Literally there only needs to be a state named Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in existence in 2019. You can do whatever you want with the Cold War, other PR’s or it’s economy. Not even all SSR’s need to survive. The less predictable, the better.
AHC: Have the Soviet Union survive to the present
- Thread starter Happy Nihilist
- Start date
Make USSR pull a Deng. Soviet Union can perform a similar reform program to China if it starts in 1985. A lot of issues were directly the fault of Gorbachev's decisions (like appointing a Russian from the Urals as premier of Kazakhstan) and must be avoided.
Essentially, start gradual transfer to a market socialist economy, with small business, partially privatised ownership of state enterprises, decollectivisation and distancing from a planned economy while retaining the means of production.
Meanwhile, keep the political reforms for later. The reason the USSR collapsed was because it rushed democritisation. The only real social reform for the late 80s should be abandonment of state atheism in favour of freedom of religion. This would definitively satisfy a very large portion of the Soviet population. Once the USSR has survived past 1991, multi party democracy can be implemented.
Additionally, the political reforms of the late 80s are what emboldened nationalists of various republics to defy Soviet authority. Gorbachev's failure to react with force is what caused the collapse of the union state. I'm not an advocate of violence, but crushing these protests is absolutely necessary. First and foremost, ensure Boris Yeltsin is remembered only as a drunk politician who was found dead near the Mosvka river in 1989. Some exceptions could be to allow the Crimean Tatars to return from exile, uniting the Ossetian ASSRs, and unifying Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia (though this will anger Azeris greatly).
Though the USSR will survive, it will still face insurgencies due to this method in Lithuania and Azerbaijan. The army will need cuts as it consumes a great portion of the GDP, but no doubt it will still be able to crush these separatists.
Now for foreign policy. Pull out of Afghanistan, but continue aerial support, advisors and funding to the Communist Afghans. However, DO NOT pull out of Eastern Europe. Gorbachev idiotically allowed the Warsaw Pact to collapse by refusing support. Instead, keep the allies on a short leash, forcing hardliners to follow Soviet reforms in exchange for quelling revolts, while cautioning the more liberal states like Poland and Hungary from going to far, too quickly. Eventually in the 90s they will be allowed to continue their reforms and even abandon socialism as long as they remain in the Warsaw Pact. Also in the 90s, the two Germanies can be allowed to gradually unify in exchange for West Germany leaving NATO.
While getting tough on the alliance close to home, abandon pointless adventures in Africa and Latin America, and stop funding rebel groups. This is an enormous waste of money that the USSR needs for it's own economy. In general, the USSR should become more defensive in its foreign policy stance. The only place I think the Soviets should touch in the 90s should be peacekeeping, but also the Balkans. As Milocevic started losing control over Yugoslavia, he started cozying up to the Soviet Union. Thus, it's not out of the question that the Soviets could invite Yugoslavia into the Warsaw Pact, and intervene to defeat the separatists. Albania's communist government was also collapsing, and could be replaced with a KGB backed coup government.
In general, yes, it's fully possible to preserve the USSR with complete territorial integrity and an economic system bearing resemblance on the surface to what it was.
Essentially, start gradual transfer to a market socialist economy, with small business, partially privatised ownership of state enterprises, decollectivisation and distancing from a planned economy while retaining the means of production.
Meanwhile, keep the political reforms for later. The reason the USSR collapsed was because it rushed democritisation. The only real social reform for the late 80s should be abandonment of state atheism in favour of freedom of religion. This would definitively satisfy a very large portion of the Soviet population. Once the USSR has survived past 1991, multi party democracy can be implemented.
Additionally, the political reforms of the late 80s are what emboldened nationalists of various republics to defy Soviet authority. Gorbachev's failure to react with force is what caused the collapse of the union state. I'm not an advocate of violence, but crushing these protests is absolutely necessary. First and foremost, ensure Boris Yeltsin is remembered only as a drunk politician who was found dead near the Mosvka river in 1989. Some exceptions could be to allow the Crimean Tatars to return from exile, uniting the Ossetian ASSRs, and unifying Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia (though this will anger Azeris greatly).
Though the USSR will survive, it will still face insurgencies due to this method in Lithuania and Azerbaijan. The army will need cuts as it consumes a great portion of the GDP, but no doubt it will still be able to crush these separatists.
Now for foreign policy. Pull out of Afghanistan, but continue aerial support, advisors and funding to the Communist Afghans. However, DO NOT pull out of Eastern Europe. Gorbachev idiotically allowed the Warsaw Pact to collapse by refusing support. Instead, keep the allies on a short leash, forcing hardliners to follow Soviet reforms in exchange for quelling revolts, while cautioning the more liberal states like Poland and Hungary from going to far, too quickly. Eventually in the 90s they will be allowed to continue their reforms and even abandon socialism as long as they remain in the Warsaw Pact. Also in the 90s, the two Germanies can be allowed to gradually unify in exchange for West Germany leaving NATO.
