Democratic Soviet Union?

What if instead of splitting up in the early 90s, the Soviets stayed as a single country, and became democratic and capitalist together? Basically a larger version of the Russian Federation.
 
What if instead of splitting up in the early 90s, the Soviets stayed as a single country, and became democratic and capitalist together? Basically a larger version of the Russian Federation.

It's possible for the current CIS, but the Baltic would defenatly go. There was too much pro-independence nationalism there.
 
Less severe drop of living standards in 1990s (due to absence of internal borders), slightly worse living standards in Russia today (it would have to share it's oil and gas bounty ITTL), seriously improved life in all other former Republics (especially Georgia, Moldova, Tajikistan, Kyrgizia) except Baltics. Baltics would likely leave if allowed. If they're not allowed, they would likely be somewhere between OTL Russia and their OTL selves (after economic boom fueled by credits with Soviet-built collaterals).
 
The best solution IMHO would be the Baltics and maybe Moldova and the Caucasus leaving, the rest (Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia) staying together.
 
Certainly some of the core republics might be game, considering the large Russian populations you have in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. A Russian insistence on redrawing the borders to include Russian populations within Russian territory might have intimidated some of these states into staying in the union rather than seeing large pieces of their putative nation-states break off (the eastern third of Ukraine, the northern third of Kazakhstan), even though this meant running a risk of Yugoslavian style civil war.

Also important is the state of play with respect to democratic elections. Yeltsin supported Russian secession (and this is how it actually came off, Russia seceding from the USSR rather than the periphery) because the reformists had a much greater presence in the Russian legislatures than in the USSR's institutions and he felt he had a better chance working with them in the position he already held as president of the Russian entity rather than attempting to take power in the whole USSR.

So if somehow you invert it, make the USSR the reform-friendly unit rather than the individual republics, lead Yeltsin to invest in that framework rather than its dissolution, then you have something with at least the boundaries of the USSR, though I don't think it's at all possible to keep Georgia and the Baltics without some pretty heinous uses of military force tha would poison the whole project.

I think Gorbachev's involvement in any way though would spoil the project as well. He was by the time of the coup the most unpopular politician in Russia, and is really reviled even today.

The key is of course that the union part not invalidate the democratic part. That's the real question. This has to be more like Canada dealing with Quebec than Yugoslavia dealing with Bosnia or Kosovo.
 
Not necessarily. In my opinion, the transition to capitalism could not have been handled worse in Russia. The economist Joseph Stiglitz in his book "Globalization and its Discontents" makes a convincing case that a more gradual transition that focuses on capitalism not as a set of institutions you set up but as a set of behaviors and expectations that you establish over time would be more successful. Conceivably, we could have seen a shorter and less severe period of economic decline and a period of economic growth both stronger and less dependent on commodity prices (as in, oil) than what we have.

And fundamentally I think some of the worst of the demographic problems faced by the country tracks the economic problems.

The solution is an option in which the Union stays together in some form and in which economic reform is a success. Of course, these two prongs of the proposition help each other (the "near-abroad" is always somewhat more willing to accept Russian hegemony when that means availing themselves of the benefits of superior Russian economic performance).

I don't know what point of departure creates this state of affairs though.

Sakharov survives, leads the resistance to the coup, and becomes the Soviet Nelson Mandela?

It'd probably be a paper tiger, with nationalist rebellions, aging population and an economy based on raw materials....
 
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