DBWI, PEACEFUL overthrow of the Soviet Empire

Excessive price gouging? If the supply of food goes way down the price goes way up. There aren't many ways around that. I didn't like the price hikes but didn't go rioting in the streets. The biggest result of all that was many Americans lost quite a bit of weight but most of them (including me) could afford losing a few pounds.
Yes but there is a difference between a 20% price hike out of necessity and a 200% to make more money, especially for those who lost jobs for unrelated reasons.

The riot started from a peaceful protest against the latest price hike egged on by media fear mongering and paranoia on the part of the police department resulting in the riots after the second attempt to break up the protests went bad
 
Yes but there is a difference between a 20% price hike out of necessity and a 200% to make more money, especially for those who lost jobs for unrelated reasons.

The riot started from a peaceful protest against the latest price hike egged on by media fear mongering and paranoia on the part of the police department resulting in the riots after the second attempt to break up the protests went bad


There were food shortages as is. Hike the price only 20% people will buy almost as much food as before and cut back on other goods. Only huge price hikes prevented actual starvation.
 
There were food shortages as is. Hike the price only 20% people will buy almost as much food as before and cut back on other goods. Only huge price hikes prevented actual starvation.

Agreed. You have to remember, Russia and Ukraine were both major grain exporters before the bombs fell, and that production disappeared overnight. Combine that with nuclear fallout in Eastern and Central Europe, major supply disruptions in oil and gas supplies (necessary for fertilizers and transport of food), and the market shock created by the second-biggest economy in the world disappearing instantly, and prices were going to triple very quickly. At least the stock market recovered from that 4000 point drop on Red Friday. September 19, 1995 will go down in history for a lot of reasons...
 
Agreed. You have to remember, Russia and Ukraine were both major grain exporters before the bombs fell, and that production disappeared overnight. Combine that with nuclear fallout in Eastern and Central Europe, major supply disruptions in oil and gas supplies (necessary for fertilizers and transport of food), and the market shock created by the second-biggest economy in the world disappearing instantly, and prices were going to triple very quickly. At least the stock market recovered from that 4000 point drop on Red Friday. September 19, 1995 will go down in history for a lot of reasons...
OOC: Didn't the Soviet Union never reach 1914 levels of Grain Production and have to import Grain from the USA in the 80's, a longer lasting and more dogmatic USSR probably won't do better

IC: If starvation was an actual danger there would have been actual rationing, as is the US government just stopped giving subsidies for not growing crops (this covered about 25% of US cropland last time I checked) and worldwide food production reached pre war levels within two years.
 
Agreed. You have to remember, Russia and Ukraine were both major grain exporters before the bombs fell, and that production disappeared overnight. Combine that with nuclear fallout in Eastern and Central Europe, major supply disruptions in oil and gas supplies (necessary for fertilizers and transport of food), and the market shock created by the second-biggest economy in the world disappearing instantly, and prices were going to triple very quickly. At least the stock market recovered from that 4000 point drop on Red Friday. September 19, 1995 will go down in history for a lot of reasons...
OOC: Didn't the Soviet Union never reach 1914 levels of Grain Production and have to import Grain from the USA in the 80's, a longer lasting and more dogmatic USSR probably won't do better. USA will not have those problems, net exporter as well

IC: If starvation was an actual danger there would have been actual rationing, as is the US government just stopped giving subsidies for not growing crops (this covered about 25% of US cropland last time I checked) and worldwide food production reached pre war levels within two years. Prices only went up 200% or more in a few special cases, in most of the developed world 20-50% was a good average
 
The 3rd world at least. Thank God the US, Europe and the Far East has technology to mitigate all that. OOC: If the world wide famine effected the 1st world people would be to busy scrounging for food to be on the internet.
China starving popullation wasn't a pretty sight especially when they were forced to raid their neibhours who were facing similar food shortage. Having a huge popullation is an handicap when food is scarse. Even in the west food price has skyrocketed forcing us to rationing like in war time. I was still young back then but I can remember how everything was covered in snow and how hungry I was. Really even today we don't exactly know the death tole the world faced.
 
Yeah, remember?. Three on Moscow, two on Leningrad, Minsk, Kiev, Rostov, Sebastapol, Smolensk, Kazan, Kaliningrad, Warsaw, Poznen and Gdansk. We had to learn a song to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle in my high school to remember it....

The Soviet Union was never nuked...
 

gridlocked

Banned
In theory since the USSR was in a bind they could have retrenched.

After leaving Afghanistan as per real life, they could have ended the cold war by dissolving the Warsaw Pact, they could have divested themselves of the most Muslim/most troublesome SSRs to make Russians again an ethnic majority in the SU. While hardly ASB, is a very pessimistic strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union's woes. I have difficulty imaging any General Secretary pushing forward such a radical retrenchment even under the cover of 'political liberalization'.

On the other hand the idea that the USSR would peacefully give up the Crimea or the vast natural resources of Baku and Kazakhstan is a bit ASB.

Maybe as an alternate timeline, as order was collapsing in Russia, President Tsongas and Premier Deng issue a joint ultimatum to the Soviets, and the Soviets fold?
 
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