I think this is wishful thinking.
The Soviet Union managed to survive a variety of problems:
External attacks and internal turmoil in the 1920s.
The "Quantity" economic problem in the 1930s, and the excesses of the Personality Cult.
The most horrific warfare imaginable in the 1940s.
"Quantitative" recovery in the 1950s.
The failure to transition to "Quality" in the 1960s and 1970s, combined with a failure of institutional renewal in the 1970s.
And the very real challenges of Qualitative development succeeding in the 1980s, combined with institutional renewal.
I find it hard to imagine how the junior technocrats and nomenklatura of the 1980s would avoid the development of large modern factories, with just in time production, and norms bonuses. These "factories of a new kind" ended up producing much of the electronics and consumer goods demanded by Europe, Japan, and perversely enough the United States.
Almost everyone I know owns an Nokia MyMuse or MyPhone. While Nokia might be Finnish, the music players and phones are made in the massive Гнездо завода лисы complex (Fox Nest Factory). Some people claim that the working standards for the young Soviet women and men in the Fox Nest are inhuman—and there have been a number of suicides reported by Soviet Va
iarisers—but the wages and living standards of the young Foxes are far above workers in the "Quantitative" Soviet factories.
Honestly, to have the Soviet Union fall would require an economic calamity and a failure to modernise. The Soviet Mode of Production, while not Socialism by any stretch, is as viable and self-supporting between moments of crisis as the Western Mode of Production.[1]
I'll give you one thing. Perhaps if Allende's Chile had failed to demonstrate the success of Networked Socialisation, then the Soviet Union might have failed to invest in Кибернетические Синхронизация (Computerised Economic Planning). But by 1982 with the KremVax up and running, and demonstrating success in planning, particularly in the "New Qualitative Plants", there was no chance of the Soviet Union being governed by a successive generation of elderly failures clinging to the Great Patriotic War like drunken asses.[2]
The growth of the Computerised Restructuring movement and the Electronic Openness movement in the Soviet Union empowered the young party members and bureaucrats against the old; and the dominance of Government stooge Va
iarisers over the Diarisphere is obvious. Hell, the successful mtlbh[3] format was derived conceptually from the VaxChat sidechannel on the Soviet planning computers, and who doesn't use the rtme?[4]
* * *
Okay, so someone here might suggest that the what-if is credible given the economic and social collapse of China; but given the two hundred years of chaos and colonialism in China, seeing it Unified under a despotic and self-slaughtering regime for forty years isn't unsurprising. China is simply chaotic, unlike the Soviet Union.
yours,
Sam R.
[1] I'll avoid arguing the point with Eurocommunists of the Communist Parties, or with the Trotskyites with their bizarre assertions of an Eastern form of Capitalism.
[2] OOT: Project Cybersyn obviously.
[3] Minitel Hypertext Markup Language; miniature de téléphonie langage de balisage hypertexte
[4] World-wide rhyzome, Rhyzome travers le monde entier. See mtlbh:/rtme.папациклопедии.ака.su/en/rtme for details, it is an article vedette so it should be trust worthy.[5]
[5] OOT:
www.(from Finnish: fast)cyclopedia.academic.soviet union / english / www
