ThePest179
Banned
Considering the massive disorder and bloodletting that occured during and after the breakup of the Soviet Union, would it be possible to make the collapse more peaceful?
DBWI/PC: More peaceful Soviet collapse?
- Thread starter ThePest179
- Start date
You'd have to get Brezhnev out of the picture. Maybe have him die during his health scare in the early 80s. Him and his gang if neo-Stalinists were dead set (excuse the pun) on keeping the USSR together. There was a faction of moderate reformers that existed during the time, but given how Brezy flipped his shit when the Politburo suggested military expenses bad to be cut, it's an uphill battle for sure
I don't think, with the crazies at the top during the collapse, that the Soviets are going to break up, like say, Czechoslovakia.
Perhaps have a more liberal premier? There was that one guy, Gorbachev, I believe, but he died in that 'incident' before the election....
How does a nation with 30,000 nuclear weapons peacefully collapse?
I mean, let's face the facts here--the use of nuclear weapons against "Hostile Arsenals" wasn't great--but there is a major difference against a disarming strike against Stalinist, Jihadist and Pro-China Opportunist Warlords.
A death toll of 2 million doesn't seem entirely out of line for what was accomplished. Think about what would have happened if Moscow, and its 8.5 Million People, suffered nuclear attack!
We do realize how close Russia came to facing nuclear attack against its CITIES, right?
I mean, let's face the facts here--the use of nuclear weapons against "Hostile Arsenals" wasn't great--but there is a major difference against a disarming strike against Stalinist, Jihadist and Pro-China Opportunist Warlords.
A death toll of 2 million doesn't seem entirely out of line for what was accomplished. Think about what would have happened if Moscow, and its 8.5 Million People, suffered nuclear attack!
We do realize how close Russia came to facing nuclear attack against its CITIES, right?
Yes, but it would have to been under Gorbachev.....who died in 1986 under very suspicious circumstances(maybe a week right after Brezhnev resigned, interestingly enough); Alexander Shelepin, though the top favorite of Brezhnev's, was absolutely terrible at keeping the country together at all, and his poor handling of the economic meltdown of '87-'88 is one of the reasons why even Siberia broke away eventually. But at least with the Stalinists permanently discredited, it gave the Russian successors a chance to actually make things work.....and most of them did(well, except for Turkmenistan, and Belarus, which remained under Lukashenko until 2009.).
Also, what might have become of Vladimir Putin? Before he became the world's most infamous free-lance terrorist in the mid '90s(his last job before he died in late 2010, was working with the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, of all organizations-remember the Atlanta Metro bombings in Sept.?), his career was in the KGB. If Mr. Putin had embarked on a political career, would he have gained some influence?
ThePest179
Banned
The current Russian government is so Stalinist that it borders on North Korea levels.
Largely because they didn't get involved in the rest of the former USSR.
The Russian OBL/Amon Goeth? His fierce nationalism post-collapse might propel him into a position of power, but there's no shortage of men just like him.
Oh yeah. After San Francisco, there was a real fear that the nukes would fly.
You could perhaps butterfly away Quayle telling the Arabs to amp up oil production. Keeping oil prices high might let the USSR hobble along until the Stalinist clique died out (which given Gorbachev was the only leading member of the politburo who was born after the revolution, isn't a good sign) and some sort of reform could happen.
Still, the Soviet Union was maaaaaasively boned in the eighties. They were going down somehow
Still, the Soviet Union was maaaaaasively boned in the eighties. They were going down somehow
Gorbachev seems to be the only guy really capable, but there's not a lot of internal information about him anymore since the destruction of a lot of documents in the archives thanks to the Neo-Stalinist clique. The only other thing I can think of is Kosygin fighting off Brezhnev, and perhaps holds out a bit longer health-wise.
I think Kosygin could help transition to a more open society, and an actual representative federation. That way you wouldn't have all the republics going their own way, and a lot of the violence in Central Asia and the Caucus. The Chechen insurgency is still going on to this day.
I'm sure they'd also find a way to deal with the Warsaw Pact being dissolved as well instead of having the Russians being murdered and rank and file security forces mutinying. Probably no iconic images of Honecker being strung up on a lamppost by rebel soldiers.
