AHC: What would it take for the USSR to survive

Do what China did, gradually open up the economy, first at the low level then medium level then high level.

If you want it to stay "communist" then perhaps not spend so much on the military but on things that people want. Have a military that is perhaps 1 million and maybe one thousand nuclear missiles land, air and sea.
 
Do what China did, gradually open up the economy, first at the low level then medium level then high level.

If you want it to stay "communist" then perhaps not spend so much on the military but on things that people want. Have a military that is perhaps 1 million and maybe one thousand nuclear missiles land, air and sea.

China had a lot of iddle resources in form of peasants to build a paralell market economy to complement its not so developed public one. And all this build up has been made with massive capital influx from the western/capitalist world and the eurodollar system. Not an option for the urss, which was a mature planning economy already in the terminal phase of capital consumption...
 
Can be done in mid-late 80s. Keep repression going, do some minor economic reform, triple amount of privately farmland. That'd get it around in 2019.

The nomenklatura no longer needed soviet branding to keep the proletariat or themselves in line.

Deng Xiaoping says hello.

Except the tools of exploitation were also reservoirs of proletarian strength. Soviet welfare was organised through the factory system and involved ingrained cultural and economic relations. Look at how historically the nomenklatura attacked these cultures and structures. You can’t pull a Deng when you are facing the Soviet problem. The barrier for value isn’t undercapitalisation in the Soviet Union: it is frictional costs of labour. Compare to China’s slow attacks on its old heavy industry.
 
Better management of the Aral Sea, and central asian irrigation generally. Better soil management and less ambitious export targets could help. The great northern river reversal would in theory enable tremendous long term economic potential, but would be very costly and likely produce all sorts of ecological downsides.
 
After Stalin dies, policies of cultural and ethnic revival such as korenizatsiya must be reinstated ASAP. If the Ukrainians, Latvians, Nenets... are allowed to freely express themselves, the Union can survive, no matter what the economy looks like.
 
After Stalin dies, policies of cultural and ethnic revival such as korenizatsiya must be reinstated ASAP. If the Ukrainians, Latvians, Nenets... are allowed to freely express themselves, the Union can survive, no matter what the economy looks like.

Would it or would it accent the differences between the various ethnic groups? It could strengthen the idea that Georgians are Georgians first and Soviet second. After all, there would be more allowed differences between the two groups. I am not saying that it would but that it could. It might even have the exact opposite effects on different groups.
 
Would it or would it accent the differences between the various ethnic groups? It could strengthen the idea that Georgians are Georgians first and Soviet second. After all, there would be more allowed differences between the two groups. I am not saying that it would but that it could. It might even have the exact opposite effects on different groups.
They would feel less of a need to resist the authorities and wait for the first moment to get away. A common Soviet identity should not exclude something that has existed before it.
 
They would feel less of a need to resist the authorities and wait for the first moment to get away. A common Soviet identity should not exclude something that has existed before it.

Maybe, maybe not. It might also strengthen the idea they aren't Soviet but nationality x. This, in turn, could strengthen the idea that x should be a separate nation. Personally I think it could go either way and would likely vary from nationality to nationality.
 
or warmongering batshit insanity from the U.S
RRs 600 ship Navy isn't what caused the USSR to collapse, or even Star Wars.

Overbuilding the Militarys after 1970 is what did it.
USSR hit Nuclear parity with the USA in 1977, and then put the pedal to the metal and by 1986, had 20,000 more warheads than the US

Once you have three times the Warheads needed to knock out every major US Metro area and cover each missile field, why keep building? Waste of money and resources
 
Stalin was a zealot who did astoundingly monstrous acts but just because Lenin died before the full evil of the path he'd laid out became evident shouldn't excuse him

The only real difference between Uncle Joe and Lenin was that of scale, not the methods
 
Better management of the Aral Sea, and central asian irrigation generally. Better soil management and less ambitious export targets could help.