While getting tough on the alliance close to home, abandon pointless adventures in Africa and Latin America, and stop funding rebel groups. This is an enormous waste of money that the USSR needs for it's own economy. In general, the USSR should become more defensive in its foreign policy stance. The only place I think the Soviets should touch in the 90s should be peacekeeping, but also the Balkans. As Milocevic started losing control over Yugoslavia, he started cozying up to the Soviet Union. Thus, it's not out of the question that the Soviets could invite Yugoslavia into the Warsaw Pact, and intervene to defeat the separatists. Albania's communist government was also collapsing, and could be replaced with a KGB backed coup government.
In general, yes, it's fully possible to preserve the USSR with complete territorial integrity and an economic system bearing resemblance on the surface to what it was.
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VadisDeProfundis
Gone Fishin'
The less predictable the better you say? Well, it is finally time for my idea of Tajikistan taking up the mantle and leading the International Workers Movement to victory!
Now, on a more serious note, this can go three ways. Either you get a gigantic North Korea, that used brute force to survive the 1990s and maybe keep much of its Eastern European sphere of influence intact, or you get a China analogue, where the Communists abandon Communism and embark on hypercapitalism. Personally I think that of the two scenarios the first one is much more probable than the second, but there could be a third, less probable one: the USSR implements meaningful reforms slowly and successfully from the very beginning,g reaching to the foundations of the Soviet State, that make it viable to today. Depending on how far back you are willing to go, that may mean changing the implementation of collectivization, killing of Stalin's ascent to the leadership, a different NEP or War Communism, avoiding the Holodomor or the Show Trials and persecution of the 1930s, etc.
Now, all these could work and produce a USSR that would be more focused on technological and cultural excellence, thus preserving the Soviet State by means of ensuring technological capability and the creation of a Soviet culture, or its promotion by the state to justify its existence, apart from its ideological reasoning. Now, on a more practical note: the Party would probably have to crack down less on dissent, maybe establish something akin to Dubček's Socialism with a Human Face, generally stop shooting other WarPac member states in the foot(for example, I seem to recall a story about how Czechoslovak engineers and city anders had designed a great subway system for Prague and brand new, innovative Wagons, but the Kremlin forced them to adapt the system and buy Moscow's carriages, things like that could be butterflied away), while at the same time enforcing strict economic modernization. Implementing measures and schemes like utilizing networks in enteral planning, funding projects like the French Minitel, using computers and digitalization, perhaps copying the Chilean ideas of Allende and computerized socialism. All these would not necessarily make socialism work, but they would probably ameliorate more direct problems, like food shortages in the end of the Soviet Union, etc.
At the same time, one would need a crackdown on other problems: the USSR needs to abandon the idea that it can have nuclear parity with the US, and spend that money elsewhere. Ideally, use it to fix crumbling infrastructure, build monuments or large public works to the effect of propaganda, or even use it to buy out sections of the population, to "bribe" them like Austria Hungary did for some time with its minorities. The Soviets would also have to find a way to stop laziness, maybe enforce a carrot/stick scheme and universalized it.
Now, another idea would be for the USSR and the CPSU to shed their rigidity on Marxism. Truly, they behaved like a church would to safeguard its religious purity: things like the Anti-Faction Ban or Democratic Centralism only prove that. Ironically, maybe a death of Lenin right after the success of the Revolution could help here, or it would be best if a different charcpacter led that October revolution. More dialogue with Eurocommunists, more dialogue with Trotskyites, an earlier version of Glasnost and Perestroika implemented more moderately and drawn out, all those would be key elements.
Now, on a more serious note, this can go three ways. Either you get a gigantic North Korea, that used brute force to survive the 1990s and maybe keep much of its Eastern European sphere of influence intact, or you get a China analogue, where the Communists abandon Communism and embark on hypercapitalism. Personally I think that of the two scenarios the first one is much more probable than the second, but there could be a third, less probable one: the USSR implements meaningful reforms slowly and successfully from the very beginning,g reaching to the foundations of the Soviet State, that make it viable to today. Depending on how far back you are willing to go, that may mean changing the implementation of collectivization, killing of Stalin's ascent to the leadership, a different NEP or War Communism, avoiding the Holodomor or the Show Trials and persecution of the 1930s, etc.
Now, all these could work and produce a USSR that would be more focused on technological and cultural excellence, thus preserving the Soviet State by means of ensuring technological capability and the creation of a Soviet culture, or its promotion by the state to justify its existence, apart from its ideological reasoning. Now, on a more practical note: the Party would probably have to crack down less on dissent, maybe establish something akin to Dubček's Socialism with a Human Face, generally stop shooting other WarPac member states in the foot(for example, I seem to recall a story about how Czechoslovak engineers and city anders had designed a great subway system for Prague and brand new, innovative Wagons, but the Kremlin forced them to adapt the system and buy Moscow's carriages, things like that could be butterflied away), while at the same time enforcing strict economic modernization. Implementing measures and schemes like utilizing networks in enteral planning, funding projects like the French Minitel, using computers and digitalization, perhaps copying the Chilean ideas of Allende and computerized socialism. All these would not necessarily make socialism work, but they would probably ameliorate more direct problems, like food shortages in the end of the Soviet Union, etc.
