AHC prosperous pseud-communist Warsaw pact

As we know, after the rise of Kruschevism in the soviet union the soviets began to invest more into light industry and consumer goods, thus leading to their years of prosperity

What if this led to the formation of a technocratic faction of the soviet party and they end taking power after the end of Kruschev's government, and they begin some kind of economic liberalization while still keeping the soviet union as one party state, adn those reforms succed, turning the USSR into a analogue of China?

The objective of this Alternate history challenge is to have the soviet government throw away the ideals of 1917 (but still keep claiming that they are following it) and turn the warsaw pact into a more prosperous and developed alliance as it was OTL

bonus points if you can keep the soviets in power until the 2000s
 
I think this is an ATL with a lot of potential.

I always wanted to read a AAR like that

The main reason that the european communists refused to crush their rebellions as the chinese did was because while the chinese did saw the good results of their policies after the fall of Mao and they knew that their situation was improving, in eastern european they tough that they were just delaying the inevitable
 
The main reason that the european communists refused to crush their rebellions as the chinese did was because while the chinese did saw the good results of their policies after the fall of Mao and they knew that their situation was improving, in eastern european they tough that they were just delaying the inevitable
Just don't like it. Even if Tiananmen Square was part of the timeline where China had the right sort of centralization to do very well economically, there has to be a better way.

And if this is merely an emotional response on my part, so be it.
 
The problem is that unlike China, Eastern European states were a) already developed and b) had significant nationalist inclinations. The POD would probably have to be in 1929; instead of going for crash industrialization, Stalin or some other leader plays up the glory and unity of the peasantry and by 1970 you have 500 million+ Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, etc. Something like the Holodomor still happens so that the USSR can trade grain with western states to develop the requisite armament production to beat back the Germans when war breaks out between them. Everything east of the Oder is "liberated" and hastily subsumed into the Soviet agrarian fold. Through further starvation, deportation, and grass-roots terror the national consciousness of these states are destroyed with more terminal prejudice than OTL Soviet communism could muster.

After the death of Stalin and a period of identity crisis, Soviet leaders realize that they can get rich by making use of their massive labor pool and political stability (for the intents of this scenario let's say China and India are not in good enough shape for significant outside investment) to attract foreign capital. Without an advanced military with good projection ability, the USSR would be less of a threat and there might not be a cold war as we know it. In TTL in 1970 the stereotypical image of the average Soviet might not be a drunken soldier or a grey bureaucrat, but a Ukrainian girl donning a floral crown or a wise old peasant man with a resemblance to Leo Tolstoy. Having learned the lessons of the alt-Holodomor and other asinine campaigns, the average Soviet would have more of an inclination for petty entrepreneurship, and in this way we will have copied what happened in China almost exactly.

tl;dr: The OTL USSR was not China, despite the two being large and communist.
 
An economic liberalization TL for the Soviet Union would be amazing. I've searched for one like it but all I find are Soviet dystopia TLs and nuclear war TLs.
 
See my previous post quoted below/ shameless self-advertisement.


I've been keeping up with your Shift in Alliances TL and it's a gem, it really is. I appreciate writers like you on the forum. But even though it's a good Soviet TL, it's another WWII one. Albeit a scenario I've wanted to see for a while. Year of the Three Secretaries is what I was looking for.
 
I've been keeping up with your Shift in Alliances TL and it's a gem, it really is. I appreciate writers like you on the forum. But even though it's a good Soviet TL, it's another WWII one. Albeit a scenario I've wanted to see for a while. Year of the Three Secretaries is what I was looking for.

That's the one I was referring to. Also written by me ;).
 
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