down its growth for a decade at least just to grab some bits of frozen wasteland? Deng didn't get a big hang up over territory - he agreed to settle the East Sea issue with Japan... and I quote... 'for later generations'. Besides, China recognized Soviet sovereingty over those territories, and it's not for no reason that the only disputed territories were islands on the Amur and Ussuri rivers, and China had never, even in Mao's days, attack and try to seize territory it agreed to be the territory of another's. Disputed borders were open to 'negotiation'. Maritime krai, Khabarovsk and Amur oblasts were not disputed.

[Wendell]

Might this be the World today?

[ShadowCommunist2009]

It seems this scenario relies very heavily on the Russian Civil War actually happening, so.....

I feel that Chinese intervention might have been limited on the imperial side, but might have occurred under an interventionist coalition at the behest of the UN in which a similar situation as in post-war Germany (an east and a west) might have happened under the NATO versus Chinese spheres of influence.

As such, Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus would most definitely have gained their independence following some semblance of NATO control in the West whereas Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan would have most definitely remained constituent republics of whatever successor state appeared in the Chinese controlled zone in the East. Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia are most likely up in the air as to constituency or independence is concerned.

But I also feel that something else might have occurred as early as '95 or '96 (assuming the intervention occurs)--Russia would have been a major asset to everybody involved, and Russian solidarity especially. So I don't think an East-West scenario is very plausible, but I believe a Russian federalization more centralized between an East and a West (two autonomous regions federalized into the current Oblast system of Russia today) that would struggle for dominance over the other, that is, if the anti-NATO anti-Chinese insurgents could be kept at bay.

Imagine it--a 2005 Iraq 1/3 of the world's landmass. Wowee.

[DMA]

One needs to stop wondering about ludicrous agressiveness on the part of Russia or China... We had most of our nukes in Siberia and Far East, and China knew this. Whatever you can say of Deng and Jiang, insanely adventurisitic is not one of them.


Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing? :p

[NFR]

Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing? :p

It also happens to be correct. This quip has as much content as if you quipped same over 'hindsight's' clarity about Hitlerite aggression. We are not slavering aggressive lunatics. Get over it.

[DMA]

It also happens to be correct. This quip has as much content as if you quipped same over 'hindsight's' clarity about Hitlerite aggression. We are not slavering aggressive lunatics. Get over it.


No one said anything about you being "slavering aggressive lunatics." It was mere speculation over what could happen in the said AH scenario.

[NFR]

No one said anything about you being "slavering aggressive lunatics." It was mere speculation over what could happen in the said AH scenario.

Alright. Sorry I overreacted.

Well, war with China still won't have been in the cards, I contend.

[DMA]

Alright. Sorry I overreacted.

Well, war with China still won't have been in the cards, I contend.


No problem. Personally I doubt too it would have gotten as bad as I speculated. In fact, I think it's fair to say, it probably would have ended up pretty much the way it did in the OTL. It seemed that almost everyone in Russia at the time, & correct me if I'm wrong, just wanted to start anew.

[Ivan Druzhkov]

Interestingly enough, the only republics Russia would have been fighting would have been Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Central Asia and Trans-caucasia relied too heavily on Soviet solidarity to prosper, which is why the all-Union treaty which Gorbachev had proposed (and indeed was the spark that lit the fire for the coup in the first place) would probably have succeeded in drawing the Baltics back into the Union.
Actually, some of the states of Transcaucasia would probably not be too pleased to stay with Moscow. In the closing years of the 1980’s, there was essentially a civil war between the Armenian and Azerbaijani SSRs over Nargornyy Karabakh, a blob of territory in Azerbaijan that the Armenians claim as their own. There were a couple of massacres in the area, including one rather nasty one in the city of Baku in 1990, when the Azerbaijainis essentially drove the local Armenian population out, then got put down by the Red Army in turn. That ended up kicking off a spate of anti-Russian protests, mostly of the issue of who Moscow actually supports, and so on.

To be perfectly frank, I don’t think the August plotters really had a hope in hell of succeeding. By 1991, the Soviet Union had essentially ceased to function. Moscow and Leningrad were sending food and medical supplies to Lithuania, despite the fact that the SSR had been sealed off with a Red Army blockade, factories had stopped churning out products, people (including Yeltsin) were resigning from the CPSU en masse, and the new legislative body Gorbachev created, the Congress of People’s Deputies, refused to cooperate with the Central Committee or the Politburo in any way. At this point, the only way to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again, IMHO, would be to go back to 1920 and just start killing people left, right, and center, and I don’t think that the plotters were the kind of people willing to engage in carnage of that scale.

