WI August 1991 coup against Gorbachev actually suceeds?

Galba Otho Vitelius

I remember watching this on the news in 1991 and I remember it being treated as something as a joke even at the time, so I went to the relevant Wikipedia page to see if there was any chance of it succeeding.

Coups do succeed quite often and wind up looking ridiculous if they don't, with the margin between success and failure often being quite narrow. In this case, the best chance the coup plotters had was either/ or a) kill Gorbachev and put out the story that he was assassinated by anti-Soviet terrorists b) arrest or kill Yeltsin. The coup seems to have been put together hastily and wasn't planned out or ruthless enough.

So lets say the hardliners pull it off? Then what happens?
 
Remitonov

Remitonov

After copious amounts of bloodshed, I imagine the Soviet Union would somehow survive as a rump Russian state, with or without a very destabilizing Second Russian Civil War. Overall, though, it's already too late to save or even salvage the USSR in its present form. The last ditch option is just to fight it out to the death.
 

Archibald

Banned
None of the eight plotters would make for a decent leader. They were mostly a bunch of old farts and idiots.
 

Mackus

USSR survives, but it probably morphs into something like North-Korea-lite.
There is no civil war. Army is united and in full control.
Baltic States are much closer to Moscow than Afghanistan. And locals have virtually no weapons, and no mountains to hide in. They'd probably be made an example if they keep resisting.
Generals will be not amused by the "lets hold hands for independence".
Protesters are trampled into ground. Police state restrained by Gorbachev is unleashed with full force.
Western press screams bloody murder. Soviet generals are genuinely confused: "What's wrong with them? We aren't allowed to suppress rebellions? Their political correctness has gone mad".
USSR has too many nukes for any foreign intervention to take place. Most of Warsaw Pact still collapses.
 
Augenis

Augenis

Mackus said:
USSR survives, but it probably morphs into something like North-Korea-lite.
There is no civil war. Army is united and in full control.
Baltic States are much closer to Moscow than Afghanistan. And locals have virtually no weapons, and no mountains to hide in. They'd probably be made an example if they keep resisting.
Generals will be not amused by the "lets hold hands for independence".
Protesters are trampled into ground. Police state restrained by Gorbachev is unleashed with full force.
Western press screams bloody murder. Soviet generals are genuinely confused: "What's wrong with them? We aren't allowed to suppress rebellions? Their political correctness has gone mad".
USSR has too many nukes for any foreign intervention to take place. Most of Warsaw Pact still collapses.
Click to expand...
The economy of the USSR was screwed way too hard by 1991 for any of this to be successfully pulled off. Keep in mind that at this point, even the Soviet Army was reliant on Western relief to even be fed. If the USSR tried something like North Korea, or anything like what you would describe, the West would just cancel all exports, relief and loans, which causes the nation to implode within months.

It doesn't matter how many nukes your nation has, if your economy is on a straight trip to hell then none of it matters.

(it should also be mentioned that in 1991, both the majority of the Soviet army and the Soviet people, both in Russia and outside of it, wished for the old regime to just go away)
 

Mackus

Augenis said:
It doesn't matter how many nukes your nation has, if your economy is on a straight trip to hell then none of it matters.
Click to expand...
If you control apparatus of repression, and aren't fighting outside enemy, economy doesn't matter. They might resort to selling off parts of their arsenal to terrorist to get dollars to smuggle in food near the end (food for WMDs...), they could still hang on for years. Nazi Germany was total mess, and it didn't fell from inside, Nazis remained in power until the end. Red Rouge was worse mess than late USSR, but terror kept people in line. Only when they tried pick a fight with Vietnam, they were knocked down a bunch.
 
Augenis

Augenis

Mackus said:
If you control apparatus of repression, and aren't fighting outside enemy, economy doesn't matter. They might resort to selling off parts of their arsenal to terrorist to get dollars to smuggle in food near the end (food for WMDs...), they could still hang on for years. Nazi Germany was total mess, and it didn't fell from inside, Nazis remained in power until the end. Red Rouge was worse mess than late USSR, but terror kept people in line. Only when they tried pick a fight with Vietnam, they were knocked down a bunch.
Click to expand...
Nazi Germany survived through plundering occupied territories, without war their economy, and thus by extension their state, wouldn't have held for long at all. And I don't think the USSR was willing to invade it's neighbors and do the same thing, especially not with NATO watching closely.

Oh, and by the way - economy does matter. A lot. A massive overstretched apparatus of repression, no matter how effective or ineffective, consumes a lot of resources, and the USSR would be unable to feed it and support it for more than a year or two before a complete collapse. Even before the 1991 coup, the Union was feeding it's army with donations and relief from Western countries, like, for example, Germany, which would immediately cease if they went all North Korea.

Add in large anti-Soviet sympathies across the Army and the population, too. The Soviet Army wasn't some faceless army of clones each one fanatically in favor of the old Soviet regime.
 

