AHC: The Soviet Union does not break up

The only way I can post is via phone, So while I would like to take on this challenge I dont currently feel I can do it justice. I mostly post Concepts, P.O.D.'s & Challenges. I do have A few Time Line's & Stories of my own on this site but all of the posts that make up those threads are short posts. When I get access to A laptop again I will be able to write longer posts with more Detail etc. The story I focus on most is my Brotherhood of Nod in Africa thread but its far from done.
 
Okay, Gorbachav succeed for one. But, keep in mind, the Soviet Union can't quite pull a China. While they do have massive amounts of industry, they don't have the same endless manpower advantage China has, among other things. Besides, if it becomes Democratic, China's economic system isn't doable.

So, I likely see the Soviet Union remaining mostly central planning(maybe some worker cooperatives) and rather changing its rhetoric, and entering detente with the United States to end the Cold War.

Endless manpower wasnt the main factor in China's GDP adavances, by that standard Taiwan & Singapore would be thrid-world nations.

The Soviets did have a highly educated population & great technical expertise and did indeed possess a rapidly growing source of manpower in the less developed Central Asian SSR’s. And an industy base that could be modernized to say nothing of the astonishing amounts of natural resources within the U.S.S.R


Plus they had in some respects a under-tapped market. There is no intrinsic reason the Soviets cant shift from central planning to a state-directed market.

Even avoiding the astonishing economic collapse of the 1990’s puts all the SSR's in much better shape IITL.


Would a POD with the original Soviet constitution work? Say, not giving the Republics a theoretical right to secession? It probably wouldn't mean anything for most of the Soviet Union's existence, but once communism begins to go it would prevent the union from (legally) breaking up.

No because the 1st, 2nd & 3rd Soviet constitution had f**k all to do with the break up the U.S.S.R, you could add or remove that clause any time with little or no effect.

I'm aware of the role shock economics played in Russia's 1990 troubles, but I think that has a good chance of happening whether or not the USSR/Russia/whatever name it adopts maintains its territorial integrity. Its going to need to reform away from Communism and will likely seek advice from western technocrats and (more importantly) money from the IMF, at which point its going to be told to cut everything, deregulate everything, privatize everything, float its currency, and let the Magic Free Market Fairy do its Magical work. The results-well, just look at OTL.

Nah, for one thing a real democratic goverment in a stable state wouldnt be able get away with it, nor would it be as ridiculously corrupt & incompetent as Yeltsin's.

Do not discount the role of Yeltsin & co in the catastrophe of the 1990’s. Without him the ‘’western technocrats & the IMF’’ will be one of many sets of advisors not predatory & malign policy-setters
 
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Thinking a bit more on Yugoslavia, this is probably what a surviving Yugoslavia *might* look like if rewrote the constitution in 1984 and got some external support as well as if there was some compromise (more autonomy; one man, one vote in the party system; the complete unification of the republic parties at the federal level and a multi-party system instead):

There would be the 6 republics but also 8 autonomous provinces which would not have veto power over legislation from their republics except within the limits of their provinces. The 8 autonomous provinces would be Vojvodina, Kosovo, Romanija/Eastern Herzegovina, Neretva/Western Herzegovina, Bosnian Krajina and NE Bosnia, Kninska Krajina and Western Slavonia, Bosnian Posavina, and Eastern Slavonia. Under this system the Serbs would not dominate (with about 40% of the population they would need to gain the support of other groups to pass legislation at the federal level and with Serbia, Montenegro, Vojvodina and 2 Serbian majority autonomous provinces in Bosnia and Croatia each they could only count on 7 (at most) out of 14 entities in any vote that would require the entities to have an equal vote and there would be lots of autonomy for all the entities). At the same time the Serbs could not be dominated or feel they were being dominated as seemed to happen under the 1974 constitution (when two autonomous provinces in Serbia were given autonomy almost on the level of republics with Vojvodina being a majority Serbian area).

Interesting borders in Yugoslavia, though I notice you've basically sliced up Bosnia already-the "Bosnian" (I assume Bosniak) part doesn't look enormasly larger than what the Bosniaks controlled at the end of the OTL war (though I notice they still have some of the east).

What sort of powers do you envision the "autonomous provinces" having in this scenario? Something like OTL Vojvodina and Kosovo-which were, de facto, Yugoslavia's seventh and eighth republics-or something less than that?
 
I may not be able to develop my envisioned Time Line myself, But what I can do is post the P.O.D.'s & Policies I had in mind for someone else to work with & develop maybe?
 
