The August coup never happens and subsequently the new union treaty is signed on schedule turning USSR to a union of sovereign republics. The Baltics, Georgia, Armenia and Moldova are out right away. Now the rest is still supposedly in one piece but the treaty and proposed constitution were pretty much unworkable so I very much doubt is still stays in one piece particularly as the Union's economy goes down the drain down the 1990s. Granted supposedly the treaty had popular support but I have some uhm doubts over the results. Frex between March and August 1991 Ukraine voted with over 71% to stay in the Union and over 90% to leave it?
Still the new Union has come into place at least for the moment and if it's not workable in other ways it would be perhaps workable as a means for a Russian dominated presidency in tow with post Soviet oligarchs/dictators (sorry perpetually re-elected presidents) keeping a rump Union around. The Union sheds away members and territory through the 1990s and early 2000s, losing Turkmenistan, (Niyazov preferred a closeted playground for himself), Azerbaijan (Abulfaz Elchibey was able to bring it out of the Union in 1992 only to be overthrown by Aliyev a couple years later), Western Ukraine ("popular sentiment" backed by Soviet tanks saved the rest from these evil autonomists) and lastly Kyrgyzstan (to popular uprising in 2005), and has fought brutal wars against Chechen and Tajik rebels when Vladimir Putin the up and coming president of the Russian SSR succeeds in the USSR presidency president Nazarbayev (ironically Gorbachev's selected successor in 1996), who steps down to run his native Kazakhstan in 2006 after that Kyrgyz mess the previous year.
Thoughts?