Mackus

Augenis said:
And I don't think the USSR was willing to invade it's neighbors and do the same thing, especially not with NATO watching closely.
Click to expand...
And who are you exactly refuting here, since nowhere I said they should go on rampage across Eurasia?
Augenis said:
Oh, and by the way - economy does matter. A lot. A massive overstretched apparatus of repression, no matter how effective or ineffective, consumes a lot of resources
Click to expand...
A fraction of what war-capable army costs. And this is worst case scenario.
If junta decided to go limited "Deng-Xiaoping" type reforms, economy will slowly bounce back. There is non-zero chance of this happening: Jaruzelski in Poland against all expectations and his prior behaviour allowed precisely that, despite personally being just as hardliner blockhead as August conspirators were.

Augenis said:
Add in large anti-Soviet sympathies across the Army and the population, too. The Soviet Army wasn't some faceless army of clones each one fanatically in favor of the old Soviet regime.
Click to expand...
Where were those sympathies? In Baltic States? You speak from distinctly Baltic background: "My people didn't like USSR, so nobody else did". Because most of Soviet nations considered collapse of USSR a catastrophe. Only in what Russians called "Pribaltica", where there still lived people who remembered having an independent non-communist countries, opposition was strong. Rest just didn't want life they were used to to be replaced with big unknown. People prefer familiar misery to total uncertainty.
 

EternalCynic

Augenis said:
The economy of the USSR was screwed way too hard by 1991 for any of this to be successfully pulled off. Keep in mind that at this point, even the Soviet Army was reliant on Western relief to even be fed. If the USSR tried something like North Korea, or anything like what you would describe, the West would just cancel all exports, relief and loans, which causes the nation to implode within months.
Click to expand...
Couldn't the Soviets go full-out North Korea and threaten to obliterate London, Paris, Berlin, NYC, Washington, etc until they get aid?
 
Histor32

Histor32

Without change stagnation becomes the order of the day and the soviet union devolves into a third world shithole

on the other hand at least its contained to it's birders since by this time its much too late to salvage the soviet empire without world war three

Andropov, gremeko knew this as did Gorbachev and others, all the hard liner wishing can't put humpty dumpty together again
 

James Ricker

The cold war starts up again, the Baltic States get crushed.The Soviet Union has to deal with ethnic tensions as well as a collapsing economy. Things would get Stalin ugly before everything collapses.
 

LeX

Mackus said:
If junta decided to go limited "Deng-Xiaoping" type reforms, economy will slowly bounce back. There is non-zero chance of this happening: Jaruzelski in Poland against all expectations and his prior behaviour allowed precisely that, despite personally being just as hardliner blockhead as August conspirators were.
Click to expand...
China had generous foreign investment due to its being a third world country and having okay diplomatic relations with potential trading partners. Of course if the USSR leadership allows some capitalist market principles it will make things better (private plots were far more effective than kolkhoz farms), but the question is if this could sustain the system for long. It would be interesting to see a successful 1991 coup TL that deals with the economic side a bit more, unlike most scenarios that fixate on the political or military consequences.

Where were those sympathies? In Baltic States? You speak from distinctly Baltic background: "My people didn't like USSR, so nobody else did". Because most of Soviet nations considered collapse of USSR a catastrophe. Only in what Russians called "Pribaltica", where there still lived people who remembered having an independent non-communist countries, opposition was strong. Rest just didn't want life they were used to to be replaced with big unknown. People prefer familiar misery to total uncertainty.
Click to expand...
Right, in most places people were pretty apathetic about politics really. The USSR was brought down from the top mostly.
 

Mackus

LeX said:
It would be interesting to see a successful 1991 coup TL that deals with the economic side a bit more, unlike most scenarios that fixate on the political or military consequences.
Click to expand...
I had idea like that, but with slightly earlier POD. But I ended up doing 1911 storyline.
 
Augenis

Augenis

Mackus said:
Where were those sympathies? In Baltic States? You speak from distinctly Baltic background: "My people didn't like USSR, so nobody else did". Because most of Soviet nations considered collapse of USSR a catastrophe. Only in what Russians called "Pribaltica", where there still lived people who remembered having an independent non-communist countries, opposition was strong. Rest just didn't want life they were used to to be replaced with big unknown. People prefer familiar misery to total uncertainty.
Click to expand...
There were large demonstrations in Russia after the January Events, demanding the Soviets to pull back and let the Baltics be free.

But the best example of anti-Soviet sympathies is the August 1991 coup attempt itself. The putsch found almost no support, the people even went to defend Yeltsin instead.
 

Mackus

Augenis said:
There were large demonstrations in Russia after the January Events, demanding the Soviets to pull back and let the Baltics be free.

But the best example of anti-Soviet sympathies is the August 1991 coup attempt itself. The putsch found almost no support, the people even went to defend Yeltsin instead.
Click to expand...

Yeltsin was president of RSFSR. Looks like people just wanted "less dumb and evil Soviet overlords, more nice and more competent Soviet overlords."
I don't think Yeltsin wanted to dissolve USSR until all other republics already started to leave. When he did dissolve USSR, it was only as a mean to get rid of Gorbachev, so he wouldn't have to share power with him.
For most of time he worked within system as reformer, not someone who wanted to blow it up. If he could take over USSR by impeaching Gorbachev, he would.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top