AHC: Russia keeps all Soviet Republicas after fall of USSR

Are we talking a democratic ex-USSR here? Because the USSR's constitution, pretty much from the beginning, established a right to secession for the republics. Sure, this was solely theoretical up till 1989 or so, but once the USSR starts democratizing and actually following its own constitution-well, that constitution says any full member of the union has the right to go anytime they want to. So either the Soviet Union has got to respect this, or violate its own constitution in a really major way, which would set a rather damaging precident really early in the democratic transition.

Perhaps we could have a POD in the 1920's that results in the Soviet Union adopting a more centralized structure, like the Tsarist system it replaced, or even adopting a federal structure but denying the republics a right to secession (maybe something about the republics being in a "perpetual union of the working classes" or something like that). Since pretty much all meaningful Soviet politics went on within the Communist Party anyway, its hard to see how this would matter all that much, and one could imagine Soviet history going more or less the same as OTL up till 1989-but then, once the Communist Party goes away and the Union is forced to actually start using its formal constitution, there isn't an automatic escape hatch for anyone who wants to leave.

The U.S.S.R's constitution was altered umpteen times over the dcades it could change again. Indeed it would have to for any democratic regime to emerge...


Granted. It would be a clusterfuck though.


Just because Putin's Russia is Shangri-La in comparison with Stalin's it doesn't make it fairly democratic. It's not North Korea or Syria but it's objectively an authoritarian regime as both the Democracy Index and the Freedom House see it.

Authoritarian democracy perhaps but not a dictatorship, Democracy Index and the Freedom House are not unbiaised sources.


Armenia and Azerbaijan were not guaranteed to leave, the only one that was really irreconcilable was Georgia. The Soviets would have to pay in blood to keep it, and it would make Chechnya look like a cakewalk. Inevitably they would also have to do it, there cannot be an independent Georgia along with a Soviet Armenia and Azerbaijan, it's geographically impossible, the Red Army is going to have to go in.

Um, no just no, middle class Georgians arnt going to go all death-commando the way the Chechens did.

If anything any bloodshed in Georgia would be betten the ethnic groups who live there not partisan's & terrorists v fedral troops & police.
 
Um, no just no, middle class Georgians arnt going to go all death-commando the way the Chechens did.

If anything any bloodshed in Georgia would be betten the ethnic groups who live there not partisan's & terrorists v fedral troops & police.

Georgia isn't going to stay willingly.

Which will make the USSR all that much more reliant upon ethnic Russians for support to keep itself in Georgia. Leaving Georgia is not in the cards if the USSR as a whole looks like it isn't going to fall apart.

So that leaves Georgia in the awkward position of wanting to leave, but in a situation where Moscow won't let it happen. The only real way out for the Georgians is to go out fighting, and chances are it will take on a character of violence against ethnic Russians in the north from day one.

So I ask this, what happens with the ethnic Georgians garrisoned in their country as soldiers? I really doubt they're going to just kind of sit around and take it.

I really don't see a way out for Georgia that isn't a bloody mess.
 
Georgia isn't going to stay willingly.

Eh? it was willing enouth for 70-odd, granted the repressiveness of the regime would make armed revolt akward, but even post-Stalin there was no real trouble for the Soviet regime in terms of holding onto Georgia.


Which will make the USSR all that much more reliant upon ethnic Russians for support to keep itself in Georgia. Leaving Georgia is not in the cards if the USSR as a whole looks like it isn't going to fall apart.

The U.S.S.R leaned on the Slavic ethnic groups due to the fact they mad up 75% of the populationbn & were seen as the most loyal. even so most Central Asians wer loyal to the union. And there was a general sense of some kind of ''Soviet'' identity.



So that leaves Georgia in the awkward position of wanting to leave, but in a situation where Moscow won't let it happen. The only real way out for the Georgians is to go out fighting, and chances are it will take on a character of violence against ethnic Russians in the north from day one.

Georgia may not want to leave if the U.S.S.R isnt in a political & economic tailspin like OTL
due to Gorbachev's screw ups. A lot of the pro-nationolist & indpendance rethoric from some people in the former SSR's is quite self-serving.


