Could a civil war in the Soviet Union in the late 80s to early 90s be an entertaining TL?

Imagine if the dissolution USSR was not as peaceful as it was in our TL. Could such a TL be interesting and even entertaining? Do we get to see NATO or even Chinese troops on Russian soil fighting die hard communists or even fascist Russians? Do terrorist groups try to steal nuclear weapons from Russia? If so are the special forces of various nations successful in stopping them? Does the actions of this TL lead to the formation of an organization like Rainbow Six or even GDI? Could America and it's allies have been able to fight a two front war in the Middle East and Korea in 1991? Would you like to see a TL where Rwanda is prevented by US and European military intervention?
 
Last edited:
It would be incredibly dangerous, mostly because the post-Soviet factions would have potentially easy access to nuclear material, and any invasion could trigger retaliation with all those nukes in the silos.

It would be a very "interesting" timeline, but very much in the Chinese sense of the word. It would only be "entertaining" if you like watching from another universe over. Or if you like darker settings.
 
Agree with Saint here. Unless you want it to be a Cockroaches Win TL, you'd need to find a way for them to have a Civil War were the Nukes somehow don't get involved. The only plausible way for that would be to have all but the most powerful faction so small that there's no real challange involved in beating them and certainly need for international help.

You might want to consider putting the Civil War in one of the Warsaw Pacts states instead. One of their client regimes due to having made some economic reforms compared to OTL, more control and just more luck doesn't get thrown out as soon as the threat of the Red Army is gone, but still too little legitimacy to hold on as before.
 
Was recently reading Stephen Kotkin’s Armageddon Averted about the fall of the Soviet Union and be explicitly says that it was very probable that the collapse would have triggered a Yugoslavia scenario but encompassing most of the former Soviet bloc, except it didn’t and states formed relatively peacefully. A timeline where they didn’t would be very interesting, I would definitely read it!
 
Imagine if the dissolution USSR was not as peaceful as it was in our TL. Could such a TL be interesting and even entertaining? Do we get to see NATO or even Chinese troops on Russian soil fighting die hard communists or even fascist Russians? Do terrorist groups try to steal nuclear weapons from Russia? If so are the special forces of various nations successful in stopping them? Does the actions of this TL lead to the formation of an organization like Rainbow Six or even GDI? Could America and it's allies have been able to fight a two front war in the Middle East and Korea in 1991? Would you like to see a TL where Rwanda is prevented by US and European military intervention?
There would be also ethnic conflicts within this civil war.
 
If the central USSR govenrment collapses or just becomes a faction among factions, you wold get intervention from NATO and perhaps China to 'secure' as many nuclear weaopns as possible to prevent them from being used or stolen by third parties (and then used wherever). Perhaps NATO and China would issue a declaration where they make it clear to annihilate whoever used nukes first? In other words: kill each other in conventional ways if you want, but use a nuke and you're toast.
 
Top