Could the Soviet Union survive to Present Day?

Brezhnev's reign didn't cause the stagnation of the USSR, the seeds of the collapse were sown decades before. Stalin's economic policies were the real cause, collectivisation annihalated Soviet agriculture and the massive expansion of heavy industry was practically useless in the post-industrial world...apart from when you want to make tanks.

In case you haven't looked up Chinese steel production figures recently, they are at the moment at 500 million tonnes per year. That's, in case you don't know, approximately 1500 % higher then Soviet production at the death of Stalin.

I mean seriously, do people still buy into this post-industrial stuff? From were you think you get the food on your table, the bus you rides to work and the road that it moves on? Production.
 
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Wolfpaw

Banned
Maybe if you had the Anti-Party Group oust Khrushchev in 1957. This would not only get rid of Brezhnev (he was a Khrushchev supporter back then, so likely to be purged) but lead to a Molotov-Kaganovich-Malenkov triumvirate. While they were hard-liners, they actually agreed with some of Khrushchev's policies; they just didn't like how he went about implementing them or how he shook things up (and Molotov and Kaganovich were pissed for him bad-mouthing Stalin).

So you get more gradual Khrushchev-like reforms like better management of the Virgin Lands Campaign (which Molotov, Kaganovich, and Malenkov were always wary of) so no massive agricultural setback, and a more balanced shift from heavy industry to consumer goods.

However, we must bear in mind that these were ultimately the Party hard-liners. Deadly purges would not disappear as they did under Khrushchev, the State would probably be Brezhnev-era repressive if not worse.

Foreign policy-wise, they are going to be way more anti-Western. So don't hold your breath on arms reductions or a whole lot of cooperation (though a lot of that depends on how long Molotov hangs around; he was always the more hawkish of the bunch. IOTL he lived until 1986). The Sino-Soviet split may be averted somewhat, though they would probably drift apart over time, though perhaps not enough to allow for a strong anti-Soviet/Sino-American relationship like the one Nixon built.
 
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In case you haven't looked up Chinese steel production figures recently, they are at the moment at 500 million tonnes per year. That's, in case you don't know, approximately 1500 % higher then Soviet production at the death of Stalin.

Yeah, and China is supplying steel to the United States and the entire world. The USSR wasn't. The industry isn't run by Gosplan either.
 
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