The Sino-Soviet border clashes of '69 get out of hand similar to that one TL that's still active, except this one results in a war that lasts for a couple years that basically devastate both sides, even though the USSR is the technical "winner". The USSR is too financially weak to support its Eastern bloc puppet states and a "Warsaw" spring of sorts happen around the place throughout the 70's, of which prove to be too much for the USSR to handle and of course the spring comes to Moscow with many protests and separatists wrecking havoc around the country of which forces the leadership to call it quits thanks to the addition of sanctions from the west (led by a US with a 1976 Reagan presidency). The USSR breaks into pieces by 1979 and a Eurasian Sovereign Republic is proclaimed, leading to a new era of democracy and prosperity in the decades to come.