I'm not really talking about "pulling a China"-China mostly kept the old Marxist political regime in place while going capitalist economically-I'm talking about a USSR that reforms its economy and politics (to a certain extent, at least). I'd expect it to look like, well, a larger version of modern Russia (that's what I'm going for, anyway).

A non-communist Soviet Union? That would basically just be the Russian Empire....and the ethnic tensions are simply too massive for that to be feasible. The communist ideology, and the brute force of the KGB, was what kept the USSR together. Once Gorbachov relaxed a bit, we saw what happened.
 
Interesting borders in Yugoslavia, though I notice you've basically sliced up Bosnia already-the "Bosnian" (I assume Bosniak) part doesn't look enormasly larger than what the Bosniaks controlled at the end of the OTL war (though I notice they still have some of the east).

What sort of powers do you envision the "autonomous provinces" having in this scenario? Something like OTL Vojvodina and Kosovo-which were, de facto, Yugoslavia's seventh and eighth republics-or something less than that?
The autonomous republics in Bosnia seem to correspond to the ethnic composition in 1991 (see here) with some exceptions (for example, the Croatian "islands" are within Bosniak territory, while the Croat autonomous regions have been expanded into Bosniak territory).
 
A non-communist Soviet Union? That would basically just be the Russian Empire....and the ethnic tensions are simply too massive for that to be feasible. The communist ideology, and the brute force of the KGB, was what kept the USSR together. Once Gorbachov relaxed a bit, we saw what happened.
Some of the republics would certainly want to secede (the Baltics, Moldova, Georgia) but the majority of the population in the other republics supported a continued Soviet Union, as was shown by the referendum held on the question in 1991.
 
Interesting borders in Yugoslavia, though I notice you've basically sliced up Bosnia already-the "Bosnian" (I assume Bosniak) part doesn't look enormasly larger than what the Bosniaks controlled at the end of the OTL war (though I notice they still have some of the east).


Well I based the autonomous provinces in Bosnia on the entities created during the war but before each of them went on an expansion craze. So I used all the Serbian autonomous oblasts as a basis for 2 Serbian autonomous provinces and used the Croat based "Herceg-Bosna" entity for 2 Croatian autonomous provinces (1 in the north and 1 in the south). As with Vojvodina, the provinces themselves don't necessarily have to be majority-inhabited by minorities of the republic in question but just have to have enough minorities that it could conceivably be like Vojvodina.

What sort of powers do you envision the "autonomous provinces" having in this scenario? Something like OTL Vojvodina and Kosovo-which were, de facto, Yugoslavia's seventh and eighth republics-or something less than that?

Something less but still with substantial autonomy. I'm not completely aware of the full details but I gather that Vojvodina and Kosovo could veto Serbian legislation. Others may disagree with me, but that makes no sense constitutionally. Autonomous regions of a unit that can veto unit legislation in effect makes the unit subject to the autonomous regions which is a recipe for ensuring that the residents of the unit outside of the autonomous regions come to resent the autonomous region.

Doing a bit more reading (here, here and here) it would seem that the best way to avoid a breakup of Yugoslavia would be to not have the 1974 constitution adopted at all, but I don't see how a 1969 assassination of Brezhnev would bring that about unless we have Kosygin, Podgorny and Kulakov being adventurous and assassinating Tito. So failing that it seems the next best time for something to happen would be in the early 1980s (say 1982-1984). If the "Serbian Package" of reforms proposed in 1984 (only a few years after Tito's death) at the League of Communists meeting was met with less hostility and the other republics bargained with Serbia over it, then combined with University of Zagreb Professor Jovan Mirić's articles on the 1974 constitution being the source of all of Yugoslavia's problems there could have been the scope for a deal. I would imagine that there might have been less hostility (though certainly not an open embrace) of the "Serbian Package" in a better economic environment where Slovenia and Croatia did not generally feel resentment (or as much resentment) towards the other, poorer units. At that point in 1984 we have:

- Tito already dead (thus opening an opportunity for reforming the 1974 constitution)

- The 1981-82 riots in Kosovo are over and some amount of calm there after late 1982 along with the purging of the communist party in Kosovo (presumably removing those who allowed or encouraged the situation to get out of control in the 1970s and up to 1982) and a lot of the Albanian professors at the University of Pristina removed (a lot of who were actually from Albania, specifically from the University of Tirana, and who apparently espoused an anti-Serb ideology and stoked up nationalism among the Albanian student body).

- Slobodan Milošević is still not yet leader of League of Serbian Communists but is only leader of the Belgrade communists.