It's been a very difficult situation all around and it raises a lot of questions of what happens when a nation experiences massive political upheaval with a large nuclear arsenal and several vassal states that don't want to be that way.
Russia in particular has always been vulnerable to collapse. It is a vast nation, and to my understanding Gorbachev would have been an agent of that collapse. We need to face the facts with Gorbachev--the man was mostly disinterested in maintaining vassal states in Eastern Europe. Many of the reforms that he could have made amount to a negotiated surrender during the Cold War.
Gorbachev wouldn't have prevented the Soviet Collapse. Gorbachev would have directly instigated it. No, he wouldn't have to use nuclear weapons against Russian nuclear stockpiles or fight a giant, confused conflict for years.
The hard reality is that the heirs of Stalin would need to use his methods to ensure his empire existed. But those methods are themselves extremely cruel, and AllConnect.com keeps reporting stories of terrible things going on in Siberia.
Russia in particular has always been vulnerable to collapse. It is a vast nation, and to my understanding Gorbachev would have been an agent of that collapse. We need to face the facts with Gorbachev--the man was mostly disinterested in maintaining vassal states in Eastern Europe. Many of the reforms that he could have made amount to a negotiated surrender during the Cold War.
Gorbachev wouldn't have prevented the Soviet Collapse. Gorbachev would have directly instigated it. No, he wouldn't have to use nuclear weapons against Russian nuclear stockpiles or fight a giant, confused conflict for years.
The hard reality is that the heirs of Stalin would need to use his methods to ensure his empire existed. But those methods are themselves extremely cruel, and AllConnect.com keeps reporting stories of terrible things going on in Siberia.
Caesar Biden
Banned
Nominally, sure. That doesn't mean his rule applies to any of the dominant warlords of the area.
It's simply not worth it for Lebed to try to clean up Siberia when he's still getting European Russia in order. Especially with the Wars fought with Chechnya and Dagestan. As much as Western media likes to paint him as an efficient strongman keeping Russia together (and there is a certain truth to that image), he can only do so much and there are plenty of things he hasn't even bothered with.
I think what's needed is a PoD further back from the 80s. By then, Neo-Stalinists and the USSR's economic problems were just too great a burden. There's just no way to avoid a bloody breakup with a PoD in the 80s.
True story...honestly
I remember it well I was a 19 year old Royal Naval reservist during this period but I hadn't really taken it that seriously up to that point
It was just a natural progression from the Sea Cadets for me - something to do while I was at college (I didn't want to join up full time as I had other ideas) - I enjoyed the Fire fighting and damage control training and the odd weekend at sea. Learned to dive etc all good fun. But lets be honest I wasn't really expecting to go to 'war'.
So you can imagine my concern when I was seconded to HMS Illustrious for what turned out to be 4 months (My units Minesweeper had 3 crews - 4 if you included the spooks from HMS President - so I was surplus to requirement
) - as far as I was concerned Lusty had a bit of a bad rep what with the gear box fire and all a few years earlier and if things went as badly as I had feared 'Lusty' was a priority target (Unlike my units inoffensive River class mine sweeper - which would probably be ignored or mistaken for a trawler or so unimportant that it was not worth the ammo ).
We and several other Royal Navy ships ended up in the Black Sea in 'support' of some of the Breakaway states (Ukraine and Georgia etc) as part of a international 'NATO' Battle group - led as you'd probably guess by a US Carrier battle group and included a USMC MAU.
For the first 4 weeks it was a bit Phoney war like - I know a lot of bad shit was happening in the USSR or former USSR - not that we really knew about it or appreciated the severity of it - we were running 4 hours on 4 hours off style watches with lots of training exercises thrown in to keep us sharp - but then the Attack on San Francisco was a major wake up call and then if that hadn't focused our minds enough the Missile attack on USS Tarawa the Next day certainly did.
One of her Point Defence guns was unserviceable that day - A USN Engineer later told me that it was something that would have been fixed in a couple of hours at most - Just bad luck really that the attack happen when it did
A single sea skimming missile - 1 of about a dozen or more fired at the fleet had penetrated the tight web of missile, ECM, chaff etc and this missile just happened to be on the side of Tarawa's that this bloody malfunctioning Phalanx system should have been protecting.