At the same time, one would need a crackdown on other problems: the USSR needs to abandon the idea that it can have nuclear parity with the US, and spend that money elsewhere. Ideally, use it to fix crumbling infrastructure, build monuments or large public works to the effect of propaganda, or even use it to buy out sections of the population, to "bribe" them like Austria Hungary did for some time with its minorities. The Soviets would also have to find a way to stop laziness, maybe enforce a carrot/stick scheme and universalized it.
Now, another idea would be for the USSR and the CPSU to shed their rigidity on Marxism. Truly, they behaved like a church would to safeguard its religious purity: things like the Anti-Faction Ban or Democratic Centralism only prove that. Ironically, maybe a death of Lenin right after the success of the Revolution could help here, or it would be best if a different charcpacter led that October revolution. More dialogue with Eurocommunists, more dialogue with Trotskyites, an earlier version of Glasnost and Perestroika implemented more moderately and drawn out, all those would be key elements.
The main ethnic tensions in the USSR at the end were in the Baltic’s and Caucasia. I would probably apply different strategies. At the Baltics, I would return independence as regular People’s Republics. I think the local population would be quite happy with it, and it would do much for the Union’s international reputaion, since nobody would think that a truly independent Baltic was ever an option. The main risk here is that it would lead to a growing demand for the same treatment from other member republics, and it would be important to present this as a gift from the top, not something that the republics won themselves, if that makes sense.
For Caucasia, I would combine all the SSR’s (plus maybe some of Southern Russian SSR) into a single Transcaucasian SSR, with the intention of thereby erasing the borders that were causing the SSR’s to fight between each other. And like OTL Russia in Chechnya, I would give both the sweetest carrot of massive investment and the hardest stick of local strongman rule to placate any opposition. If there were any other ethnic tensions in the USSR, I would love to hear from them.
I’m not sure what you mean by demographic changes. Russia’s demographic crisis only got really bad after the fall, with the chaos and cheap vodka of the 90’s.
Big Smoke
Banned
Somebody has to write a Dengist USSR timeline, as @Belarus-Chan described it, its a shame nobody has on this site.
That's because it was a near impossibility. There wasnt anyone remotely close to the Politburo that had the power base, drive, courage and intellectual capacity to pull something like this off. The closest was Gorbachev and...it didnt work.
Big Smoke
Banned
As a Belarussian, someone like Gromyko comes to mind as someone with immense clout within the KPSS, but he was 80 years old, I understand, and most other partocrats were all insane centenarians. Otherwise, have Gorbachev himself come to different conclusions or decisions, either by looking at the more succesful Chinese transition or being more averse to radical liberal reforms. While I do agree with the belief that socialism inevitably collapses and every state relies on the support of the people, I also dont think that the Soviet Union was doomed to collapse - in fact, I think its more likely it survives longer, the whole Gorbachev crowd made some seemingly senseless decisions.
I pondered with the idea of giving the Baltics independence as socialist client states, but I think they would collapse rather shortly after most Soviet troops leave.
Transcaucasia SSR would almost certainly be a bad idea. The Armenians and Azeris were cutting each other's throats before the union even collapsed, there needs to be a defined border between the 3 republics.
I wrote one in point-form, maybe I'll make a full version and post it at some point.
I think the best way would be, as you mentioned, for Gorbachev himself to have different conclusions or ideology in general. Maybe send him on a trip to China during the early 80s, or be more heavily influenced by the more hardline members of the Politburo.
Gromyko was not the guy to make this happen. Too old and too scarred by Stalin.
Someone like Ligachev might have been able to. There might be others I am unaware of as well. But most likely to junior.
To me, there are several PODs that would probably work. The later the better if the only goal is to get the Union to survive to present, as it averts butterflies, but the best PODs for just accomplishing the spirit of the OP are those that manage to avoid the disaster that was Stalin and the lesser disaster that was Brezhnev.
In chronological order, as I see it, they are:
1. Somebody other than Stalin ends up on top of the chaos that was the top echelons of the CPSU after Lenin's death. Perhaps the sections of Lenin's will condemning Stalin are never intercepted by the latter as OTL and are read to the Party, resulting in any association with Stalin becoming political kryptonite and averting the Stalin-Kamenev-Zinoviev troika which he used to come to power. From there, it's probably a bit of a free-for-all for who comes out ahead, but whoever it is will likely not be as paranoid as Stalin, enabling the Union to develop more as the upper party never rounds up scientists and others. This is especially true given that most of the Party besides Stalin was more open to Soviet Democracy as Lenin originally intended it. There are several contenders to take over:
a. Rykov--in many ways Lenin's designated successor, advocated a continuation of the NEP. Would possibly result in one of the highest standards of living for the Soviet people pre-WWII, but possibly would not advocate the enforced collectivization that was to some extent necessary for the Union to industrialize enough to fight off Hitler.
