Sergeant Foley
Banned
Translation: Pinochet stays in La Moneda Palace for a long time.
What does that mean for the following:
1.) Patricio Aylwin
2.) Eduardo Frei, Jr.,
3.) Ricardo Lagos
4.) Michelle Bachelet
Bicentennial Man: Ford '76 and Beyond
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
What does that mean for the following:
1.) Patricio Aylwin
2.) Eduardo Frei, Jr.,
3.) Ricardo Lagos
4.) Michelle Bachelet
I believe I specified 1997 in my Beagle War update (IOW - he wins the 1988 plebiscite).
So I'll need to start figuring out probably in the late 1980s what happens to the 4 listed
Sergeant Foley
Banned
The 1988 plebiscite extends Pinochet's Presidency until March 11, 1997? 😕
He outlasted Franco, Peron, Stroessner. Castro still outlasted Pinochet however.
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March 1997 but yeah, those were the terms of the OTL referendum at least
Sergeant Foley
Banned
I meant to say March 11, 1997.
Pinochet is living it up in La Moneda Palace (I've heard Pinochet had the palace reconstructed & rebuilt). I've also read that he used Palacio de Cierro Castillo (the summer residence) as well.
Coming up in my Rocky timeline, I'll be doing a segment on Pinochet sometime around Chapter 3, so be on the lookout for that 😉
This is true. A lot of the members of the junta had grown quite tired of him too
Yes indeed. Actually they preferred a civilian on the ballot to replace Pinochet... And after he lost they did not go along with his attempted power grab since he already had his turn and lost.
But damn, ITTL, he lasts till 1997, that's LONG... Wonder what difference that makes for Chile but I'm happy to see what happens next here!
On another note, regarding Daddy Park's shooting IOTL, some speculation on some fringe circles was that his death was an American plot to stop Park's pursuit of nuclear weapons according to the Wikipedia page...
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Is that said infighting happening behind them?? 😜 thank you!
South America will have some “interesting times” in the Chinese sense in this TL, unfortunately. Of course the trade off is a much more stable Middle East… for now
I’ve heard such conspiracy theories but give them little credence personally
Sergeant Foley
Banned
Here's an article on how the hostilities between Maneka & Sonia escalated, just in case if you plan on cooking up a story in the next chapter:
https://www.dailyo.in/politics/mane...ms-indira-gandhi-saas-bahu/story/1/30320.html
Of Purges and Parchamites
Of Purges and Parchamites
"...fundamentally, the promotion of Soviet socialism must rely on a bedrock of service to the People and the State first, to the Party second, and to the Self after; without the absolute knowledge that the State stands above the baseness of corruption and selfish impulse, the socialism envisioned by Lenin and Stalin cannot be realized. It became fashionable in some places during the latter years of the life of Comrade Brezhnev to claim that the Party has failed the People; this is imperialist, capitalist Western propaganda! It is the inverse - a great number of individuals have rather, through their baseness, immorality and lack of devotion to Marxism-Leninism and the dictatorship of the proletariat, failed the Party..."
- Yuri Andropov before the Presidium, October 1979
Andropov did not wait long before making it plain that there was a new sheriff in the Kremlin. First with the Politburo, then before the whole Presidium and finally in a much-publicized speech before the entirety of the Supreme Soviet, he laid out what would later become one of the three points of the "Three Arrows" of Andropov and his successors: a fierce, robust anti-corruption campaign, one that would (so as to not rock the boat in Moscow too much while there were still prominent intraparty rivals to his position as General Secretary and, starting in December of 1979, Chairmanship of the Presidium) start from the bottom up. In a secret memorandum to the Central Committee that was not declassified until 2007, Andropov outlined what everyone knew to be true but had not been discussed in polite society within the Party up to that point: that much of the Soviet Union's statistics and figures relied upon by the organs of the government were absolute nonsense. In particularly colorful language when discussing this problem with his inner circle in later weeks and months, Andropov dismissively referred to much of what was produced by the "spineless bureaus" as "vapor," "horse excrement" and, most critically, "estimations made with the pathetic eagerness and meagre skill of low-quality typist pool fellatio."
Andropov's assessment put the contradictions of the Soviet system in words for some of its most powerful benefactors for the first time; had he not been a ruthless KGB hardliner tight with men like Ustinov and Gromyko, his time at the peak of the pyramid may well have been short. His solution, however, belied his background as a Brezhnevite and spymaster. The problem with the garbage-in, garbage-out bullshit within the system and the rank corruption it spawned was that the people responsible for it were immoral and thus driving the stagnation everyone could see but everyone had been afraid to speak of. Suddenly, the problems were not only publicly admitted and open to criticism and debate within the confines of the system but had a plain culprit: apparatchiks who had "failed the State" through personal petty corruption and thus threatened the institutions of the Party and its proletarian revolution. Andropov termed what came next as his "Morality Campaign;" it could better be described as a more modernized version of a Stalinesque purge, only without the mass slaughter (prison sentences were, however, quite stern). It was not merely targeted at officials, either; tardiness and truancy on the job new earned stiff penalties from laborers, and the new era was meant to be one of collective responsibility after the myopic, navel-gazing stagnation of the Brezhnev era.