We were about 20 miles North of her that day conducting ASW sweeps and it could quite easily have been us that got hit.
Makes me feel quite sick just thinking about that.
But we were lucky - Tarawa wasn't
The Missile they say - didn't explode but caused a large fire in her hanger.
Hat off to her Crew they eventually put it out and saved the ship - but it cost them over 200 KIA and hundreds of wounded.
Many of the wounded were sent to our ship and we had to turn several of the mess areas into makeshift wards there was so many of them.
Most of them were the same sort of age as me 19, 20 maybe and lots of them were terribly burned.
As bad as that was the smell though...that's the worst thing and that never leaves you.
If you could make a TV that could share smells, wars would be a lot less popular.
A group of fucking paranoid Idiot Stalin worshipping Russians Morons had decided to blame the USA for the the Collapse of the USSR and so attacked it with what ever they could.
I have no idea what they were hoping to achieve but the gaggle of former Russian warships that had initiated the attack on our fleet were all snuffed within 5 minutes.
President Bush turned a lot of Cheek that day in not retaliating and it cost him his job.
But I believe that Humanity would have rued that day had be not done so and I believe that History will judge him favourably for having a firm had on the tiller.
Anyway those attacks and the other mostly failed attempts around the globe that sought to Punish the Americans didn't start WW3 and most of the not so extreme Nutcases in Russia realised (Belatedly) how close we had all come to the abyss and sought to ally themselves with other less extreme nutcases in order to remove the very extreme Nutcases from power (who as I understand it mostly died of 9mm Brain haemorrhages).
There were no more massed attacks on the US and NATO forces and things gradually calmed down and eventually settled down into the former Russian states we have today
Things are not perfect in the former Russian States by any means except in those Western breakaway nations that allied themselves with 'Europe' - but when you consider how bad it could have got.........
I remember it well I was a 19 year old Royal Naval reservist during this period but I hadn't really taken it that seriously up to that point
It was just a natural progression from the Sea Cadets for me - something to do while I was at college (I didn't want to join up full time as I had other ideas) - I enjoyed the Fire fighting and damage control training and the odd weekend at sea. Learned to dive etc all good fun. But lets be honest I wasn't really expecting to go to 'war'.
So you can imagine my concern when I was seconded to HMS Illustrious for what turned out to be 4 months (My units Minesweeper had 3 crews - 4 if you included the spooks from HMS President - so I was surplus to requirement
) - as far as I was concerned Lusty had a bit of a bad rep what with the gear box fire and all a few years earlier and if things went as badly as I had feared 'Lusty' was a priority target (Unlike my units inoffensive River class mine sweeper - which would probably be ignored or mistaken for a trawler or so unimportant that it was not worth the ammo ).We and several other Royal Navy ships ended up in the Black Sea in 'support' of some of the Breakaway states (Ukraine and Georgia etc) as part of a international 'NATO' Battle group - led as you'd probably guess by a US Carrier battle group and included a USMC MAU.
For the first 4 weeks it was a bit Phoney war like - I know a lot of bad shit was happening in the USSR or former USSR - not that we really knew about it or appreciated the severity of it - we were running 4 hours on 4 hours off style watches with lots of training exercises thrown in to keep us sharp - but then the Attack on San Francisco was a major wake up call and then if that hadn't focused our minds enough the Missile attack on USS Tarawa the Next day certainly did.
One of her Point Defence guns was unserviceable that day - A USN Engineer later told me that it was something that would have been fixed in a couple of hours at most - Just bad luck really that the attack happen when it did
A single sea skimming missile - 1 of about a dozen or more fired at the fleet had penetrated the tight web of missile, ECM, chaff etc and this missile just happened to be on the side of Tarawa's that this bloody malfunctioning Phalanx system should have been protecting.
We were about 20 miles North of her that day conducting ASW sweeps and it could quite easily have been us that got hit.
Makes me feel quite sick just thinking about that.