b. Kamenev or Zinoviev--in some respects a "Rykov-lite", something of political animals but with relatively little evidence of their ideas for how to evolve the Union. My guess is that they would continue the NEP for the short to medium term, whilst encouraging a heavy meritocracy and a good degree of Soviet Democracy as a side effect of political maneuvering. That or the whole thing would collapse into favoritism even more than OTL...
c. Trotsky--indubitably the intellectual giant of the old echelons of the Bolshevik party, but not the most apt political negotiator and a man marked as the potential Bolshevik Napoleon. OTL, he never was able to form lasting alliances with other Politburo members until it was too late, though part of this IIRC was due to illness. He might well industrialize whilst causing less chaos if he advocates local democracy enough to alleviate some opposition to collectivism. However, his doctrine of Permanent Revolution will scare the bejesus out of most of the capitalist world, making it almost impossible to find any foreign investors to build machinery etc. However, his premiership is among the only likely to butterfly Hitler (and a long-term Weimar Germany or even Communist Germany would definitely help make up for an even more complete isolation from Britain/France/USA). Overall, possibly the best long-term option but also one of the least likely.
d. Sokolnikov--OK, given how junior he was he's a little less likely, but he's a personal favorite. That being said, he was IMO one of the sharpest minds in the Politburo, and correctly pointed out the flaws in the Union and likely would have been able to correct them. IMO, he's one of the best persons to manage to implement a partial collectivization to fund industrialization properly without resulting in massive famines, whilst also keeping the structures of Soviet Democracy in place. What I propose to get him in power would be a Kamenev-Zinoviev-Sokolnikov troika becoming dominant over the party, with Sokolnikov increasingly becoming the dominant member of the coalition.
However, I will point out that in order to get the Union to survive until today whoever is in control has to either butterfly WWII or survive it at least as well as OTL.
2. Krushchev manages to hang on to power for longer. This is certainly possible if the Cuba debacle plays out differently, i.e. if the CCCP manages to sneak nukes into Cuba successfully without the US discovering it and it becomes fait accompli. For added benefit, avoid the 1960 U2 incident. Krushchev's reforms, whilst not as drastic as Deng's, certainly give the economy more breathing room whilst definitely placating a lot of the minorities due to relatively free political expression. Furthermore, the focus on the Soviet space program under Krushchev (he's the reason US Astronauts get to space on Russian spacecraft to this day) will likely lead to a long-term Soviet technological advantage in crucial areas. I doubt that they can quite defeat the US in the arms race, but they can likely give their army enough of a technical advantage that they can cut spending in a quality-over-quantity approach. That, and early automation would help alleviate some flaws of the Soviet system. Likely, between a greater tolerance for political stress and a slightly freer economy, it staggers on until today.
n.b. it is also often proposed that a POD of Beria taking power would have many of the same effects, whilst Beria's ruthlessness would prevent his removal from power. However, IMO, Beria was hated enough that him taking power is ASB--Zhukov would have quite possibly led a military coup before letting it happen--and Beria was too unstable to not likely engage in more purges.
3. Gorbachev proves more willing to use military force to crack down on dissent. He quite possibly has to let the Baltics go and reform the Warsaw pact, but it's possible for him to hold on. In theory, he or his successors could still be hanging on in the present. However, by this point, it seems impossible for me to create the reforms necessary for the Union to survive indefinitely without creating enough political stress for it to dissolve, fairly peacefully as OTL or...less so if Gorbachev tries a military crackdown too late. It can hang on until today, but I doubt it will be sustainable through any severe crisis.
In chronological order, as I see it, they are:
1. Somebody other than Stalin ends up on top of the chaos that was the top echelons of the CPSU after Lenin's death. Perhaps the sections of Lenin's will condemning Stalin are never intercepted by the latter as OTL and are read to the Party, resulting in any association with Stalin becoming political kryptonite and averting the Stalin-Kamenev-Zinoviev troika which he used to come to power. From there, it's probably a bit of a free-for-all for who comes out ahead, but whoever it is will likely not be as paranoid as Stalin, enabling the Union to develop more as the upper party never rounds up scientists and others. This is especially true given that most of the Party besides Stalin was more open to Soviet Democracy as Lenin originally intended it. There are several contenders to take over:
a. Rykov--in many ways Lenin's designated successor, advocated a continuation of the NEP. Would possibly result in one of the highest standards of living for the Soviet people pre-WWII, but possibly would not advocate the enforced collectivization that was to some extent necessary for the Union to industrialize enough to fight off Hitler.
b. Kamenev or Zinoviev--in some respects a "Rykov-lite", something of political animals but with relatively little evidence of their ideas for how to evolve the Union. My guess is that they would continue the NEP for the short to medium term, whilst encouraging a heavy meritocracy and a good degree of Soviet Democracy as a side effect of political maneuvering. That or the whole thing would collapse into favoritism even more than OTL...
