Challenge: USSR Survives

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Realistically its not that hard to make the USSR survive, Its fall wasnt envitable as everyone talks about. Yes it was flawed system but it was it always a flawed one. To make it survive requires small changes causing rather than trying to reform it cracks down hard on the internal factors and plays aggressive around the time of the gulf war. If they can drive up oil prices and the cost of other mineral resourses it streghtens the Soviet hand while slowing Western economic growth.
Several factors came together at the time, small changes to its internal politics and responses butterfly away collapse.

Agreed.

I remember thinking during the oil price spike caused by the war, that if Gorbechev had held on just a little longer...

Hell, just let Iraq hold Kuwaitt and you've got a dangerously aggressive Saddam with a lot more money to buy Soviet hardware.

More money for guns, more trouble in the ME, higher prices for oil, more money for oil (both for Saddam and USSR), more money for more guns, more prestige for Saddam, more ambition for Saddam, more trouble, more guns,

repeat and simmer until oil prices have new HIGER floor, Iraq's a powerfull military and economic partner for the USSR, the USSR is recieving much more for it's oil, the West is sucking because of higher energy costs...
 
Agreed.

I remember thinking during the oil price spike caused by the war, that if Gorbechev had held on just a little longer...

Hell, just let Iraq hold Kuwaitt and you've got a dangerously aggressive Saddam with a lot more money to buy Soviet hardware.

More money for guns, more trouble in the ME, higher prices for oil, more money for oil (both for Saddam and USSR), more money for more guns, more prestige for Saddam, more ambition for Saddam, more trouble, more guns,

repeat and simmer until oil prices have new HIGER floor, Iraq's a powerfull military and economic partner for the USSR, the USSR is recieving much more for it's oil, the West is sucking because of higher energy costs...
Cue WWIII...
 
Cue WWIII...

Maybe.

Depends what happens next.

Does Saddam invade Saudia Arabia?

Or does he just intimidate them?

Does Saddam invade Iran again? That could be good for the USSR, with a tanker war and more guns bought.

Or does the US finally go nuclear in a big way, eventually reducing the importance of the ME?

Or does Saddam try to buy enough friends to become teh Pan-arabic leader. Hell, depending what the money getts spent on this might not be to bad. (Probably not though;))
 
There have been similar threads about this topic and many agree that Brezhnev did nothing to help the Soviet Union's stagnating economy. Many seem to agree that if someone like Alexei Kosygin had taken power instead then it would be likely that we would see a surviving USSR today.
I agree on that. Another major problem is the arms race. Brezhnev (albeit it wasn't Brezhnev's doing but on of the party leaders who's name and position escapes me now) saw a massive arms build up within the USSR which put it lightyears ahead of the US in the number of nukes and so forth it had. Problem was that cost a lot and the Soviets couldn't well afford it.

I also think the Soviets would have survived had Khrushchev not been ousted from power in 1964. Was he eccentric? Yes, and one of the larger reasons he was ousted was because he was becoming an embarrassment to many party members. Did all his reforms work? No. But many did, and the air of openness and civil liberties and democratization he created was enjoyed by the masses and that thawing is often cited as a factor which inspired that generation, when it took power under Gorbachev and including Gorbachev himself, to democratize the USSR and reintroduce that spirit.
What a complete load! Gorbachev's reforms could have worked if he didn't have to rush them.
The problem was, once Brezhnev took power, there became a notion among the Soviet leadership that you couldn't reform the USSR, and thus they turned back the clock and removed the leaps in democratization made by Khrushchev. And when democratization did come in the latter 1980's, it was far too quick and at a time when the USSR couldn't handle it (taking note of a bad economy and internal dissent). I often wonder what may have happened had those same reforms made by Gorbachev come with Khrushchev, and taken course over several decades between then and 1991, rather than half a decade as happened under Gorbachev. Or if those reforms even came with a reformer who took the place of Brezhnev, and those if reforms took place even in just the roughly two decades between 1970 and 1991.

Do you want a WWIII with that, Emperor Norton?:rolleyes::p
Hopefully no. I don't see World War III as inevitable between the superpowers if they continue to exist in a bipolar world. Especially if detente takes hold and Cold war competition becomes less tense.
 
I was referring to a non-nuclear WWIII, like in Tom Clancy's novel, Red Storm. That, and I was being sarcastic.
 
Yeah, you could always have the 1969 assassination attempt on him by Viktor Ilyin succeed. And then maybe you could get a reformer like Kosygin as General Secretary. Not sure how much that'd help though, I'm no expert on the subject.

Yes, I think Brezhnev being assassinated in 1969 with Kosygin taking over as General Secretary (in addition to his historical role as Premier) would be the way to go. With Podgorny as Chairman of the Presidium still the pairing of Kosygin and Podgorny could well go on until Kosygin's death in 1980 which would give Kosygin 11 years to effect the type of reforms he was in favour of but without Brezhnev to stymie them.

Since Andropov seems to have been of a similar mould, I suspect Kosygin might have eventually preferred him and since I see no reason for one of Andropov's backers (Suslov) to not retain a role under Kosygin, Andropov would probably still have made it into the politburo in the 1970s.

Kosygin dies in 1980 and the General Secretary and Premier positions are filled by temps unless Andropov gets elected earlier. If Andropov dies as in OTL then there might be a bit of convergence with Chernenko taking over as in OTL for a year followed by Gorbachev or perhaps Gorbachev (who was apparently Andropov's preferred successor) would get the job in 1984.