Once again, that goes back to Stalin and best crop scientist, Lysenko. Khrushchev just put icing on that cake that was already baked
 

RousseauX

Donor
After Stalin dies, policies of cultural and ethnic revival such as korenizatsiya must be reinstated ASAP. If the Ukrainians, Latvians, Nenets... are allowed to freely express themselves, the Union can survive, no matter what the economy looks like.
But in otl, it was the freedom of expression for nationalists that led to the downfall of the USSR

there was no large baltic or ukrainian nationalist-seperatism in the USSR between the 1950s and perestroika, it was Gorbachev allowing nationalism into legitimate discourse legally that caused the fall of the Union
 
The only real difference between Uncle Joe and Lenin was that of scale, not the methods

Right. And if Lenin had lived longer, I have no doubt he would have scaled up his crimes as it became clear that the other choice was a compromise of his ideas.

Once you have three times the Warheads needed to knock out every major US Metro area and cover each missile field, why keep building? Waste of money and resources

Keep in mind that the Soviets didn't have guidance as good as that the US had. So to be sure of hitting the key targets if war happened tomorrow, they needed more warheads.

The whole situation was crazy, but each step was perfectly logical. Which is to say, the Soviets were no more nuke-crazy than the Americans were.

Overbuilding the Militarys after 1970 is what did it.

Imagine, for a moment, an alternate world where the Soviets spend, oh, 3/5ths or 4/5ths of their OTL military budget. If political and economic factors remain the same, are they really going to do much better?

In my view, it wouldn't make much difference at all. The economy would reach a slightly higher apogee with the freed up labour and investment but they'd still be suffering from resource exhaustion, malinvestment, out of control agriculture and investment budgets, shortage of middle managers of a reasonable age in the generations decimated by WW2, international trade will still be grossly inefficient and Gorbachev is still likely to break the system when he tries to reform it.

The only way things can be different is if the slightly smaller military provides enough slack that it gives Gorbachev's useful reforms enough time to start working before he feels he needs to do something really drastic as happened in OTL's 1987.

fasquardon
 
The USSR has a better chance of surviving without WW2 happening. If its sphere of influence is Mongolia, Tuva, and maybe Xinjiang it will be easier for most of the other Great Powers to get along with the USSR and maintain open trade relations.

Without the massive casualties from Barbarossa, ethnic Russians would probably be a larger percentage of the Soviet population, and it would be easier for the central government to check the influence of any separatist ideas in the minority SSRs. The communist movement would be seen much more positively without the winter war, the annexation of the Baltic States, or the occupation of Eastern Poland. Leaving Galicia under Warsaw's control could weaken national consciousness in the Ukrainian SSR and become a propaganda victory for the Soviets when the region becomes a Polish version of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
 
I am writing a TL basedon Special Bulletin. Its a 1983 made for tv movie where terrorists nuke Charleston SC. We belive that gorbachev would not become leader, instead some hardliner would. We postulate that this extends the unions lifespan untill around 2005 due to a more authoritarian leadership. The collapse would no doubt be a civil war when the people get fed up with the poverty under the hardliners leadership.
 
But in otl, it was the freedom of expression for nationalists that led to the downfall of the USSR

there was no large baltic or ukrainian nationalist-seperatism in the USSR between the 1950s and perestroika, it was Gorbachev allowing nationalism into legitimate discourse legally that caused the fall of the Union

More accurately there was no PUBLIC Baltic or Ukranian separatism in the USSR. The lid wouldn't have come off so easily if the lid was tightly screwed on. The Baltics were always going to separate the first chance they got. The Balts hate the Russians and did since at least as far back as the Stalinist takeover.
 
Last credible POD from my perspective is the Pb choosing to tail end Dubcek. If you think that’s incredible: Zhukov and Mikoyan spoke in favour of the Nagy experiment in the PC on November 2ish.
 
It's probably doable right up until the New Union Treaty. Russia's going to have a bad 1990s regardless, but should bounce back somewhat in the 2000s with the commodity boom.
 
Top