With a POD of any time after the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991, change history so that the current animosity between the American and Russian governments does not exist, and that there is collaboration and widespread friendship instead.
With a POD of any time after the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991, change history so that the current animosity between the American and Russian governments does not exist, and that there is collaboration and widespread friendship instead.
Another factor might be a China going rogue after 1989 instead of trying it's best to integrate into global economy.
Was the U.S. government involved in the shock doctrine that devastated 90s Russia?
From what I know, US-Russia relations were fairly good under Russian President Yeltsin
From what I’ve read, Russia privatized their industries far, far too quickly, leading to an Oligarchy.
From what I know Yeltsin-era Russia-US relations were just decent-not great, sorry if I gave that impression. Whatever the case-they were certainly much better than Putin's Russia-US relations currently. I'll admit that I'm not the most knowledgable about Russian economy post-Soviet collapse, I was just sharing how I thought it was a big mistake that the US did not try and help Russia a lot economically after the fall of the Soviet Union.Not really. The US never wanted to deal with Yeltsin and if Bush could have kept Gorbachev in power, he would have. And relations only got worse as time went on. On the Russian side, the US was pressuring him to do things their way, while actively making that way harder for Russia and on the US side, Yeltsin was a drunkard and a nationalist.
They did so under US pressure. Indeed, that the Russians slowed the process down from the speed the US preferred, which led to predictable grumbling from US commentators. Of course, the US had also made shock therapy unworkable because the US Congress was not willing to loan Russia the hundreds of billions that would be required to re-capitalize Russia. Instead Russia got the shock, but not the therapy.
Add this to continuation of NATO (which the Russians have always remembered started as an anti-Soviet alliance), the expansion of NATO into the former Eastern Block, bringing in countries fearful of Russian attack (which makes NATO look like it's now an anti-Russian alliance), and US obstructionism when Russia tried to integrate into the Capitalist world infrastructure.
At the end of the day, the lesson Russia learned from the Yeltsin years was "don't drink and drive the country and don't trust the US further than you can throw them, because they're still fighting the cold war". (Not to say that the US doesn't have legitimate grievances with Russia - but I reckon people will be more familiar with them, hence my focus on the Russian side of the story.)
Also, the privatization didn't lead to oligarchy - the oligarchy was already emerging during Gorbachev's last reforms. The laws allowing private companies to be set up were poorly written, so lots of enterprise managers set up "private companies" that asset stripped their state-owned workplaces and if their employees wanted jobs, they'd have to put in extra hours (which weren't well paid, if paid at all) in the "private company". It's better to say that the shock therapy encouraged this Oligarch-formation process, rather than started it.
And of course, the enterprise managers had so much power because of Brezhnev's reforms, that allowed so many to remain in place for long enough that they gained more power over the enterprises they managed than the centralized state did. And the Tsarist-vintage patronage networks that were the real organizing principal of the Soviet Union didn't help either.
For an unusual PoD: how about if the Soviet Union falls apart, but Gorbachev wins the power struggle with Yeltsin? That would certainly lead to better US-Russian relations in the 90s. Though there's enough time that relations could cool to OTL's levels.
fasquardon
From what I know Yeltsin-era Russia-US relations were just decent-not great, sorry if I gave that impression. Whatever the case-they were certainly much better than Putin's Russia-US relations currently. I'll admit that I'm not the most knowledgable about Russian economy post-Soviet collapse, I was just sharing how I thought it was a big mistake that the US did not try and help Russia a lot economically after the fall of the Soviet Union.