c. Trotsky--indubitably the intellectual giant of the old echelons of the Bolshevik party, but not the most apt political negotiator and a man marked as the potential Bolshevik Napoleon. OTL, he never was able to form lasting alliances with other Politburo members until it was too late, though part of this IIRC was due to illness. He might well industrialize whilst causing less chaos if he advocates local democracy enough to alleviate some opposition to collectivism. However, his doctrine of Permanent Revolution will scare the bejesus out of most of the capitalist world, making it almost impossible to find any foreign investors to build machinery etc. However, his premiership is among the only likely to butterfly Hitler (and a long-term Weimar Germany or even Communist Germany would definitely help make up for an even more complete isolation from Britain/France/USA). Overall, possibly the best long-term option but also one of the least likely.
d. Sokolnikov--OK, given how junior he was he's a little less likely, but he's a personal favorite. That being said, he was IMO one of the sharpest minds in the Politburo, and correctly pointed out the flaws in the Union and likely would have been able to correct them. IMO, he's one of the best persons to manage to implement a partial collectivization to fund industrialization properly without resulting in massive famines, whilst also keeping the structures of Soviet Democracy in place. What I propose to get him in power would be a Kamenev-Zinoviev-Sokolnikov troika becoming dominant over the party, with Sokolnikov increasingly becoming the dominant member of the coalition.
However, I will point out that in order to get the Union to survive until today whoever is in control has to either butterfly WWII or survive it at least as well as OTL.
2. Krushchev manages to hang on to power for longer. This is certainly possible if the Cuba debacle plays out differently, i.e. if the CCCP manages to sneak nukes into Cuba successfully without the US discovering it and it becomes fait accompli. For added benefit, avoid the 1960 U2 incident. Krushchev's reforms, whilst not as drastic as Deng's, certainly give the economy more breathing room whilst definitely placating a lot of the minorities due to relatively free political expression. Furthermore, the focus on the Soviet space program under Krushchev (he's the reason US Astronauts get to space on Russian spacecraft to this day) will likely lead to a long-term Soviet technological advantage in crucial areas. I doubt that they can quite defeat the US in the arms race, but they can likely give their army enough of a technical advantage that they can cut spending in a quality-over-quantity approach. That, and early automation would help alleviate some flaws of the Soviet system. Likely, between a greater tolerance for political stress and a slightly freer economy, it staggers on until today.
n.b. it is also often proposed that a POD of Beria taking power would have many of the same effects, whilst Beria's ruthlessness would prevent his removal from power. However, IMO, Beria was hated enough that him taking power is ASB--Zhukov would have quite possibly led a military coup before letting it happen--and Beria was too unstable to not likely engage in more purges.
3. Gorbachev proves more willing to use military force to crack down on dissent. He quite possibly has to let the Baltics go and reform the Warsaw pact, but it's possible for him to hold on. In theory, he or his successors could still be hanging on in the present. However, by this point, it seems impossible for me to create the reforms necessary for the Union to survive indefinitely without creating enough political stress for it to dissolve, fairly peacefully as OTL or...less so if Gorbachev tries a military crackdown too late. It can hang on until today, but I doubt it will be sustainable through any severe crisis.
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Why would the Red Army have to leave though? Of course they'll remain to protect the security of their Warsaw Pact ally, and to ensure a smooth transition to stable "independence"!
This is maybe my bias, but I don't think ethnic conflict comes from the wrong borders, as much as it comes from the need to define the borders in the first place. Look at how Yugoslavia and British India went from decades of peaceful coexistence into violent chaos the moment the multinational entities were cut-up. So the goal with a single SSR would be to remove the excuse for local elites leverage border disputes for their nationalist or selfish interests. Remove the elites (by sending them to a distant capital), and I don't think the local people care anymore. And when I'm talking about ''border disputes", I mean those that existed between the SSR's before the break-up.
A unitary repubic instead of a union would be seen as Russian imperialism and justification for a Soviet programs to settle ethnic Russians in the Baltic States and Kazakhstan. Everybody forgets their previous disputes and goes against the Russians. Not very good. Simply put, the Soviets shouldn’t relent in the 80s, and should continue suppressing nationalist disputes as they had always done.
Kosegyn out maneuvers breshnev. Mrs Honecker takes power in the gdr, expands the elite to passify the elite while intimidating the masses. Bulgaria pulls a new lies for old switchero gives the power to the puppet agrarian union.
An easy one might be that, say, Belarus decides they want to remain in some sort of union with Russia, with the USSR continuing as a two-state federation under reform Communists, the way Serbia and Montenegro continued as "Yugoslavia" for a while after the rest of the constituent republics had bolted.
I'm gonna try this one with TL format:
1944: Nazi rocket scientist Klaus Riedel survived the car accident that would've killed him in OTL.
