Earlier Soviet collapse

While there have been extensive discussions on the possibility of the USSR lasting longer than it did, I often wonder how the world would be different with a Soviet Union that collapsed sooner. I'd suggest that the biggest reasons for the collapse were, in no particular order:
#1 - Losses in Afghanistan.
#2 - Poor harvests in the Ukraine.
#3 - Inability to deal with internal nationalist aspirations.
#4 - A really flawed economic model.
#5 - A leader who tried to loosen control, but ended up simply causing it to fly apart.

#2-#5 could happen any time, but in order to have a collapsing Soviet Union, you need that "failed foriegn adventure". I'm looking at one of three options:

#1 - Big ground/conventional war with the Chinese circa 1965 over Siberia.
#2 - Africa?
#3 - Into Afghanistan in the 1960's rather than the 1980's.

I'm hoping to engineer a Soviet collapse in the late 1970s rather than the early 1990s. I'm leaning the hardest for a Chinese/Soviet confrontation, because it would create some interesting side effects. First, the big war up there leaves little to support the little war in Vietnam. This gives the Americans a free hand to easily crush the North. Instead of a Huey fleeing from Saigon as the lasting image, that same Huey is photographed unloading airmobile troops as part of the fall of the North Vietnamese government.

Now, without the defeat in Vietnam, there are benefits and drawbacks to the US. First, they are not forced to re-evaluate and re-build their military strategy and doctrine. Second, the lack of the defeat in Vietnam does not shape and colour the entire US strategic conventional doctrine as it has. Unlike now, the first question isn't "Will this turn into another Vietnam?", but instead they'll be operating from the same playbook they carried in WW2. Lastly, this would put the resulting drawdown of the US forces in the hands of Carter, not Clinton. That's assuming that the Reagan/Bush years even happen, as there isn't an "Evil Empire" for Ron to fight.

Thoughts?
 
This is intresting!! I would continue with the Chinese/Soviet conflict as the main way the USSR collapses a few years earlier.

The Chinese were given by Henry Kissinger during his trips to China alot of intelligence data on Soviet troop location along the Chinese border. Perhaps the Chinese use this data to move their forces into "better" positions to confront the Soviets.

Another course of events could occur when the Soviets feel that the Chinese and Americans are moving too close together, atleast diplomatically for their comfort.. Maybe the Soviets attack along the Chinese border?

Did Nixon even go to China in this timeline?

Will Nukes be used?
 
Any China-USSR war will almost certainly go nuclear and cause an intervention by everyone else, because the mess and body count would be vast.

If you want the US crashing in the late 1970s, have your options 2-5 happen then. Perhaps Brezhnev dies about 15 years earlier than in OTL, and who replaces him is unable to keep control.

As for foreign intervention gone bad, at that era Africa is your best bet. I think the best option there in Rhodesia and Angola. Both were in 1970 having wars that were getting increasingly nasty. Both had opposing sides supported by nation sides (South Africa), and the USSR was arming the African armies then too. Have something cause the mess in those two to go really downhill (Britain recognizes the UDI government perhaps, or Portugal goes full force in trying to keep Angola) and have the USSR respond. The Red Army's forces would win the conventional wars, but the West would funnel guns to groups like UNITA and ZIPRA - almost certainly through South Africa, perhaps arming the apartheid state in the process. The jungles of Africa would be just as big a pain in the neck as Afghanistan was, with tropical diseases to make life more miserable for the Red Army.
 
Well it is quite far and away from your PODs but have Beria take over completely after Stalin's death rather than Kruschev. Despite his NKVD/Georgian posse credentials he was very much a pragmatist and seemed quite willing in 1953-1955 to accept Marshall Aid in the USSR in return for 'reforms'. If he manages to hold on I can see the Soviet Bloc withered away by 1970.

Alternatively you could have Zhandov survive his hospital stay in 1948. Zhandov was more or less Stalin's successor before his death. We're talking a very rigid, dogmatic fellow, heavily into socialist realist art, and Lysenkoist farming techniques (which bordered on quack-science). For one the Doctor's Plot might be carried out to its horrible conclusion, Soviet agriculture would suffer even worse than under Kruschev and all in all the USSR would remain a very grim, repressed place, no doubt with even more revolts in the Warsaw Pact countries.

Come Zhandov's death, there's quite a chance delayed de-Stalinization might lead to full on removal of the Soviet system by the late 1970s
 
I was just thinking of sr. strangelove's alternative world with no spanish civil war, where the stalinists had been eclipsed by syndicalist of the anarchist and trostskyist...(although I see the two somehow merging)

How about an early alternative to stalinism which appears more just, humane , free and rational then stalins deformned workers state.....although a small weak "anarchist" (political anarchisim is more of a mix between the liberty of libertarianism and the justice od social democracy) spain or whatever small country it will be wont have the power projection of russia it's very extance and prosperity would be a shining example to indepindence and social justice movements around the world who like some of the aspects of communism and are anti corpratist but are still unsettled by stalins tactics.....so throughout the 50's and 60's and maybe even the 40's while the resestance movements may act coy and con the russkys into military aid once they take power they'll try to emulate the spanish model....this will isolate the soviets on the world stage, cause more revolts in the warsaw pact and may even lead to social unrest
 
They could end up in an decolonisation conflict if Spain or France turn communist before or after WWII. They could get a guerilla war in Eastern Europe post WWII if the western support was more efficient (kill Philby?). Then they could attack Yugoslavia anytime. And finally the Middle East but I think it would be a later when they have develped the ability to move the troops.

And Sri Lanka. I think it would be cool to see the Soviets fight the Tamil Tigers. Thinking of which, Soviet gets better relations with Pakistan, invade india :eek:
 
Zhdanov.

Beria would not disband USSR, he could try to transform it Deng-style with economical reforms going long before political ones.

Zhdanov- Now your just making stuff up :rolleyes:

True on the Beria though, just gave me an idea for a TL I'm working on...
 
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