[Michael B]

*sign* Beijing makes no such claim. The most they did was to harrangue us on taking the land back then (I recall something about Neo-Tsarism inheriting the old Tsar's spoils), China's border dispute is over territory that it signed over to Imperial Russia in the nineteenth century. It has similar disputes with India over territory transferred to the British Empire in the same century. It used to have a similar dispute with Burma for the same reason, but it has settled that one. When it settled it, the border was not changed, merely the treaty that determined it.

The position with Beijing is that it does not recognise transfers of Chinese territory to colonial empires. It believes that borders should be mutally agreed. Personally I think that it has a case in this.

[Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy]

No, the dispute with Russia is over some islands, not over all Outer Manchuria.

[NFR]

China's border dispute is over territory that it signed over to Imperial Russia in the nineteenth century. It has similar disputes with India over territory transferred to the British Empire in the same century. It used to have a similar dispute with Burma for the same reason, but it has settled that one. When it settled it, the border was not changed, merely the treaty that determined it.

The position with Beijing is that it does not recognise transfers of Chinese territory to colonial empires. It believes that borders should be mutally agreed. Personally I think that it has a case in this.

VoCSe is correct. And the issue of the islands has also been resolved tentatively first in 1997 and finally in 2004. Outter Manchuria was never diplomatically disputed.

Also, that is manifestly not the position China takes. It recognizes such transfers as long as there is a formally ratified treaty - re: Semey and Ili regions of Xinjiang and Outter Manchuria, what it does not recognize is a unilaterally declared border, such as is the case with the NEFA region of India.

[ShadowCommunist2009]

To be perfectly frank, I don’t think the August plotters really had a hope in hell of succeeding. By 1991, the Soviet Union had essentially ceased to function. Moscow and Leningrad were sending food and medical supplies to Lithuania, despite the fact that the SSR had been sealed off with a Red Army blockade, factories had stopped churning out products, people (including Yeltsin) were resigning from the CPSU en masse, and the new legislative body Gorbachev created, the Congress of People’s Deputies, refused to cooperate with the Central Committee or the Politburo in any way. At this point, the only way to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again, IMHO, would be to go back to 1920 and just start killing people left, right, and center, and I don’t think that the plotters were the kind of people willing to engage in carnage of that scale.

That's exactly why this is a "what if." We all know it had no chance of succeeding. But IF IT DID....that's what we're exploring. And we already explored the way to put Humpty Dumpty together again which resulted in all the extravagent nuke talks. Kryuchkov, the guy in charge of the KGB and fellow plotter in the coup, had replaced his predecessor only a short while before the coup. His predecessor might have had the guts to start the purges again, but Gorbachev was slowly losing all sense on the reality of the situation, Yeltsin was far too busy gobbling up the spoils of the USSR's painful disintegration, and everyone else was busily trying to round up all finances and assets so that when the USSR got the big finger, they'd come out on top even though only name and economic structure would change.
Basically, if the coup had occurred in '85 or '86, the USSR MIGHT have lasted until at least 2000. But as late as 1991, it was way too late. Until Putin (and even then) the government was pretty much the same people. And now the CIS is falling apart.

I guess a more logical question than "what if the 1991 coup had succeeded" would be "what if the 1991 coup had occurred immediately before Glasnost and Perestroika?"

[oberdada]

I wonder what would happen to the Red Army troups still stationed then in the Eastern part of Germany. They did not leave till 1994.
Would they pull out or try to stay (as a whole or maybe individual soldiers seecing refuge in GErmany or a foreign embassy)
How would NATO react?

[zoomar]

I am not so sure the August plotters had no chance of succeeding. The Soviet Union had a long history of reformnist-minded rulers being ousted by hardliners. True, Gorbachev let things get more out of hand than Kruschschev, but the genie could have been put back in the bottle, at least for another generation. The west was initially perfectly willling to do business with the plotters, and I suspect the average Soviet citizen would have shrugged and accepted it. Without Yeltsin, the coup probably would have succeeded.

I suspect the new Soviet leadership would have had to come to terms with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact to some extent, but would have retrenched in the Soviet Union. The Baltic independence movements would be crushed and the west would sit back and watch.

It would be interesting. The plotters regime could be just a "last gasp" or a prelude to something worse and more extreme, especially if relationships between the Soviet Union and the newly independent non-communist Warsaw Pact states sour - which they probably would.

[ShadowCommunist2009]

The plotters regime could be just a "last gasp" or a prelude to something worse and more extreme, especially if relationships between the Soviet Union and the newly independent non-communist Warsaw Pact states sour - which they probably would.

