Challenge: Communist Eastern Europe and capitalist Russia (POD after 1945)

Thande

Donor
Weird thought I had earlier. The challenge is to get to a situation by 2000 whereby Russia is no longer communist - probably not a democracy, but some kind of statist capitalist one-party state, a bit like where it seems to be heading now... - but Eastern Europe is still made up of People's Republics. Presumably, the Eastern European states have banded together in an alliance, and perhaps are aligned with a China that stayed full-blooded communist.

How could we get there?
 
Seems near ASB, though maybe you could have 1950's revolutions in Eastern Europe be more successful and have moderate communist states, while the Soviet Union doesn't reform and eventually breaks up, probably sooner due to lack of European allies
 

ninebucks

Banned
Perhaps if the Soviets decide that they shan't roll the tanks in if things look a bit shakey in other Communist countries. This might, in the short term, result in some socialist regimes being overthrown, but I don't really think it will result in any kind of reverse domino effect like we saw in the 80s and 90s - the intelligentsia is still solidly socialist at this time, and communism won't be seen simply as an instrument of Russian imperialism.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union turns its attention south, perhaps involving itself in a terrible war in Iran. The propaganda about the Warsaw Pact being a free association becomes much more believable as the Soviets can't really militarily hold Eastern Europe. Starting in the Balkans, communist states start to form their own bloc seperate from Moscow.

The Iran War ruins the USSR, and by the late 70s, market liberalisation and courting the West becomes the only avenue left for the Kremlin to follow in order to balance the books. The Warsaw Pact, not feeling anywhere near as much disatisfaction with socialism as OTL, remains socialist.

This liberalisation strikes the Baltic Republics, and in the early 80s, they are granted independence, provided they remain confederated with each other. Around the same time, the WP renames itself the European Peoples' Community, to mirror the European Economic Community on the other side of the curtain.
 
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