gorbachev

Many at the time and today called Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost "too little too late". With the Soviet Union in shambles, opening the press only highlighted the country's myriad problems. Combined with tepid economic reforms, these policies arguably shattered confidence in the...

Disclaimer: The text is based on an edited Google translation, so if you see errors anywhere, please let me know. And so, I decided to write a TL about the absence of Yeltsin. The specific PoD that led to Boris Yeltsin not becoming a political leader in the late 1980s is not particularly...

This is a discussion I found online while doing some research on the matter of a Union of Sovereign States. The points here are valid all across, but it seems that not a lot of people believe that Gorbachev's vision for a New Union Treaty was possible to begin with. Do you think the New Union...

Recently, I learned how the Soviet Union attempted one certain reform before it fell apart. This was Mikhail Gorbachev's New Union Treaty to reform the country into a Union of Sovereign States, to make it more democratic and ensure equal rights for all its citizens. Many countries agreed to it...

General Secretary Boris Yeltsin and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev The passing of time brings them together once more: Boris Yeltsin would have turned 90 on February 1, and Mikhail Gorbachev will mark his 90th birthday slightly more than a month later, on March 2. This invites comparison...

Just as the title goes. What would you do differently or what you would you still do if you woke up as him on his first day as the General Secretary of the Soviet Union? How would you keep the Soviet Union from dissolving and going through all its woes following the collapse.

Gorbachev and Yeltsin were pretty similar in their political evolution: both rose from down to the top of the Communist Party, both led regional party organizations(Gorbachev Stavropol Region, Yeltsin Sverdlovsk Oblast), both were moderate communists and both managed to raise to the leadership...

I've been reading some threads on this forum on the August Coup, an attempted 1991 Soviet coup d'état. Communist hardliners tried to seize power from Gorbachev, President and General Secretary of the USSR. They opposed his reforms and the new union treaty, which decentralized a lot of power to...

On November 7th 1990, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev traveled to Red Square to celebrate the 73rd anniversary of the October Revolution and meet with anti-Soviet demonstrators. But as history would have it, Gorbachev was killed alongside Chairman of the Russian Presidium Boris Yeltsin after...

Mikhail Gorbachev's rise to power as Leader of the USSR was one of the most consequential events in world history since 1945. No other Soviet Leader would have been quite so radical in domestic reforms - including allowing open criticism of the regime, no other leader would have stood by and not...

Like it says on the title. Could the USSR, iwhile keeping most if not all of its territory, survive and reform with a POD after 1980? Notice that I'm talking only about the USSR, the satellite states can crumble apart as it did IOTL. So, what could do that, if possible? Brezhnev dying a couple...

It is December 1989 and Nicolae Ceausescu, the former Romanian leader, has just been captured by the new authorities. The authorities are planning a show trial and quick execution. Of course, Mikhail Gorbachev hates Nicolae Ceausescu and probably doesn't feel sorry for him personally. Let's say...

On November 1990, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev traveled to Red Square to greet a group of Communist demonstrators. During this stage in his reign, economic downturn had weakened his popularity as both the hardliners and the liberalizers began to attack the General Secretary. While Gorbachev...

OOC: In case you missed the title (which most of you don't but I have encountered a few people over the course of my time here who have), this is a DBWI, also known as a Double-Blind What If. If you don't know what that is, =double&s[]=blind']this article explains it far better than I ever...

With a POD of Brezhnev's death, have the USSR survive if possible to the present day. Would limited economic reform whilst politically remaining the same work?

At the 1986 Reykjavik Summit, Reagan and Gorbachev tried and failied to finalize an agreement that would have banned all ballistic missiles within 10 years. Reagan came close to taking up Gorbachev's final offer but he refused to compromise on his "Star Wars" program and the agreement collapsed...

Given the recent cultural reflection of an Eighties revival, the challenge in this is to create a scenario in which the Eighties, with its characteristic tentative optimism, heightened Cold War tensions, and flashy consumerism, never truly ends on the night of December 31st, 1989.

During the 1990 October Revolution Parade on November 7th 1990 a man named Alexander Shmonov attempted to assassinate Soviet leader Gorbachev. Let's say one or both shots he fired hit their intended target, killing Gorbachev. What happens next? Who takes power in the decaying Soviet Union? Do we...

Yeltsin was the first non communist leader of Russia but he was a drunk who brought large corruption. Could any other politician have stepped up and have done a better job at bringing a western system to Russia? Also, could there have been different and better leaders in other Soviet republics...

1st Scenario: Gorbachev doesn't resign on December 25th, 1991. (In my opinion, nothing much would have changed if he resigned later, as the Soviet Union was basically non-existent in reality, but in existence by law.) (Newspapers mostly refered to the USSR as the Former Soviet Union since...