AHC: The least aggressive, least defensive, most multilateral, mellowest Russia post 1991

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
What it says on the tin. Have the Russian Federation break from the USSR in 1991 as in OTL, but have the friendliest, most benign image around the world possible from the 1990s through 2018.
 
What it says on the tin. Have the Russian Federation break from the USSR in 1991 as in OTL, but have the friendliest, most benign image around the world possible from the 1990s through 2018.
Privatization of Russian companies goes ideally. Massive western investments in their industry. Standard of life of population after year or two of stagnation is massivly improving year after year. NATO is not expanding. Instead maybe just EU. As Russia is owner of huge natural resurces, it’s exonomy is solid, it’s offered EU memebrship. To lower Russians overwhelmingly influence EU policy each EU member got exactly same number of seats in EU parliament no matter what size. :D
 
Gorbachev's social-democratic Commonwealth of Independent States holds together, at around an EU level of pan-national soveriegnty. Russia busies itself with its new allies and does not go making trouble abroad.
 
Market Liberals taking over from Yeltsin and taking control of the patronage structures within government and using them to rule for the benefits of the oligarchs.

Any other ideology in control of Russia will clash with the west, be it a renewed Communism (even if it is just Zombie Penshioner Zyuganovite Communism of OTL) or a renewed nationalism. Social Democracy in Russia is a dead end, as it is in almost every other country with an undiversified economy.

Putin TBH made two major transitions in his period. First was the 2005 speech about the fall of the Soviet Union, made largely on the back of a commodity boom that allowed Putin some semblance of security to undertake his own personal ideological goals (a strong and respected Russia with a security establishment well in control, ideological and geopolitical clarity about Russia's role in the world). The second was after the 2011-12 protests, which he blamed on the West, that saw him don the garments of a Neo-Tsar who upheld traditional Russian values and institutions (the army, the Orthodox Church) against Western subversions, and this transition was actually popular.

OP's goal for Russia is most easily accomplished if Russia's governmental institutions has no Soviet nostalgia and no major cultural tension points stressed with the west.
 
That would be OTL. If Putin didn’t win the Russian elections in 1999. Communists would’ve. And a Russia that reembraces Communism would be very-anti western. Also remember CPRF (Russian Communist Party) is pretty nationalist and would not only pull a Crimea, but would try to annex all of Ukraine.
 

samcster94

Banned
That would be OTL. If Putin didn’t win the Russian elections in 1999. Communists would’ve. And a Russia that reembraces Communism would be very-anti western. Also remember CPRF (Russian Communist Party) is pretty nationalist and would not only pull a Crimea, but would try to annex all of Ukraine.
Zyuganov would have been a pretty dangerous leader.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Doctor Pangloss, so what you are saying is that we are enjoying the best of all possible Russias?
 
Doctor Pangloss, so what you are saying is that we are enjoying the best of all possible Russias?
I find that hard to believe, personally.

Russia still has international ambitions, both in its near abroad (perhaps more territorial annexation, but above all else, frozen conflicts and ethnic tension) and beyond (in dismantling western institutions it perceives to be hostile).

Its economy is actually approaching levels of quasi-state control not seen since the Communist period as of late (judging how much exactly is hard because of cronyism blurring the lines), even while continuing privatization plans. This means, essentially, that there are kleptocratic and mafia-like elements in control over substantial parts of the economy.

Things could have gone much better. They should have eased into a market economy and only deployed shock therapy in the 90s in a few areas where the state was failing to a massive degree, and not deployed it in a manner that allowed capital assets to be stripped and stored abroad so quickly. The rise of Putin was very much avoidable. A securocrat comfortable with both the liberals and unltranationalists was basically a ready-made dictator.

Honestly, a Zyuganov victory in 1996 would NOT have been the worst thing possible. The 1990s saw Communist Parties around the world (from the ANC in South Africa and SWAPO in Namibia, to many of the Communist Parties in post-Soviet states that were in charge, and in China) begin to grasp that the gig was up and that the market was not going away, and Zyuganov was not hostile to market solutions based on his conversations with western investors at the World Economic Forum. A Zyuganov victory would have probably seen the climb down from state control be managed slower, but perhaps better.

Yes, the RFCP is a nationalist party that would have clashed in Chechnya just as the government in OTL did, but it was not ultimately a party that was un-democratic or going to be engaging in wars of conquest.

I think probably the most realistic but positive (if not the best) path would be a Zyuganov victory in 1996, an avoidance of the 1998 bond default and economic crisis by easing market reforms into place. The Chechnyan crisis would ensure his reelection in 2000, and the RFCP would become the default party of governance. The Color Revolutions would probably not help things long term, true, but I think they would simply manage over an economy that would be undynamic but not ultimately having the bottom fall out. Eventually, the RFCP would have a leadership turnover and a new generation would try to follow the China model (massive infrastructure investments to create growth to secure the pension system). Even Zyuganov himself had expressed admiration for Deng Xiaoping Theory.
 
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