- Ibrahim Rugova is about to or has just received his doctorate at the University of Pristina and will likely become a moderate, well respected leader of the Albanians of Kosovo in a few years (at this point I would expect that he would support through his writing any compromise deal on a new constitution which would not drastically reduce Kosovo's autonomy but which would still prevent Kosovo from having a veto over Serbian legislation which is meant to apply to Serbia generally except within the bounds of Kosovo only)

- Professor Jovan Mirić publishing his articles on the problems of the 1974 constitution

- Jovan Djordjević (one of the authors of the 1974 constitution) admitting that the current system (for 1984) was not the intention of the drafters of the constitution.

1984 into 1985 seemed liked the ripe time for reform and if Yugoslavia got some external support (less IMF pressure, maybe some more loans from the USSR and the West (with the West concerned about Andropov so that they don't stop trying to win Yugoslavia over with money until 1988)) then perhaps a compromise could be reached. I would imagine that as long as the other republics kept their cherished autonomy and new autonomous republics included not just Serb areas but Croat ones to form a balance of sorts (and at the time the thinking of some politicians might have been that Serbia could still be outvoted on the federal level on some issues with 5 non-Serb republics and 4 "non-Serb" autonomous provinces (well, not in the case of Vojvodina, but its leaders tended not to vote with Serbia at the federal level until Milosevic managed to install pliant leaders in Montenegro, Vojvodina and Kosovo) versus Serbia-proper and 4 Serb autonomous provinces.

I would imagine that a reformed, better performing USSR would support this type of move because in essence Yugoslavia would be copying the Soviet system more fully (with republics and lower level autonomous entities in many of these republics, etc). A promise to investigate the possibility of even lower level autonomous units (oblasts, etc) with a view towards giving Bosniaks/Muslims some amount of autonomy in Sandžak and giving Albanians autonomy in northwestern Macedonia could probably also be enough to lessen or restrain Bosniak and Albanian opposition to the compromise (Macedonia of course would be on board having had the autonomy of the republics increased and with there being no autonomous units in that republic yet and probably there wouldn't be any without the expressed agreement of the republic in question first).

If this is done by say late 1985 there would still be tensions (especially in Kosovo), but a lot of tension (and the potential for tension) would have been removed. If future disputes are mainly confined to Kosovo and the Albanians and Serbs then Rugova's entry into politics in the late 1980s in the framework of a theoretical 1985 constitution and with the West still giving aid/not working against Yugoslavia up to 1988 might be enough to keep the problems manageable within the framework of a federal Yugoslavia (especially if Milosevic gets voted out early (perhaps being replaced by Dragoslav Marković) and other nationalists like Tudjman don't come to power). Eventually a 1985 constitution which restored the internal market for Yugoslavia and democratic reforms into the 1990s might ensure tensions are reduced to such a level that Yugoslavia becomes more like Spain or Canada in terms of the threat of it breaking up (so there would be separatists, there would be terrorists (like ETA), but separatism isn't necessarily mainstream nor is it necessarily supported by overwhelming majorities or even by majorities in the units). Throw in the collapse of Albania's economy in the 1990s after democracy is introduced (which I think would still happen as Albania had sufficiently isolated itself that I can't see how Brezhnev being assassinated in 1969, Andropov getting a kidney transplant in 1983, Gorbachev coming to power in 1988 and a delay in the end of communism in Europe by a few years would substantially change the trajectory of Albania's economic and political development except that Hoxha's successor Ramiz Alia would have been in a power for a few more years) and at least some Kosovo Albanians might look less favourably on uniting with Albania (at least during the late 1990s/early 2000s).
 
A non-communist Soviet Union? That would basically just be the Russian Empire....and the ethnic tensions are simply too massive for that to be feasible. The communist ideology, and the brute force of the KGB, was what kept the USSR together. Once Gorbachov relaxed a bit, we saw what happened.


The 1991 referendum results and opinion polls from even 2008 would indicate otherwise. The majority in the republics which voted in the referendum wanted the USSR to remain together. Even in 2008 in most of the republics polled up to a third of respondents wanted either a unitary state across the former USSR or a federation.
 
The autonomous republics in Bosnia seem to correspond to the ethnic composition in 1991 (see here) with some exceptions (for example, the Croatian "islands" are within Bosniak territory, while the Croat autonomous regions have been expanded into Bosniak territory).

Thanks for that link. I might use that map to refine the borders in Bosnia to correspond to the internal divisions more.
 
Interesting borders in Yugoslavia, though I notice you've basically sliced up Bosnia already-the "Bosnian" (I assume Bosniak) part doesn't look enormasly larger than what the Bosniaks controlled at the end of the OTL war (though I notice they still have some of the east).

What sort of powers do you envision the "autonomous provinces" having in this scenario? Something like OTL Vojvodina and Kosovo-which were, de facto, Yugoslavia's seventh and eighth republics-or something less than that?

