AHC: With a post June 1989 PoD, have the USSR and Warsaw Pact last another 10 years

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Is it possible to add more years of life, up to and including a decade or more, to the USSR and Warsaw Pact?

By surviving "Warsaw Pact" I don't mean all original members need to remain in a military alignment with the USSR (for example, Poland or Hungary might drop out) but at a minimum, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria remain in the alliance.

How could Soviet and Central European Communism halt its own disintegration at this late stage?

Will the Chinese, newly estranged (in political terms) from the west over suppression of the Tiananmen Square movement, become as friendly with the ATL Soviet Union and remains of the "Soviet bloc" as they did with post-communist Russia during the 1990s and beyond?

Or was OTL China only willing to purchase arms from Russia, settle territorial disputes along status quo lines, form the Shanghai Cooperation organization and collaborate with Russia more in international fora because the full collapse of the USSR and Soviet Communist Party rendered Russia much more harmless?

In this context, it is important to remember that in OTL, the PRC had a degree of military collaboration with the US during the 1980s and was engaged in proxy struggles against the USSR in Afghanistan and Cambodia up to 1989.
 
If you want the Pact to survive, not just the USSR, then I suspect the only way is an early and successful coup in Moscow to kick out Gorbachev and the reformers, followed by a massive military clampdown. It was Gorbachev's stated unwillingness to use Soviet military forces to support East European communist regimes that gave the peoples of those nations the belief that they really could seize their own destiny this time, which then led to a domino effect. Remove Gorbachev and his "Sinatra Doctrine", have the hardliners send tanks into Hungary to seal the border with Austria and make menacing eyes at any other Pact nation that might think about relaxing the grip of Marxism-Leninism, and it's possible Eastern Europe could remain imprisoned under Moscow's thumb for as long as the Soviet leadership remains willing and able to enforce it. So basically the Tienanmen response on a continental scale. Another decade or so could be possible in those circumstances.
It probably would be necessary to ensure all members remained within the Pact, as any one being allowed to leave would risk signalling that there is a door to exit that might be opened again in the future. A hardline leadership would want to crush that hope as quickly as possible, so no Polexit from the Pact (not to mention if Poland did leave, the Warsaw Pact would be left with a pretty stupid-sounding name...)
Improved relations with the PRC would probably be tricky in this situation, as it was Gorbachev who initiated the warmer relations in the 1980s. Then again, the Chinese Communist leadership weren't exactly impressed with the way his visit inspired their own uprising. Overall, I imagine both sides would remain wary of the other - not as hostile as at the height of the Split, but not exactly bosom buddies either.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Remove Gorbachev and his "Sinatra Doctrine", have the hardliners send tanks into Hungary to seal the border with Austria and make menacing eyes at any other Pact nation that might think about relaxing the grip of Marxism-Leninism, and it's possible Eastern Europe could remain imprisoned under Moscow's thumb for as long as the Soviet leadership remains willing and able to enforce it. So basically the Tienanmen response on a continental scale. Another decade or so could be possible in those circumstances.
It probably would be necessary to ensure all members remained within the Pact, as any one being allowed to leave would risk signalling that there is a door to exit that might be opened again in the future. A hardline leadership would want to crush that hope as quickly as possible, so no Polexit from the Pact (not to mention if Poland did leave, the Warsaw Pact would be left with a pretty stupid-sounding name...)

The reform processes were quite far along at this point in both Hungary and Poland. Would the most sustainable policy just be a hardliner crackdown and occupation on Hungary and Poland and a rolling back of all reforms? Or would it be things like containment, border closures and deterrence against any geopolitical defections by Poland, while leaving the two some internal breathing space?

If Hardliners from the USSR to East Germany did a crackdown like this, they would piss off the west alot and dash expectations that had been raised (diplomatically worse than never having the expectations raised in the first place). Plus, there was little money to be made there unlike in China.

Improved relations with the PRC would probably be tricky in this situation, as it was Gorbachev who initiated the warmer relations in the 1980s. Then again, the Chinese Communist leadership weren't exactly impressed with the way his visit inspired their own uprising. Overall, I imagine both sides would remain wary of the other - not as hostile as at the height of the Split, but not exactly bosom buddies either.

Perhaps the European crackdown far overshadows Tiananmen, and MFN isn't even a rhetorical/political controversy in US politics in the 1990s because the US foreign policy elite is wary of driving the USSR and China closer together.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
By 1991, the Chinese were obviously cheering on the makers of the August Coup in the USSR and condemning Gorbachev's political reforms as dangerous.

However, had there been a coup against Gorbachev in 1985 or 1986, the Chinese probably would have been more worried that hardliners of the day would restore a hardline against China and beef up commitments to other clients in Asia.

In other words, early in the Gorbachev era, the Chinese probably appreciated Gorbachev's moves to relax tensions in Asia and retrench the USSR's military and geopolitical position in Asia more than they feared the bad example of his reforms. But, by the end of his rule, they feared the bad example of his reforms more than anything else.

I wonder when the inflection point occurred. Perhaps after Tiananmen pointed out the dangers of internal unrest? Perhaps earlier? Perhaps with the collapse of Warsaw Pact regimes in 1989, which both demonstrated fragility of communist governments and massively reduced the USSR's geopolitical weight and potential threat?
 
Top