1945: Anthony Marchione was shot down by part of the Imperial Japanese air force, causing General McArthur to interpret this as an act of non-surrender. Small skirmishes between US and Japanese forces ensued but it was quickly brought to a resolution fortunately.
October 4, 1957: USSR launched Sputnik 1 into space, which is the first artificial satellite.
January 31, 1958: USA sent up their first satellite Explorer I into space.
March 5, 1958: NASA's Explorer II is launched into orbit.
April 27, 1958: Sputnik 3 launched by USSR.
December 6, 1958: Pioneer 3 is launched that will became the first object to go into interplanetary space
January 20, 1961: Inauguration of President Kennedy.
February 9, 1961: Leonid Brezhnev's plane is shot down over Algeria by French fighter planes. He is killed and as a result an international crisis ensues which ended with monetary compensations to the USSR and prosecution of the pilots responsible for that with criminal charges on French soil after much negotiations.
March 24, 1961: NASA's Alan Shepard is the first American in space with a 15 minute suborbital flight, and with a recoverable booster.
April 12, 1961: Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in orbit.
May 25, 1961: US President Kennedy delivers his speech to put a man on the Moon in the Congress. Afterwards Khrushchev orders Korolev to do the same thing.
February 20, 1962: John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.
July 22, 1962: Mariner 1 is launched, and would become the first probe to fly by a planet (Venus) later.
November 1, 1962: Yevgeni Andreyev and Pyotr Dolgov survived their space dive.
November 2, 1965: Voskhod 3 lifts off into space and flew into the vicinity of the Van Allen Belt.
March 15, 1966: Irina Solovyova is the first woman to spacewalk in the Voskhod 4 mission.
April 26, 1967: Soyuz 1 performed a hard landing onto the ground. Vladimir Komarov survived but is permanently left disabled.
November 15, 1968: USSR launched Alexey Leonov and Valery Bykovsky in a Soyuz 7K-L1 spacecraft to do a lap around the Moon like Apollo 7.
December 24, 1968: Apollo 8 became the first manned mission to orbit the Moon. By the end of the year the Prague spring ends with a peaceful resolution with Dubcek allowed to keep "Socialism with a human face" in place. By the end of this year the Vietnam War became a stalemate like the Korean War.
February 19, 1969: Lunokhod 1 rover is sent to the Moon where it successfully lands, stunning the world.
May 17, 1969: Yuri Gagarin and Viktor Gorbatko became the first Soviet cosmonauts to orbit the Moon in a Soyuz 7K-LOK spacecraft.
July 20, 1969: Apollo 11 landed on the Moon which is the first manned mission to do so.
November 4, 1969: USSR followed suit by sending Alexei Leonov to land on the Moon.
June 12, 1971: Soviet Russia's Irina Solovyova is the first woman to walk on the Moon.
September 1971: Soviet Premier Khrushchev dies, Alexei Kosygin took over his helm.
October 6 - 25, 1973: Yom Kippur War.
Circa 1974: NASA's Mariner 10 and USSR's Hermes which are launched few years earlier reached Mercury while Pioneer H is launched as an out-of-the ecliptic mission.
July 15, 1975: Apollo Soyuz test project is launched into space.
September 5, 1977: NASA launched Voyager 1 to the outer planets and beyond.
1978: Afghanistan would gradually spiral into civil war which ends up with Taliban taking power after the monarchy government is deposed.
1979: Despite the cries for help by Afghan communists for a Soviet intervention, nothing out of the blue happened after all. But Iran revolution happened as OTL.
1980: Alexei Kosygin dies, Yuri Andropov became his successor while across the Atlantic Ted Kennedy won the presidential election.
1981: John Hinckley assassinated Ted Kennedy in attempt to "impress" Judie Foster. His VP John Glenn became the president and space shuttle Columbia makes its maiden flight.
September 1, 1983: Just a normal day for Korean Air 007, after all.
1984: Mikhail Gorbachev took over the leadership after Andropov's death and Valentina Tereshkova began to be seen as a rising star in the Politburo. Meanwhile Ronald Reagan won that year's election but will serve only a term.
1989: China's Tiananmen protests are suppressed violently, resulted in international condemnation and consternation. George Bush became the president after Reagan served only a term.
1990: Germany is allowed to be reunified on the conditions that it withdraws from NATO and becomes a neutral state.
1991: The Gulf War which saw Saddamist forces pushed out from Kuwait where they invaded earlier.
1992: Bill Clinton won the presidential election.
1994: Taliban took over power in Afghanistan.
1995: Gorbachev retires and hand over his leadership to Valentina Tereshkova.
December 13, 1996: USSR dispatched a space probe to fly by asteroid Vesta 3 years later. By this year Bill Clinton won the presidential election across the Atlantic.
2001: Tereshkova is pushed out of power by hardliner elements with Alexander Lukashenko became the new Soviet leader. George W. Bush became president but 9/11 attacks occur across the United States and the Soviet Union. Joint Soviet-US invasion against Taliban's Afghanistan would occur later that year.