Not necessarily. Unless the new Soviet regime called for the immediate reconstruction of the Eastern Bloc, I'm sure relations would have continued as per normal, albeit without the direct party line from Moscow.
In the early nineties, the Eastern Bloc was still largely reliant on trade with Russia and was still treated as a foreign entity in Europe. Even today, especially in the Balkans, the former Eastern Bloc is still treated as the "East," as if the West is older and more mature than the little retarded man children in the East. (That's actually a quote from a book written by a Croatian...I believe it's called "Cafe Europa" but I could be wrong. She gives a wonderful and insightful view into post-Communist Yugoslavia and the continued cold relations with the West)

However, I also feel that the Soviet Union, in order to survive following a successful coup, would have become more reliant on exercising the new political scene in Eastern Europe. The Russians have a tendency to not change things (Their word for hello has an extra letter that hasn't been pronounced for six hundred years, and его (ego) is pronounced "yevo", another change not reflected in the spelling) but they are surprisingly adaptable when they have to be. If the coup had succeeded relatively bloodlessly, I'm fairly certain some measure of reform would have happened in response to the Eastern Bloc and might even have ended up changing the way the USSR was run all together into something new. Possibly better. But that's me being horribly optimistic. They might have gone the route of isolation and stagnated to the point of having a GDP roughly equivalent to 1994 Rwanda under the Hutu power government.

[Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy]

The Russians have a tendency to not change things (Their word for hello has an extra letter that hasn't been pronounced for six hundred years, and его (ego) is pronounced "yevo", another change not reflected in the spelling) but they are surprisingly adaptable when they have to be.

So is that why they haven't gotten rid of all those red stars they have lying around everywhere?

[Wendell]

I think Moscow would have to accept Baltic independence. That said, these states may stay in Moscow's orbit in such a TL.

[Ivan Druzhkov]

ShadowCommunist2009, I'm sorry I came in swinging in this thread. I just wanted to make it clear that things at the very end of the USSR were pretty godawful, and that anyone trying to keep the old state of affairs past 1992 would have an uphill battle. When working with this WI, I generally like to circumvent the Gorbachev era entirely, or at least get him out of the way by 1987, before glastnost has really got rolling.

I think Moscow would have to accept Baltic independence. That said, these states may stay in Moscow's orbit in such a TL.
They're probably going to have no choice, considering the lock Moscow has on them with natural resources. During the Brezhnev days, it was a not uncommon occurance for a Warsaw Pact state that tried to push its luck with Moscow to suddenly find the natural gas and petroleum pipelines cut off for a day or two. That usually brought Berlin back in line nice and fast.

On a general note, I wonder if it might be possible to keep the Warsaw Pact together in 1989. Since 1945, there have been any number of uprisings against Moscow-backed governments, and most of the time the Soviets put them down fairly easy. While 1989 was wider in scope than 1953 (East Germany), 1956 (Hungary), 1968 (Czechoslovakia), or 1980 (Poland), in general it's not that different than those earlier events. In fact, if Bush's tepid reaction to Tiananamen Square is something to go by, the Soviets might be able to crack down with little more than a "shame, shame" from NATO. Of course, I'm just theorizing out loud here.

[ShadowCommunist2009]

ShadowCommunist2009, I'm sorry I came in swinging in this thread. I just wanted to make it clear that things at the very end of the USSR were pretty godawful, and that anyone trying to keep the old state of affairs past 1992 would have an uphill battle. When working with this WI, I generally like to circumvent the Gorbachev era entirely, or at least get him out of the way by 1987, before glastnost has really got rolling.

Dude....we've already addressed that, and decided a better WI would have been the coup occurring prior to glasnost and perestroika. No beating of dead horses!

Baltic independence was inevitable, regardless of Gorbachev or the coup. Even if Stalin was reincarnated and managed to keep his cult of personality going, the Baltic region would still have seceded, albeit, it would have turned bloody if Stalin came back, but they would have attempted secession anyway. Moscow knew this as early as Andropov, as the Soviet apparatus began to crumble and tensions in Riga, Tallinn, and Vilnius began to grow.
In one of Gorbachev's many books he makes the statement that when Andropov was promoting him, he had a meeting with the Soviet leader. During the meeting, Andropov alluded to Baltic independence. "We need a youthful and vigorous leader to keep the country together. Without youth, with exuberance, the Soviet Union is doomed to disaster, and 70 years of Socialism will disappear." (sic)

Unfortunately, Gorbachev tried to reform the state far too quickly, which resulted in the implosion of 1991. The money still looked nifty though. --Says he as he fingers the one ruble bill from 1991.