End the cold war with a surviving USSR

What you need to happen in order for the soviets to survive , can you make a different outcome for the cold war with instead of the ussr falling apart , the americans and the soviets gave up the competition , id like to hear some interesting PODs :)
 
earlier on, Gorbachev and other leading reformers, could have hit upon the idea of religious liberty and really meaning it. and/or a church or mosque is taxed but at the lowest tax rate in that broad area.

There's then one less major motivation for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, etc, to leave the Soviet Union.

And maybe if the first doesn't leave, the ball never gets rolling.
 

trurle

Banned
What you need to happen in order for the soviets to survive , can you make a different outcome for the cold war with instead of the ussr falling apart , the americans and the soviets gave up the competition , id like to hear some interesting PODs :)

I remember some specualtion about Stalin in 1950-1953 working to gradually dismantle Communist party, as expansionism and inept economic concepts of party was recognised as threat to the survival of the Soviet Union. Let the Stalin live few more years, orderly succeed him with Beria, make sure the Beria continue the transformation of the Soviet Union to the civil state - an the Cold War will wither before spiralling into war of economic attrition.
 
earlier on, Gorbachev and other leading reformers, could have hit upon the idea of religious liberty and really meaning it. and/or a church or mosque is taxed but at the lowest tax rate in that broad area.

There's then one less major motivation for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, etc, to leave the Soviet Union.

And maybe if the first doesn't leave, the ball never gets rolling.

My understanding was that the Central Asian republics wanted to remain in union with Russia, but once Belarus and Ukraine decided on independence, the Russians didn't want the 'Stans.

fasquardon
 
Not advertising, but I have this in my Tales of the Shining Pearl TL.

Here, economic reforms make the USSR stronger. Khrushchev and Kosygin lead this, so that by 1989, no republic would dare to break away because it would lead to breakdown in trade and such. They would instead demand democracy within the context of the USSR. End result: Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics! A democratic USSR :) All 15 republics stay :)

In my TL, the US and USSR are great friends starting from 1975 in the so-called Great Thaw, wherein RFK and Kosygin and the USSR's ally China's leader Liu Shaoqi meet, and the Eastern Bloc enacts market reforms, China gets recognized but Taiwan is not ridiculed, and the 1980s is very rosy.
 

B-29_Bomber

Banned
earlier on, Gorbachev and other leading reformers, could have hit upon the idea of religious liberty and really meaning it. and/or a church or mosque is taxed but at the lowest tax rate in that broad area.

There's then one less major motivation for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, etc, to leave the Soviet Union.

And maybe if the first doesn't leave, the ball never gets rolling.

With a Gorbachev PoD you'd need him to focus on economic reform and not political reform. That's what ultimately killed the USSR.
 

RousseauX

Donor
earlier on, Gorbachev and other leading reformers, could have hit upon the idea of religious liberty and really meaning it. and/or a church or mosque is taxed but at the lowest tax rate in that broad area.

There's then one less major motivation for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, etc, to leave the Soviet Union.

And maybe if the first doesn't leave, the ball never gets rolling.

Kazakhstan and the Muslim republics didn't want to leave the Union though. Yeltsein had to keep the dissolution a secret from them before it went public. It was Russia which wanted the Union dissolved.
 

RousseauX

Donor
With a Gorbachev PoD you'd need him to focus on economic reform and not political reform. That's what ultimately killed the USSR.

No it wasn't, what killed it is the lack of political will to keep the Union together in Moscow combined with opportunism for Russian politicians to stage a power grab by dissolving the Union
 
Kazakhstan and the Muslim republics didn't want to leave the Union though. Yeltsein had to keep the dissolution a secret from them before it went public. It was Russia which wanted the Union dissolved.
This really surprises me. You're the second person who's said it, so good chance it is the case. But all the same, I'd like to have some references.
 
Not invading and swallowing up the Baltic states would be a massive boon for Soviet unity as well. Before Gorbachev, they could still clamp down on any overt signs of nationalism but it was still there, simmering under the surface. But after Gorbachev's rash political reforms, the genie in the bottle had been unleashed after being repressed for 40 years. The Baltic republics were the first of the republics to demand autonomy, and then succession later on. They were also the first ones to have public demonstrations and protests against the regime in Moscow. The loud secessionist movement there made a lot of other people in the non Russian republics to consider the idea of succession.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_referendum,_1991

The New Union Treaty was a treaty to reform the USSR into the Union of Sovereign Socialist Republics. It would have made the USSR much less of a highly centralized state, and would have turned it into a confederation. There would still be a common national president, foreign policy and tariffs, but most everything else would be in control of each republic. After Gorbachev had negotiated the treaty, he put it up for a referendum that was free and fair, and 9 out of the 15 republics participated. The 6 republics that wanted out and boycotted were the Baltic states, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia, the East Slavic core would have remained. The 9 republics voted on average of 78% to keep the Soviet Union together, but in a reformed way. Literally the day before the treaty was supposed to be signed, there was a KGB coup that stopped it. After the coup failed, people were so disgusted by the Soviet government and the communist party that they turned way from keeping the Union together.
 
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