January 19, 2006: NASA launches space probe New Horizons.
October 9, 2006: North Korea explode its first nuke.
January 20, 2009: Barack Obama became the US president.
December 18, 2010: Start of the Arab Spring and eventual civil wars across many Arabic countries.
2011: Soviet troops withdraw from Afghanistan after Osama bin Laden is captured and killed by US SEAL teams.
April 13, 2012: North Korea launched its first satellite into space.
2013: Mitt Romney is inaugurated as president after he defeated Obama in the 2012 election.
2014: Iraq's Saddam Hussein is executed by rebel forces while Syria's Bashar Assad flees to Moscow.
July 14, 2015: New Horizons flew by Pluto.
January 20, 2017: Hillary Rodham Clinton is inaugurated as the President of the United States.
January 3, 2019: Chinese Chang'e 4 lander became the first to land on lunar far-side.
January 12, 2019: Saudi teen Rahaf Mohammed granted asylum by Australia after she was briefly detained at Bangkok airport for fleeing her abusive family.
1944: Nazi rocket scientist Klaus Riedel survived the car accident that would've killed him in OTL.
1945: Anthony Marchione was shot down by part of the Imperial Japanese air force, causing General McArthur to interpret this as an act of non-surrender. Small skirmishes between US and Japanese forces ensued but it was quickly brought to a resolution fortunately.
October 4, 1957: USSR launched Sputnik 1 into space, which is the first artificial satellite.
January 31, 1958: USA sent up their first satellite Explorer I into space.
March 5, 1958: NASA's Explorer II is launched into orbit.
April 27, 1958: Sputnik 3 launched by USSR.
December 6, 1958: Pioneer 3 is launched that will became the first object to go into interplanetary space
January 20, 1961: Inauguration of President Kennedy.
February 9, 1961: Leonid Brezhnev's plane is shot down over Algeria by French fighter planes. He is killed and as a result an international crisis ensues which ended with monetary compensations to the USSR and prosecution of the pilots responsible for that with criminal charges on French soil after much negotiations.
March 24, 1961: NASA's Alan Shepard is the first American in space with a 15 minute suborbital flight, and with a recoverable booster.
April 12, 1961: Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in orbit.
May 25, 1961: US President Kennedy delivers his speech to put a man on the Moon in the Congress. Afterwards Khrushchev orders Korolev to do the same thing.
February 20, 1962: John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.
July 22, 1962: Mariner 1 is launched, and would become the first probe to fly by a planet (Venus) later.
November 1, 1962: Yevgeni Andreyev and Pyotr Dolgov survived their space dive.
November 2, 1965: Voskhod 3 lifts off into space and flew into the vicinity of the Van Allen Belt.
March 15, 1966: Irina Solovyova is the first woman to spacewalk in the Voskhod 4 mission.
April 26, 1967: Soyuz 1 performed a hard landing onto the ground. Vladimir Komarov survived but is permanently left disabled.
November 15, 1968: USSR launched Alexey Leonov and Valery Bykovsky in a Soyuz 7K-L1 spacecraft to do a lap around the Moon like Apollo 7.
December 24, 1968: Apollo 8 became the first manned mission to orbit the Moon. By the end of the year the Prague spring ends with a peaceful resolution with Dubcek allowed to keep "Socialism with a human face" in place. By the end of this year the Vietnam War became a stalemate like the Korean War.
February 19, 1969: Lunokhod 1 rover is sent to the Moon where it successfully lands, stunning the world.
May 17, 1969: Yuri Gagarin and Viktor Gorbatko became the first Soviet cosmonauts to orbit the Moon in a Soyuz 7K-LOK spacecraft.
July 20, 1969: Apollo 11 landed on the Moon which is the first manned mission to do so.
November 4, 1969: USSR followed suit by sending Alexei Leonov to land on the Moon.
June 12, 1971: Soviet Russia's Irina Solovyova is the first woman to walk on the Moon.
September 1971: Soviet Premier Khrushchev dies, Alexei Kosygin took over his helm.
October 6 - 25, 1973: Yom Kippur War.
Circa 1974: NASA's Mariner 10 and USSR's Hermes which are launched few years earlier reached Mercury while Pioneer H is launched as an out-of-the ecliptic mission.
July 15, 1975: Apollo Soyuz test project is launched into space.
September 5, 1977: NASA launched Voyager 1 to the outer planets and beyond.
1978: Afghanistan would gradually spiral into civil war which ends up with Taliban taking power after the monarchy government is deposed.
1979: Despite the cries for help by Afghan communists for a Soviet intervention, nothing out of the blue happened after all. But Iran revolution happened as OTL.
1980: Alexei Kosygin dies, Yuri Andropov became his successor while across the Atlantic Ted Kennedy won the presidential election.
1981: John Hinckley assassinated Ted Kennedy in attempt to "impress" Judie Foster. His VP John Glenn became the president and space shuttle Columbia makes its maiden flight.
