DBWI: Soveit president Gennady Yanayev dead

Gennady Yanayev, famous for coming to power in the infamous 1991 Soviet hardline coup, was found dead, apparently of Dioxin poisoning. Now who takes over the Soviet Union?
 
A very good question....
Whoever it is, has got his work cut out for him. Ethnic nationalism is rising; the economy (from what we can tell based on the limited information that slips past the propaganda) is in ruins, and pro-reform demonstrations are becoming more and more frequent, even if they're also met with brute force.

I wouldn't say: "It's certainly going to end in a break-up", because history has surprised us before, but I think it's difficult to avoid in the mid-long term.

And yes, I agree: Good riddance.
 
Good riddance.

As to who's coming to power, can't say, but he's likely to be no better.
Indeed. Remember the Baltic Genocide? I'm so glad those three republics at least won their indepenence eventually. More that can be said about the Chechnyas, or any of the peoples living under Milošević's "Serboslavia". I swear that guy thinks he can get away with anything with the Soviet's blessings. Do you think the new guy will finally reconise the German reunification?
 
Do you think the new guy will finally reconise the German reunification?

Again, that very much depends on whom the Politbureau elects. It's kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place:
If it elects a hardline-conservative (funny using that term about a communist) then we'll see more of the same, which seems to be the only way the USSR can stay together at the moment...but this will almost certainly lead to bigger financial problems and ethnic tension.
If it elects a "liberal" (again: Using that term lightly, when speaking of a high-ranking
member of the communist party of the USSR)
then we might see some defrosting of Soviet foreign policy, as well as some of the needed economic and political reforms the people of the USSR seem to be demanding........but this will almost certainly cause the whole house of cards to come tumbling down within a few years.

Darned if they do, and darned if they don't. If it wasn't because the lives and well-being of so very many people depended on this decision, I'd find it kind of amusing. Now, it's just....scary.
 
An interesting domestic angle on this story to consider.

In college I had a professor who theorized that had the coup failed it was possible that the whole house of cards would have come down and the Soviet Union would have dissolved, become more democratic.

In our discussions of this possibility I suggested that such a shift in foreign policy could have changed our own politics.

For example if you look at suburban voters (women in particular) they tend to be more liberal than the GOP on a lot of social issues but many stick with the GOP because of the perception that Democrats aren't as strong against the Soviets.

So how might our politics have changed if the Cold War had ended back int he 90's ?
 
Gennady Yanayev, famous for coming to power in the infamous 1991 Soviet hardline coup, was found dead, apparently of Dioxin poisoning. Now who takes over the Soviet Union?

OOC: Sorry to say this, but the USSR's decline was pretty much baked into the cake by the time Brezhnev died off. This may be better suited for the ASB forum, TBH.
 
I hope he rots in a pit tortured by the inhabitants of Riga.

I hope some kind of reformist gets in, to try to at least begin to set the USSR to rights. Whatever happens, I hope a civil war is avoided; in a country with a nuclear arsenal that size, it's likely that at least a few will get loose, and no one wants that.
 
The USSR is utterly rotten. I think it almost certain that the next Soviet leader will be the last.

Let's hope so!
And let's hope for someone sensible to take over and try to put the pieces back together somehow. We need a politically stable Russia, if for no other reason than the fact that they're sitting on a f.ckload of nukes.
 
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