Historians have debated to present day exactly what Andropov's motivations in shaking the foundations of the USSR through his grand, well-publicized anti-corruption campaign were; it certainly ended the Brezhnevite approach to avoiding intraparty conflict and confrontation, and by the end of 1981 the shakeup was so complete that nearly half the Supreme Soviet had turned over even before accounting for deaths and retirements from age, while hundreds of secretaries, ministers and mid-level party officials across the various SSRs had been dismissed, arrested or quietly encouraged to step down. Like shaking rotten apples from a tree, the thirty-month campaign opened the door for thousands of younger party members to rapidly rise in the ranks and form important political connections; this rejuvenation of the body politic of the Party would represent one of the key legacies of Andropov's comparatively brief time as Chairman.
Some historians purport that it was out of a genuine moral and personal revulsion for corruption and belief that for the Soviet Union to continue to maintain its position as a competitor to the capitalist world, it needed to deeply root out the rot that had set in under Brezhnev's broad tolerance for such behavior, and that Andropov was setting an example from the very top. A line of thinking within this school that skews particularly hagiographic in its treatment of Andropov suggests even greater motivations - that Andropov, who starting in 1981 would begin a great reformation of the Soviet economic system, needed to purge the Other scholars of the Soviet period point out, not incorrectly, that such anti-corruption purges have the beneficial side-effect of empowering those doing the purging, by eliminating potential rivals along with the genuine bad apples. Andropov was, after all, perfectly tolerant of the extravagant corruption of men such as Heydar Aliyev or Nursultan Nazarbayev, local officials from the Caucasian and Central Asian SSRs who grew in influence in the early 1980s.
Andropov's early influence and rigidity showed flashes outside of the Soviet borders, too. Though committed to the Brezhnev Doctrine of supporting communist movements and governments at all cost - "zero retrenchment," as he put it - Andropov had little interest in committing more Soviet resources than necessary to the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan between the rural Pashtun-majority Khalq faction of the Marxist government, led by General Nur Mohammed Taraki and his Prime Minister, Hafizullah Amin, a member of the more urban and cosmopolitan Parcham faction that was consolidating power and openly toying with aligning with China and perhaps also Pakistan. Andropov escalated Taraki's requests for military advisors (generally Central Asians) and kit but was reluctant to deploy full regiments or even divisions for peacekeeping; rather, in one of his early and decisive moves as Chairman, he authorized the assassination of Amin and several of his close confidants at Taraki's residence with KGB participation and then sent a large number of KGB agents to Kabul to "assist" in the "stabilization" of the regime. This meant, in effect, the complete purging of the Parcham faction from the Afghan government; the United States, deep in SALT II talks with the Soivets and despite decent relations with the increasingly Soviet-friendly Zulfikar Bhutto in Pakistan, elected to redouble its support for the Iranian junta as its bulwark in Central Asia (particularly as events in the Middle East took a grim turn that December) once it became clear that Islamabad had no desire to support mujahids from the porous border in Peshawar rising up against the Marxist regime in Kabul after Taraki's Saur Revolution had removed Bhutto's enemy Daoud Khan from power.
Unfortunately, even with Amin and the Parchamites gone, the frequent riots in Afghanistan had not abated, but Andropov felt confident - for the time being - that the internal strife within Afghanistan could be controlled and a better course charted...
In my head-canon, I don’t think Comrade Yuri Vladimirovich meant to impugn all fellatio performed by the Soviet typist pool; it is propaganda by the Western imperialist dogs that Soviet typists perform it poorly!
Merely, he is saying that when it is of low-quality, it is akin to the rotten behavior of the low-level corrupt apparatchiks
(Jokes aside. What he’s really getting at here is making a crude comparison of people doing desperate things to please their superiors to keep their jobs/advance their careers. He’s an asshole, IOW, as we know from OTL)
Hello, hello, haven't commented here yet but I have followed this timeline for quite a bit and I just want to commend you, @KingSweden24 for the great work you have done. Thank you for your effort.
Now, onto the latest update itself, it is riveting indeed to see the shift in the USSR that comes with Andropov's meteoric rise to the top. It is very much shown that this KGB man is a ruthless, cold calculator who will stop at nothing to assure the survival of the Soviet state, pulling back from foreign entanglement on the contrary to the Brezhnev doctrine IOTL. Of course, this reform initiative is also out of self-interest (eliminating obstacles to his rule), as shown by his tolerance of certain apparatchiks while purging others, and it is a great detail that to show how its impact is analyzed in the future of TTL. Also, love the touch of crudeness in there, fits very well.