September 1, 1983: Just a normal day for Korean Air 007, after all.
1984: Mikhail Gorbachev took over the leadership after Andropov's death and Valentina Tereshkova began to be seen as a rising star in the Politburo. Meanwhile Ronald Reagan won that year's election but will serve only a term.
1989: China's Tiananmen protests are suppressed violently, resulted in international condemnation and consternation. George Bush became the president after Reagan served only a term.
1990: Germany is allowed to be reunified on the conditions that it withdraws from NATO and becomes a neutral state.
1991: The Gulf War which saw Saddamist forces pushed out from Kuwait where they invaded earlier.
1992: Bill Clinton won the presidential election.
1994: Taliban took over power in Afghanistan.
1995: Gorbachev retires and hand over his leadership to Valentina Tereshkova.
December 13, 1996: USSR dispatched a space probe to fly by asteroid Vesta 3 years later. By this year Bill Clinton won the presidential election across the Atlantic.
2001: Tereshkova is pushed out of power by hardliner elements with Alexander Lukashenko became the new Soviet leader. George W. Bush became president but 9/11 attacks occur across the United States and the Soviet Union. Joint Soviet-US invasion against Taliban's Afghanistan would occur later that year.
January 19, 2006: NASA launches space probe New Horizons.
October 9, 2006: North Korea explode its first nuke.
January 20, 2009: Barack Obama became the US president.
December 18, 2010: Start of the Arab Spring and eventual civil wars across many Arabic countries.
2011: Soviet troops withdraw from Afghanistan after Osama bin Laden is captured and killed by US SEAL teams.
April 13, 2012: North Korea launched its first satellite into space.
2013: Mitt Romney is inaugurated as president after he defeated Obama in the 2012 election.
2014: Iraq's Saddam Hussein is executed by rebel forces while Syria's Bashar Assad flees to Moscow.
July 14, 2015: New Horizons flew by Pluto.
January 20, 2017: Hillary Rodham Clinton is inaugurated as the President of the United States.
January 3, 2019: Chinese Chang'e 4 lander became the first to land on lunar far-side.
January 12, 2019: Saudi teen Rahaf Mohammed granted asylum by Australia after she was briefly detained at Bangkok airport for fleeing her abusive family.
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It's definitely not possible to make the Soviet economy worked in the manner that it was run, there are too many conflicting incentives and information problems that can't be overcome. Red Plenty by Francis Spufford is a great explanation of how the Soviet system worked, its a speculative fiction novel that explains some math and computer science (Leonid Kantorovich's work on linear programming, optimization problems) through the lives of various people. This blog post summarizes most of the book. It's a fascinating engineering problem, but the sheer number of variables involved, the type of mathematical problem, and limits to computer power make a successful planned economy basically impossible for the foreseeable future.
Command economies generally see an initial generation of rapid growth followed by a generation of stagnation, then a final generation of rapid decline and collapse. The three generation model is a good heuristic for countries like Russia, China, Albania, etc. that were unindustrialized when the communists took over. In more developed areas like Czechia and Eastern Germany the problems were more readily apparent. The crash in life expectancy and other indicators in the former USSR during the '90s would've been the same or worse without privatization, it was the result of trends like alcoholism and declining life expectancy that had already been in play for a decade or more.
The Soviets could grew their economy by adding more inputs (build steel mills to get steel, train more teachers to increase literacy, etc.) but they were very bad at increasing the productivity of existing capital stock. In most western countries agribusiness increases output by increasing the productivity of existing land, but the Soviets had to resort to schemes like the Virgin Land campaigns that just adding more inputs without increasing productivity.
Command economies generally see an initial generation of rapid growth followed by a generation of stagnation, then a final generation of rapid decline and collapse. The three generation model is a good heuristic for countries like Russia, China, Albania, etc. that were unindustrialized when the communists took over. In more developed areas like Czechia and Eastern Germany the problems were more readily apparent. The crash in life expectancy and other indicators in the former USSR during the '90s would've been the same or worse without privatization, it was the result of trends like alcoholism and declining life expectancy that had already been in play for a decade or more.
The Soviets could grew their economy by adding more inputs (build steel mills to get steel, train more teachers to increase literacy, etc.) but they were very bad at increasing the productivity of existing capital stock. In most western countries agribusiness increases output by increasing the productivity of existing land, but the Soviets had to resort to schemes like the Virgin Land campaigns that just adding more inputs without increasing productivity.
Dementor
Banned
Avoid Gorbachev or someone like him coming to power. There was no intrinsic reason for the collapse.
Denying the collapse of living standards in Russia (and to different extents, throughout the former Eastern Block) is a good indication that the book is nothing more than pure fiction.
The '90s aren't mentioned at all in the book, but yes, they did occur. The book doesn't claim to be an account of characters who actually existed, it's written as an extremely realistic form of historical fiction to show the structure of the Soviet economy and its major problems.