Communist Russia after all the fall of the USSR

If there was enough support and competence within the communist system in Russia, I doubt the USSR would have collapsed.
 
A good possibility actually. The referendum for dissolving the USSR was disregarded, and the results were actually in favor of maintaining the Union. Depending on who you ask, if Yeltsin didn't stuff the ballot box or displayed his inability to run the Russian Federation, Zyuganov as President is likely.
 
there are a few opportunities for this, IMO, both of which take place during the yeltsin years.

during his first term as president, yeltsin was trying to change the constitution, but was opposed by the supreme soviet and the congress of people's deputies. yeltsin declared the congress disbanded by decree, but they refused to accept this and instead declared that yeltsin was removed from office. for a while this was the status quo, with both of them acting independently. there were street protests against yeltsin and his privatization/neoliberal economic plans, and there were clashes with police which in some cases became running street battles. the army ended up siding with yeltsin, however. they shelled the parliament, killed a bunch of people, and secured yeltsin's power.

however, we can posit a situation in which the armed forces go the other way, siding with parliament over yeltsin. while this does not on its own lead directly to a communist russia, it certainly derails and likely rolls back the neoliberal changes which were already starting to play havoc with the standard of living in russia. it also leaves in existence structures of soviet government, which are manned by people who are not exactly friends of capitalism. so that's one way.

the other way I could see is if the 96 elections go to zyuganov and the communists rather than reelection for yeltsin. how this could be accomplished: somehow negating the effect of western interference in the election or the fraud perpetuated by the yeltsin camp, or securing such a huge majority for zyuganov that it is impossible to ignore. in my opinion, the former is more doable here. zyuganov had a solid amount of supporters, but nothing like the landside necessary for the latter option. so if the 96 elections are completely free of interference and fraud, you could see a communist president. I think there was a brief TL here on that subject a while back, but I don't think it really got off the ground.
 
the 1993 Russian Constitutional Crisis began as
President Boris Yeltsin dissolved the legislature: Congress of People's Deputies and its Supreme Soviet.
using the results of a referendum of April 1993 to justify his actions.
the Congress elect Vize President Alexander Rutskoy to replace Yeltsin
but in October durnig brutal street fighting in Moscow the Army decides for Yeltsin

WI Alexander Rutskoy a Hero of the Soviet Union, had persuaded the Army to join him!
would be now a Communist Russia ?

another interesting fact is that Yeltsin had psychological problems next to his alcoholism
some say he was manic-depressive, others say he suffered from an unspecified neurological disorder that affected his sense of balance.
there were unexplained "attacts" on Yeltsin who could be interpreted as attempted suicides
Yeltsin claime he was thrown from a brigde or in another case he was stabt with a scissors in chest
source: at German TV Doku serie called "Die Dunkle Seite der Macht" in eng "The dark side of [political] power"

is this info usefull for WI to get Yeltsin out of the way ?
 
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Zugunov (sp?) winning the later election might work, although I think the most radical of his plans was to nationalize the vodka industry and use that to pay for various projects.

Communist, yes, but he didn't seem totalitarian.
 
If there were no August Coup in 1991, I could see the Communist system existing in some form, consisting of Russia, Belarus, and some parts of Central Asia.
 
Zugunov (sp?) winning the later election might work, although I think the most radical of his plans was to nationalize the vodka industry and use that to pay for various projects.

Communist, yes, but he didn't seem totalitarian.

This was what I was thinking too. I further agree that he was not aspiring for a return to totalitarianism. However, I think that he would want to rein in the "baron" system now present in Russia.
 
It's quite possible, it would really be more a matter of engaging in the proper political maneuvering than anything else. The Communist Party of Russia is still today the second largest political organization in the nation, even Stalin's contemporary approval ratings are actually into the 30's. The Soviet Union and socialism never really took any significant blow to their popularity, it was really little more than an unfortunate turn of events which led to the fall.
 
If you're willing to take the OTL Russian Federation electing the communist party I could still see it happening over the next few years... Not that hard IMO.
 
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