AHC: Make Russia Strong

As we all know, Russia is a power in continuous decline. It likes to posture as a great power, but its military is weak, its economy is small, and its population is in free-fall.

And that's just the most obvious problems Russia faces.

So this is my challenge. With a POD no earlier than... oh, let's say 1979, make/keep Russia (or the Soviet Union if you wish), a great(er) power.

By the way, by Great Power I don't mean a country than can go toe-to-toe with America in WW3. But if you look at Russia now, with a strong EU to its left, a rising China to its south, and its old friend America to its right, well, its enough to break someone's heart. I'm looking for a Russia that isn't so politically weak on the world stage compared to these other powers.
 

Daffy Duck

Banned
Interesting

Having some like Putin come to power earlier than Putin actually did. Someone who took a slower pace to capitalism, like the Chinese did.
 

Art

Monthly Donor
Easy!

TURN the Urals into himalayas, monsters in Black Sea, and more mountains on the Polish Border. . . Easy! To defend.

Defend Italy! ! !


You want to defend? Defend Avernum!
 
As we all know, Russia is a power in continuous decline. It likes to posture as a great power, but its military is weak, its economy is small, and its population is in free-fall.

- 2009 was the first year of positive population growth in Russia, only 20 thousand people, but this trend continues today.

- Beside USA they are a nation with most illegal immigrants in the world, estimates numbering in 12 million. And they said that they need 8 million more of low skill workforce. They are also working on a big liberalization program considering visas and work permits.

- Rate of abortions is for decades almost the same as rate of birth, 1.3 million, but they started to tighten the laws around the problem. And the orthodox church which has an ever growing rate of influence in society and political sphere is making open calls for maximum limits on the abortions, even total ban.

- Alcohol is the problem as in any country, the myth of a non stop drunken Russian is just a stereotype and even there you have an improvement in the form of stricter laws, bigger prices and shorter hours on when bars can sell it.

- Quality of their education is pretty high as always. For years now they are a European nation with most university graduates.

- They are well aware of their dependence on oil and gas exports and you can bet that they are not that stupid to sit on petrodollars and not to try to diversify their economy. Currently you have a massive privatization program in the works who, if it succeeds will attract tens if not couple of hundreds of billions if of foreign investment. Their interest in nanotechnology isn't also just for show.

- This statement was made on number of occasions as well and a bit hard to believe but they said that the plan is to invest a trillion dollars in an entire russian infrastructure by 2030. Roads especially in mind.

- Military is also planned for reform in such a way that they plan on abolishing conscription, cutting its size and going professional all the way. The view of "the stronger and richer the country the bigger the army" is 19cent one.
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Conclusion; they have their bad sides like any other state, but the stereotypes of a drunken dying out nation is shot down long ago.
 
Basically you need someone other than Boris Yeltsin, or anyone like him, coming to power but someone that's either more democratic or Putin-esque. Now the transition to a market economy is still going to be rocky and difficult but if you can avoid the rampant corruption and asset stripping that took place you can perhaps end up with Russia being more like Estonia, Latvia or Poland which was the most successful of the transition economies. The problem of course was that nothing like that had ever really happened before on such a massive scale so people were making predictions and trying to apply theories as best they could but with incomplete data.

The main stumbling block that Russia had was that they decided to go for the big bang approach as opposed to most of the Central and Eastern European countries who took a more gradual route. This allowed them to create the societal underpinnings - tax reforms, legal reforms, independent rule or law etc. - along with easing into things so there wasn't as much destabilization. They also didn't go the voucher route but sold of state owned industries over time with the small and mid-sized ones first and preferred bidders who had coherent business plans and management skills. Of course that's a horribly simplified overview since it's actually a pretty fascinating subject with a massive amount of books and papers being written on it.
 

whitecrow

Banned
Grumpy young Man, I don't mean to bash Russia but I think your missinformed on some of your points. Just look up alcohol & nicotine consumption by country & you'll see that Russia is way up there. Stereotypes don't come from thin air you know.

Russia's education has seen better days. University diplomas can be basicaly bought rather than earned. A lot less Russians go for science degrees then in the days of the Soviet Union (business degrees are all the rage now -- capitalism all the way baby!) . This has stagnated Russian academia and attempts to attract back academic that left the country in durring the post-colapse brain drain have not proven very successful.

New mlitary projects have encountered quality problems & mlitary has fallen behind West in areas. Russian troops still use Afgan War-era body armour that was ment to be taken out of service years ago. I also read that during the 2008 Georgian War Russian soldiers took NATO body armour from dead & captured Georgian troops, perfering it over their own armoured vests.

Conclusion: Russia may be better of now than it was in 1990s, but it still has a lot of problems. Let's hope it gets better, not worst :(.
 
Just look up alcohol & nicotine consumption by country & you'll see that Russia is way up there. Stereotypes don't come from thin air you know.
Judging from what Russians themselves have told me, vodka is not just a panacea but a food group.

Russia's education has seen better days. University diplomas can be basicaly bought rather than earned.
True also in the U.S.A.
 
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