So I ask this, what happens with the ethnic Georgians garrisoned in their country as soldiers? I really doubt they're going to just kind of sit around and take it.

Thier grandfathers took it. At a time when the Soviet state newborn & quite weak too.
 

Jonjo

Banned
Just to make things clear, this is not about a surviving USSR, it is about a Russian Federation that holds all its former USSR countries.
 
Just to make things clear, this is not about a surviving USSR, it is about a Russian Federation that holds all its former USSR countries.

Well you are talking about a surviving USSR that democratizes since technically speaking the Russian Federation never held any former USSR countries being a constituent republic itself.

But for a Russian Federation that was called the Russian Federation and encompassed all of the former USSR territories we are talking ASB territory here. While i might see Belarus joining the Russian Federation as a republic of that country (like Tatarstan, etc) I can't see the other former Soviet republics joining the Russian Federation once the USSR collapsed. There would have to be a name change at the very least to satisfy them.
 
The post-Soviet successor federation was supposed to be the Commonwealth of Independent States, CIS. The very name tells us how little the Russians were interested in trying to hang on to any of the other Republics.

Actually I think they were keenly interested in hanging on to some of them, if only they could. The pattern was, the places they wanted to keep a grip on, for economic and strategic reasons, like the Baltics and Georgia, were the most keen to leave, whereas the ones they could easily hold such as all of Central Asia, they regarded as drains and burdens. I'm not sure the Central Asian republics were even invited into the CIS!:rolleyes:

My personal opinion at the time was that it was very dumb and shortsighted for Moscow to shrug off any Republic that didn't want to go.

OTOH, the ones that wanted out--I think some people upthread who think the Soviet forces could have held them against their wills aren't facing realities that the latter-day Kremlin was. Even in the Polish crisis of the late 1970s and early 80's, when Solidarity was at last cracked down on it wasn't the Red Army that did it, it was the Polish. The Kremlin was losing confidence that they could simply suppress any secessionist movement by sheer force of arms, and I think they were probably right to fear they were losing their grip.

The solution, from the point of view of someone who wanted to keep the Union and larger Warsaw Pact intact, would have been a more robust economy, but that is very much easier said than done. With the exception of the Western territories, that is the former Warsaw Pact nations and the Baltics, I don't have the impression that a quarter century later any part of the former Soviet sphere is doing spectacularly better economically than when they were under the heavy and inefficient planners of Moscow. It isn't at all obvious what the Soviet loyalists should have done to make things all better.

The thread is not about a surviving USSR nor retaining the Warsaw Pact of course. But if the Russians had been able to come up with an economic miracle, or at least an economic muddle-through, I don't think there would have been any question about reforming away the Soviet Union; it would still exist under that name and command the loyalty of the Russians at least, and probably many other minorities, who would be majorities in most of their homeland Republics. If the end of the USSR and its replacement by some successor federation (or absorption into an aggrandized Russian Republic) is on the table in 1991, it is because the Soviet institutions failed, as OTL. Failing, they could not possibly hang on to their hegemony in Eastern Europe--it was the determined resistance to Russian domination that triggered the whole breakup in the first place. They might have been able to hang on to Baltics and Georgia, but it would be costly, economically, diplomatically and in terms of domestic legitimacy.

But to hold Central Asia, all they'd need I think is to have been a bit more visionary. Don't call the successor federal body a Commonwealth of Independent States to start with! Welcome in anyone who stands by Russia, and change the economic plan to use their resources more wisely, and they'd stop being a drain. Maybe give up the Baltics but redouble the hold on Georgia; I suspect another commentator upthread is right, that the Georgians mainly had economic quarrels with Moscow, whereas the Baltics had deepseated ethnic rivalries and enjoyed a lot of Western sympathy.

But to hold all the Soviet Union's territory--it would have to stay the USSR, still under Communist Party control. And the POD for that would be well before 1991.
 
Just to make things clear, this is not about a surviving USSR, it is about a Russian Federation that holds all its former USSR countries.

