Economic size of surviving Soviet Union

What could have been the GDP size and per capita of the Soviet Union (minus the Baltics, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova) had survived from disintegration?

Would rump Soviet Union better economically had they follow the "shock therapy" similar to Poland ones instead of OTL or adopting the China-like gradual strategy of economic liberalization?
 
The big problem for the Soviet Union was the cupboard was completely bare. It had run out of money by 1991. It's not going to turn out much differently than Russia did IOTL.

If the Soviets had begun economic reforms like China earlier - when they still had some money - then they could have implemented reforms over a long enough period of time to not provoke a political backlash. They don't have that option by 1991.

Shock therapy is the only way to go, but the problem here is that there is nothing to keep politics stable. Eastern Europe took the needed medicine because they had no grand ambitions to be seen as equal to the US, they had the example of Western Europe which they desperately wanted to join, and their economy was nowhere near as screwed up as the Soviet Union's. The political costs of shock therapy are much higher in Russia than in Poland or Czechoslovakia.

The big problem facing the USSR/Russia is that there is no rule of law, and that there is going to be a huge transition cost. Whether its party officials skimming off the top, or insiders stealing assets in shady privatization deals, the people are losing out. Designing an economic reform plan that will prevent the rise of the oligarchs and allow the people to benefit requires hindsight that reformers did not have in the early 1990s.

Simply keeping some of the other Soviet republics isn't going to improve things. It'll simply make things worse when Moscow has to deal with more ethnic conflicts in its domain than Russia had to deal with.
 
The big problem for the Soviet Union was the cupboard was completely bare. It had run out of money by 1991. It's not going to turn out much differently than Russia did IOTL.

Soviet Union before 8 December 1991 could have been saved it's territorial integrity minus the Baltics, Georgia, Armenia, and Moldova. I think Yeltsin's move to dissolve the USSR entirely was a geopolitical disaster because Yeltsin never give a chance the reformed Soviet Union to exist politically and economically even though the USSR was on the verge of death. I could see a rump Soviet Union a giant Russian Federation politically and economically with GDP size probably at $4.5 trillion and $15,000 per capita with proper implementation of "shock therapy".

If the Soviets had begun economic reforms like China earlier - when they still had some money - then they could have implemented reforms over a long enough period of time to not provoke a political backlash. They don't have that option by 1991.
Soviet Union have many chances of reforming the economy similar to China ones had Beria won the power struggle over Khrushchev, Khrushchev never stupidly put a nuclear missile in Cuba or successful Virgin Lands reform, AND Leonid Brezhnev killed in 1969 and replaced by Alexei Kosygin.

Shock therapy is the only way to go, but the problem here is that there is nothing to keep politics stable. Eastern Europe took the needed medicine because they had no grand ambitions to be seen as equal to the US, they had the example of Western Europe which they desperately wanted to join, and their economy was nowhere near as screwed up as the Soviet Union's. The political costs of shock therapy are much higher in Russia than in Poland or Czechoslovakia.
What should have been for Russia but the problem was Boris Yeltsin never prepared a ground framework for real free market economy and until 1993, Russia operates with a Soviet-era Constitution which was an anathema with a real free market economy to operate. In addition, Yeltsin privatize state-owned assets overnight and frees the prices overnight while the framework was absent and the Soviet-era Constitution still in force.

The big problem facing the USSR/Russia is that there is no rule of law, and that there is going to be a huge transition cost. Whether its party officials skimming off the top, or insiders stealing assets in shady privatization deals, the people are losing out. Designing an economic reform plan that will prevent the rise of the oligarchs and allow the people to benefit requires hindsight that reformers did not have in the early 1990s.
That's what I've said above.

Simply keeping some of the other Soviet republics isn't going to improve things. It'll simply make things worse when Moscow has to deal with more ethnic conflicts in its domain than Russia had to deal with.
Most Soviet Republics wanted to stay with the Soviet Union. However, it was Russia who left the Soviet Union in the final moment and Russia's absence makes the Soviet Union moot and academic so the remaining Republics forced to go apart.
 
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