But we were lucky - Tarawa wasn't
The Missile they say - didn't explode but caused a large fire in her hanger.
Hat off to her Crew they eventually put it out and saved the ship - but it cost them over 200 KIA and hundreds of wounded.
Many of the wounded were sent to our ship and we had to turn several of the mess areas into makeshift wards there was so many of them.
Most of them were the same sort of age as me 19, 20 maybe and lots of them were terribly burned.
As bad as that was the smell though...that's the worst thing and that never leaves you.
If you could make a TV that could share smells, wars would be a lot less popular.
A group of fucking paranoid Idiot Stalin worshipping Russians Morons had decided to blame the USA for the the Collapse of the USSR and so attacked it with what ever they could.
I have no idea what they were hoping to achieve but the gaggle of former Russian warships that had initiated the attack on our fleet were all snuffed within 5 minutes.
President Bush turned a lot of Cheek that day in not retaliating and it cost him his job.
But I believe that Humanity would have rued that day had be not done so and I believe that History will judge him favourably for having a firm had on the tiller.
Anyway those attacks and the other mostly failed attempts around the globe that sought to Punish the Americans didn't start WW3 and most of the not so extreme Nutcases in Russia realised (Belatedly) how close we had all come to the abyss and sought to ally themselves with other less extreme nutcases in order to remove the very extreme Nutcases from power (who as I understand it mostly died of 9mm Brain haemorrhages).
There were no more massed attacks on the US and NATO forces and things gradually calmed down and eventually settled down into the former Russian states we have today
Things are not perfect in the former Russian States by any means except in those Western breakaway nations that allied themselves with 'Europe' - but when you consider how bad it could have got.........
The way that the USSR broke up suited some people very well indeed. China, for instance, swooped in on Mongolia the moment they were sure it was safe. And the UN seem to be edging closer to officially recognising Sakhalin and the Kuriles as part of Japan now. Not that that's stopped the Japanese settling or making use of the islands' oil for the last two decades...
I disagree. Kosygin and Gorbachev could have definitely handled a transition. Kosygin was all about revitalizing the Soviet economy. Gorbachev and Kosygin also seemed tolerant of allow some form of free speech to be allowed. Imagine how much easier the fall of Communism in the Warsaw Pact would have been if a moderate premier decided to send the garrisons home instead of trying to pull another 1953?
We wouldn't see Hoenecker and the SED officials being lynched, and the Stasi headquarters raided by angry mobs. Or the subsequent chaos of defected soldiers fighting off the loyalist elements with Bundeswehr assistance. Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Baltics, and Poland are lucky they got off without dealing with hardliner diehards.
Then again, we wouldn't have massive territorial adjustments. Japan wouldn't get the Kuril Islands, nor Finland Karelia. I'm not sure what would happen with Prussia, would they keep it as an autonomous SSR? Poland's annexation and subsequent expulsion of Russians was controversial OTL, that's not going to happen in a diplomatic collapse.
Also, what about NATO? NATO would probably only add the reunified parts of Germany after the Fall of the Wall. The Soviets are still going to want a buffer between them, so I can see the newly freed nations being neutral. Would NATO even be dissolved in such a case?
ThePest179
Banned
God, there are enough people in the US who act like Bush didn't do jack shit, we don't need more of those here. What happened in San Fran was one of the worst disasters in human history, but that doesn't excuse this whitewashing/revisionism.
Bush called in Article V and NATO bombed the shit out of the Stalinists with HE and even nerve agents. It was ten times worse than what the US did to Iraq in the Arabian War.
I assume you're not refering to Soviet troops, yes?
Of course. Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova before reunification, and East Germany still had some supporters in the security forces. Of course, they varied in the resilience, the Ceaușescus being the first to go.
The bloodshed was minimal compared to fighting elsewhere.
Then Yugoslavia blew apart with ethnic tensions and took Albania with it because of that Kosovo province.
Granted, the Warsaw Pact's dissolution wasn't clean and orderly, but it sure as hell beat the insanity going on in the former USSR.
Last edited:
ThePest179
Banned
Yeah, it was even worse than the South African Civil War. I don't think peace could be achieved there even in a "peaceful collapse" scenario.