The Soviet republics had distinct identities that would make being part of an officially Russian state extremely unpopular. Gorbachev's "Union of Sovereign Socialist Republics" or something similar is your best bet to have the USSR's land area remain one country.
 
And just how are those sources biased? Do enlighten us.

Freedom House?

Biased? Well according to a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan (who was apparently removed from his post for criticizing human rights abuses in Uzbekistan at a time when Uzbekistan's support was crucial for prosecuting the war in Afghanistan):

the executive director of Freedom House told him in 2003 that the group decided to back off from its efforts to spotlight human rights abuses in Uzbekistan, because some Republican board members (in Murray’s words) "expressed concern that Freedom House was failing to keep in sight the need to promote freedom in the widest sense, by giving full support to U.S. and coalition forces". Human rights abuses in Uzbekistan at the time included treatment of prisoners who were killed by "immersion in boiling liquid," and by strapping on a gas mask and blocking the filters,

Then there is this research paper which found "consistent evidence of a substantial bias in the FH ratings for the [ period before 1989]" and determined that after 1988, "estimates are a little less consistent and hint to a smaller, but still existent political bias in the FH scores."
 

Incognito

Banned
Just to make things clear, this is not about a surviving USSR, it is about a Russian Federation that holds all its former USSR countries.
Perhaps if you get an active monarchist movement seeking to reinstate the Russian Empire and have this movement be at the forefront of anti-Soviet activists as well as clamp down on ethnic nationalism so that Ukrainians, Georgians, Tajiks, etc. give their support to this monarchist idea rather than seek to form independent ethnic states, then maybe you’ll get what you are looking for. Of course, the result would be a recreated (constitutional) Russian Empire, not a Russian Federation.
 
Have this Assassination Attempt successfully kill Brezhnev and put a reformer in power to prevent the era of stagnation and you got a shot. If the USSR can liberalize its economy while also keeping an iron grip on power china style there's a good chance of keeping all the republics. Obviously the "fall" of the USSR ATL is going to be different that OTL, perhaps occurring later and involving Prague Spring like demonstations and subsequent crackdowns in the baltics and other agitating republics (I dont see how a transformation of the USSR into a new suposedly democratic state with all the republics wont involve some heavy handedness or military action).
 
Freedom House?
"consistent evidence of a substantial bias in the FH ratings for the [ period before 1989]" and determined that after 1988, "estimates are a little less consistent and hint to a smaller, but still existent political bias in the FH scores."

Lets also remember that Freedom House is a U.S.-based non-governmental organization, there's bound to be some bias against states the US is geo-politcally opposed to even if it's not necessarily intentional.
 
[OTOH, the ones that wanted out--I think some people upthread who think the Soviet forces could have held them against their wills aren't facing realities that the latter-day Kremlin was. Even in the Polish crisis of the late 1970s and early 80's, when Solidarity was at last cracked down on it wasn't the Red Army that did it, it was the Polish.


If they could get the Polish Army to do their dirty work why would the Russians do the crack down? Let the Poles do the dying if things get messy and it doesn't look as bad. A big part of the reason the Polish Army did do so was they thought that if they didn't the Russians would and things would be even worse off. I think they were right.
 
If they could get the Polish Army to do their dirty work why would the Russians do the crack down? Let the Poles do the dying if things get messy and it doesn't look as bad. A big part of the reason the Polish Army did do so was they thought that if they didn't the Russians would and things would be even worse off. I think they were right.

True, but we do have records of what the leadership was saying at the time: they were deeply concerned about the possibility of a military intervention turning into a real clusterfuck with the world watching, and were very relieved when the Polish military did the job for them. They would have eventually bitten the bullet if there had been no relief from Jaruzelski, but they were hardly feeling optimistic about their ability to handle the situation as neatly as, say, in '68.

Bruce
 
In previous discussions of this nature, the "Russophobia" issue has come up.

Depends on the context Russophobia is real enougth.

Not really an issue on this topic however., as ''non-goverment'' think-tanks having thier own agenda & ideology is hardly Russophobic.

All other things being equal if Putin was avidly pro-US, he'd be praised as a democratic reformer (albeit with some faults) by FH, instead of a sinister neo-Stalinist figure.
 
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