By then there would have been 14 years of changes to the USSR's economic history, so Gorbachev may well just have been continuing economic reforms set in motion by Kosygin over a decade before.

Alternatively, Romanov (who also attracted Andropov's attention and apparently supported Andropov's reforms) could have gotten the top job in 1984 or 1985. That would have made for interesting newspaper headlines....
"Romanov rule in Russia again".

Either way though by 1988 there would have been basically 2 decades of the USSR following a different economic track and possibly being able to provide consumer goods to its citizens (Kosygin emphasised consumer goods production and light industry instead of the heavy industry and military production in place at the time). The baltic states would probably still eventually agitate for secession if either Gorbachev or Romanov introduce political freedoms but I can't see the rest of the republics doing so since the rest of them supported continued unification in OTL in the All-Union referendum (and in a number of those that did not partake in the referendum there was support in some unofficial and official polls apparently). And this was in OTL where Gorbachev's reforms hadn't yet worked to the extent he was hoping for and where citizens still had difficulty with daily life. In a TTL with Kosygin-Andropov-Gorbachev/Romanov as the main actors the daily life might be better for a lot of them and the support for the USSR would be higher than in OTL.
 
Hmmm

Im curious why theres an assumption that an aggressive Soviet foreign policy would lead to WWIII. Where saying aggressive not war-orientated. Could you really see the US government risking a nuclear war over Kuwait? The end of the US of A because oil is slightly more expensive. It was only when they got Soviet agreement on the issue did they decide to confront Saddam so readily.

Economically without the fall of the USSR and communist powers there is no 1990's boom (no german reunification, no lower oil prices, no markets opening u, etc.). Rather with the US military spending flattening out, rising material prices and geopoloitacal tensions your more likely going to see a small bust cycle start.
 
The easiest way to acchive it is yet another crackdown and in the long run NorthKoreanisation.
 
On September 19, 1980, a Titan-II missile caught fire and exploded inside its silo near Conway, Arkansas. The 20-ton blast door was blown off the top of the silo, and the 5 MT warhead ended up in a field 200 yards away.

POD: somehow it goes off. Although the W-53 warhead is designed to be "two-point safe", let's say a design flaw in the arming circuitry fools the warhead into thinking it's arrived at Novosibirsk (it did just undergo an untested scenario involving rapid acceleration, freefall, then abrupt deceleration...) wherefore it performs a full-yield detonation.

This is bad. The fallout from a 5 MT groundburst would contaminate a large swath of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. FEMA would have to evacuate a vast Chernobyl-like exclusion zone right across America's breadbasket. Not a good end to Carter's administration or a good start to Reagan's.

Several thousand people die that night; and millions more will be forced to abandon their homes and businesses forever (including Wal-Mart CEO Sam Walton). There's not going to be a Reagan Recovery, nor a big increase in military spending anytime in the 80's; we'll be stuck at post-Vietnam levels for the forseeable future.

Besides the huge economic hit, it's going to be politically impossible to put Pershing-II's in Europe. There's going to be a lot of pressure for bilateral or even unilateral disarmament. In any case, all our Titan-II's at home will need to be taken offline while the Feynman Commission tries to figure out how in the hell this happened.

By examining the crater size, the Soviets are going to figure out that a well-known formula (in Glasstone's 1977 book) for yield-vs-crater depth is wrong, and that our existing warheads probably can't take out their buried command-and-control bunkers.
 
What about some sort of social corporatism under Gorbachev? Have the Eastern Bloc break from the Soviets, so it is back to socialism in one country. The Soviets would allow social liberalization, and restore some private property and enterprise, while retaining control over some parts of the economy. Given, this would probably not allow any free-market frenzy in Eastern Europe, but when is that a bad thing?
 
With a POD of December 1963 (I'll give that leeway since Khrushchev can play a role and that would allow more time to save his butt), my challenge is to avoid the fall of the Soviet Union and have it live past 1991. Bonus if the Cold war is till ongoing, though detente isn't a problem.



Most people are WAY to negative about the soviet Union and economics. The fall of the USSR wasnt even really about economics (Gorbatchevs Perestroika and Glasnost caused hardship). After the liberalisation, the Baltics left the Union. The union-referendum in 1991 proved that 76% of Soviet citizens wanted to keep the union and a reformed version of soviet-socialism.

Then the Alma-Ata treaty was signed, by leading politicians of all SSRs, dissolving the Union.

The USSR had a quite good economic growth untill 1985, when Gorbatchev took control over the central comitee.

My POD is in 1985, as Gorbatchev is beaten by the hardliner Victor Grishin.

Grishin was Gorbatchevs main rival, along with Grigory Romanov (who got along with Grishin quite well).

The new general secretaries hardline pollicies would prevent the SED party-coup in east germany, so honecker stays in power. The wall doesnt fall, but the SED by this point, allowed visits to the west mire easily, allready.

There wouldnt be massive protests in this TL, allthough some voices for more moderate pollicies would still exist, everywhere in the eastern block, primarily in east Germany and the USSR.

In 1992 Grishin dies, and is succeeded by Romanov, who at this point is the obvious choice.

Romanov was a good economist, so the soviet economy remains stable.

Most people also underestimate the peoples trust in eastern bloc governments. However the communist governments were mostly popular alomg the populace.

So the cold war continues. Im not going into detail about how things could go on. But this is my guess.
 
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