Oh and that is not the Bosniak part. It is simply Bosnia proper, much like Serbia proper (Serbia apart from it's autonomous provinces) on the map. There are still plenty of Serbs and Croats in that area under the full control of the government in Sarajevo.
 
Endless manpower wasnt the main factor in China's GDP adavances, by that standard Taiwan & Singapore would be thrid-world nations.

The Soviets did have a highly educated population & great technical expertise and did indeed possess a rapidly growing source of manpower in the less developed Central Asian SSR’s. And an industy base that could be modernized to say nothing of the astonishing amounts of natural resources within the U.S.S.R

True, China had much economic growth from successful planning, but a large part was seemingly endless manpower to make ridiculously cheap labor. Now, this had arguably adverse effects on the rest of the world wide market, but for China, it got a tons of economic growth.

But otherwise, you're right, they have those. However, I'd argue it will come out of this with more central planning than China does, and additionally, will have to do with this with no external help. That will be quite difficult to say the least.

One idea is perhaps they somehow reform during the 1970s enough so that they can take their sweet time doing it during the 80s and 90s.
 
Endless manpower wasnt the main factor in China's GDP adavances, by that standard Taiwan & Singapore would be thrid-world nations.

The Soviets did have a highly educated population & great technical expertise and did indeed possess a rapidly growing source of manpower in the less developed Central Asian SSR’s. And an industy base that could be modernized to say nothing of the astonishing amounts of natural resources within the U.S.S.R

True, China had much economic growth from successful planning, but a large part was seemingly endless manpower to make ridiculously cheap labor. Now, this had arguably adverse effects on the rest of the world wide market, but for China, it got a tons of economic growth.

But otherwise, you're right, they have those. However, I'd argue it will come out of this with more central planning than China does, and additionally, will have to do with this with no external help. That will be quite difficult to say the least.

One idea is perhaps they somehow reform during the 1970s enough so that they can take their sweet time doing it during the 80s and 90s.

But in comparison to the likely market for the USSR in the 1970s (Europe) wouldn't the USSR seem to have an endless manpower supply in comparison to its competitors in Europe?
 

Old Airman

Banned
Two words: constitutional change. Would 1977 Constitution (and, before that, 1936 one) not include "Republic's right of self-determination", the Union would survive. There was an omnipotent fear ruling over Soviet populace - fear of violent breakup. All "ethnic conflicts" didn't strive to become a "nation-building events", they were more of "tolerated hooliganism" variety, sorta like Czarist pogroms. So, if there's no law allowing to dissolve the Union, people would very grudgingly tolerate it (sorta what happened in IOTL Russia), for fear of rocking the boat.
Everything else might be discussed. Gorbachov might survive as a president or go down in disgrace, economic and political reforms might go whatever way you want (my personal feeling is that 1990-s flight into abyss would not go as deep for very simple reason of keeping existing economic ties within the Union). USSR might drop one "S" from the name, becoming Union of Soviet Republics (there's nothing intrinsically Communist about Soviets, or Councils of People's Deputies). I can imagine, without too much trouble, USR-2011 as semi-autoritarian state with President Putin running "what looks like democracy-of-sort". But this country should have a GDP at least 15-20% more than today's combined GDP of post-Soviet states.
 
Two words: constitutional change. Would 1977 Constitution (and, before that, 1936 one) not include "Republic's right of self-determination", the Union would survive. There was an omnipotent fear ruling over Soviet populace - fear of violent breakup. All "ethnic conflicts" didn't strive to become a "nation-building events", they were more of "tolerated hooliganism" variety, sorta like Czarist pogroms. So, if there's no law allowing to dissolve the Union, people would very grudgingly tolerate it (sorta what happened in IOTL Russia), for fear of rocking the boat.
Everything else might be discussed. Gorbachov might survive as a president or go down in disgrace, economic and political reforms might go whatever way you want (my personal feeling is that 1990-s flight into abyss would not go as deep for very simple reason of keeping existing economic ties within the Union). USSR might drop one "S" from the name, becoming Union of Soviet Republics (there's nothing intrinsically Communist about Soviets, or Councils of People's Deputies). I can imagine, without too much trouble, USR-2011 as semi-autoritarian state with President Putin running "what looks like democracy-of-sort". But this country should have a GDP at least 15-20% more than today's combined GDP of post-Soviet states.

That's more or less what I was suggesting when I brought up the Soviet Constitution earlier. OTL, the USSR broke up exactly (with two or three possible exceptions) along the internal Republic bounderies, which, combined with the referendum results mentioned above, leads me to believe the breakup wouldn't have happened had the constitution not allowed for it.
 
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