Andropov's consolidation, does mean, sadly, that Eastern Europe will most probably be crushed even more under the iron heel of Soviet oppression than IOTL, but if I think of Solidarity in Poland and etc. I'm just getting ahead of myself.
Overall, the late Soviet period is fascinating in many ways, a reflection of a failing society and a crumbling empire, not completely unsalvageable but very much in trouble. Andropov coming to power earlier than 1982 means that most of his changes will take root more forcefully, creating a more gradual change than Gorbachev's attempt at perestroika and glasnost, which came too much too soon and accelerated the unraveling of the Eastern Bloc. Really, IOTL could have been much worse, Gorby is a key factor in that it collapsed in a mostly peaceful manner, but I digress.
Coming back to the update, the Middle East is going through interesting times indeed, in the Chinese sense of the phrase. A cauldron of seething tension ready to explode at any time is not good news, but for the moment it remains still. Afghanistan will probably remain a Communist dictatorship firmly secured in its urban centers, with trouble from the countryside, much like in the later years of the Soviet-Afghan War before the fall of the USSR iirc. Iran remains the American ally of choice, but its military regime is not very popular and it is uncertain how that may hold up over the next few years. It will be seen with great interest how the region turns out.
Once again, thank you for the effort you put into this. The Seventies are quite the wonderful time period to work with, and your timeline is truly a tidy piece of work. Terrific job you've done.
Now, onto the latest update itself, it is riveting indeed to see the shift in the USSR that comes with Andropov's meteoric rise to the top. It is very much shown that this KGB man is a ruthless, cold calculator who will stop at nothing to assure the survival of the Soviet state, pulling back from foreign entanglement on the contrary to the Brezhnev doctrine IOTL. Of course, this reform initiative is also out of self-interest (eliminating obstacles to his rule), as shown by his tolerance of certain apparatchiks while purging others, and it is a great detail that to show how its impact is analyzed in the future of TTL. Also, love the touch of crudeness in there, fits very well.
Andropov's consolidation, does mean, sadly, that Eastern Europe will most probably be crushed even more under the iron heel of Soviet oppression than IOTL, but if I think of Solidarity in Poland and etc. I'm just getting ahead of myself.
Overall, the late Soviet period is fascinating in many ways, a reflection of a failing society and a crumbling empire, not completely unsalvageable but very much in trouble. Andropov coming to power earlier than 1982 means that most of his changes will take root more forcefully, creating a more gradual change than Gorbachev's attempt at perestroika and glasnost, which came too much too soon and accelerated the unraveling of the Eastern Bloc. Really, IOTL could have been much worse, Gorby is a key factor in that it collapsed in a mostly peaceful manner, but I digress.
Coming back to the update, the Middle East is going through interesting times indeed, in the Chinese sense of the phrase. A cauldron of seething tension ready to explode at any time is not good news, but for the moment it remains still. Afghanistan will probably remain a Communist dictatorship firmly secured in its urban centers, with trouble from the countryside, much like in the later years of the Soviet-Afghan War before the fall of the USSR iirc. Iran remains the American ally of choice, but its military regime is not very popular and it is uncertain how that may hold up over the next few years. It will be seen with great interest how the region turns out.
Once again, thank you for the effort you put into this. The Seventies are quite the wonderful time period to work with, and your timeline is truly a tidy piece of work. Terrific job you've done.
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Ah! What a kind thing to say and get to read late in the evening after a long day. I appreciate your kind words and I'm glad you're enjoying BCM so much!
No, he is certainly not
Pleasure is mine, pal. It's always good to see projects like this, for me in particular as the late 20th Century fascinates me, but also in how a rather common PoD like Ford winning can get utilised to lead to such diverse outcomes, much as the Panama War surprised me slightly (would have expected it from a Reagan administration from the get go, but your progression of events rendered it quite plausible for Ford's actions) and also how I cringed at Pinochet becoming a "hero" due to the victory against Argentina, which is good writing because it demonstrates how history is rarely kumbaya and how the story beat did its purpose well, amongst other examples. I found both the original snippets and the new longer entries to be rather enjoyable to breeze through. As always, I admire the labor done by writers, thus I congratulate you and will patiently await for the next update.
I'm honored! There'll be quite a bit more in this TL to come; I'm trying to wrap up the 19th century in my main TL, Cinco de Mayo, and then spend some time getting through the 1980 election and other events here too so I can conclude this story's Part I to my satisfaction (each part will coincide, roughly, with a Presidential term; Part I covers 1977-1981).
Sounds great! I'll probably give Cinco de Mayo a read one of these days. Pretty interesting that it is split in Parts; makes sense to set clear narrative end goals. Take your time, no worries.