How could the USSR have survived to see its 100th anniversary?

And yet the standard of living in China today is makes 1970s China look like a hellhole

I was back in China a couple of years ago and went to a couple of farming villages: I talked to some farmers and asked them what was life like when they still had the Communes in the 60s-70s and they told me the village looked like Africa back then.

And now that same village has 20% rate of automobile ownership by household.

Does China and Poland have serious economic issues today? But I would choose to live with those problems over the ones that existed in Communism in a heartbeat.
In China, massive poverty and unemployment. The market is unacceptable - because of it, innocent people always suffer.
The standard of living in the USSR was -higher- in the 1980s than in the 1960s

And lol if the example of the apex of the bountifulness of a planned economy is when a trained engineer (who could easily be making $100k+ in a western country) can "afford a relatively good suit" in the USSR
In the mid-60's there was no severe deficit. Very often, the actual increase in the level does not correspond to real results. And sometimes the solution of some problems will provoke others (the increase in purchasing mobility of the population provoked a deficit in the 70s). And I meant the Italian costume - and what kind of quality I have no idea. It was still about the holidays in Bulgaria, but it does not matter, because the ticket is paid by the Trade Union.
 
if soviet system was so good then why were there soviet hospitals which literally infected babies with aids????

http://articles.latimes.com/1989-05-06/news/mn-2099_1_soviet-hospital-infected-vadim-pokrovsky

Hint: it because glorious soviet economy which you say "produced an excessive amount of goods" didn't have enough syringe needles for hospitals so that they had to re-use needles to give people shots and oops I guess we infected some babies with HIV

This isn't really just a communist problem. Plenty of countries had AIDS outbreaks due to tainted blood in the 80s. Canada had one and it's hardly communist. It had a lot more to do with a poor understanding of the disease and poor screening procedures than anything else.
 

RousseauX

Donor
This isn't really just a communist problem. Plenty of countries had AIDS outbreaks due to tainted blood in the 80s. Canada had one and it's hardly communist. It had a lot more to do with a poor understanding of the disease and poor screening procedures than anything else.
except the reason why this occurred isn't because of poor understanding of disease or screening procedures. It would still have being horrible but yeah, that would have being on par with rest of the world.

But it occurred because of re-usage of syringe needles in state ran hospitals, this is a whole different degree of incompetence/shortage altogether
 
In 1986 I was at college (which in New Zealand is the equivalent of high school) and I said to a group of friends that if Gorbachev made the Soviet Union democratic the Soviet Union would collapse. They thought I was crazy. Then I explained to them that only force kept the Soviet Union together. The Soviet Union was made up of a lot of nationalities that wanted to go their own way as soon as they could. More importantly, the Soviet constitution also stated that any Soviet Socialist Republic that bordered on an independent country was allowed to proclaim their independence.

Gorbachev's reforms led to the emergence of nationalist groups demanding independence. The Soviet government was forced to let them go on the basis of the Soviet constitution that allowed them to break away. The Soviet Union eventually collapsed.

Could anything have saved it?

1. The introduction of devolution where the individual Soviet Soviet Republics were granted control over most of their affairs, not unlike what the British did in Scotland in 1979, would've made a huge difference.
2. The introduction of an economic system similar to so-called "goulash Communism" in Hungary where a certain amount of political freedom was allowed and private enterprises allowed to operate while the state continued to control essential infrastructure and key economic assets. This would've allowed the Soviet Union to introduce a social democratic economy.
3. NOT invading Afghanistan. The need to support their unwinnable war drained the Soviet economy and heavily impacted the morale within the Soviet military.
4. Not playing into Reagan's hands by weakening their economy by pouring so much money into the military trying to catch up with the United States.
 

RousseauX

Donor
In 1986 I was at college (which in New Zealand is the equivalent of high school) and I said to a group of friends that if Gorbachev made the Soviet Union democratic the Soviet Union would collapse. They thought I was crazy. Then I explained to them that only force kept the Soviet Union together. The Soviet Union was made up of a lot of nationalities that wanted to go their own way as soon as they could. More importantly, the Soviet constitution also stated that any Soviet Socialist Republic that bordered on an independent country was allowed to proclaim their independence.

Gorbachev's reforms led to the emergence of nationalist groups demanding independence. The Soviet government was forced to let them go on the basis of the Soviet constitution that allowed them to break away. The Soviet Union eventually collapsed.

Could anything have saved it?

1. The introduction of devolution where the individual Soviet Soviet Republics were granted control over most of their affairs, not unlike what the British did in Scotland in 1979, would've made a huge difference.
2. The introduction of an economic system similar to so-called "goulash Communism" in Hungary where a certain amount of political freedom was allowed and private enterprises allowed to operate while the state continued to control essential infrastructure and key economic assets. This would've allowed the Soviet Union to introduce a social democratic economy.
3. NOT invading Afghanistan. The need to support their unwinnable war drained the Soviet economy and heavily impacted the morale within the Soviet military.
4. Not playing into Reagan's hands by weakening their economy by pouring so much money into the military trying to catch up with the United States.
1) is basically the New Union Treaty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Sovereign_States) would have done but the August coup destroyed that attempt
 
This would've allowed the Soviet Union to introduce a social democratic economy.
No, there can be no question of any renunciation of socialism (more precisely, the construction of socialism). Eliminating socialism, we do not simply destroy the economic system, we eliminate society itself. For you, the USSR is only repressive, but this is a primitive and prejudiced view.
The measure of alienation that is generated by the dominant race in any sphere of social activity today at any cost can only generate a life-threatening reality that becomes a criminal reality at a certain critical mass. The reality itself turns into something that kills both the human and the human in it. However, this is natural for any type of capitalism that generates different forms of alienation. Only the Red October 1917 was able to bring about a revolutionary breakthrough of them. This does not mean that there was no alienation in the USSR: there were forms in it that came from the tsarist regime, and those that arose already within the framework of Soviet reality. But the main thing was different: in the USSR, the principle of indifferent attitude towards alienation was approved as a specifically universal ethical and civil imperative fundamental to all spheres of the Soviet system and obligatory for a citizen, for a statesman and for a creator (artist and scientist). He was obligatory for a person of any age, any nationality and any profession. Moreover, it was the main criterion for measuring the human in man. And most importantly, it was the fundamental principle of Soviet history and Soviet culture. But what is very important is that this imperative had not the idealistic but quite material foundations of its genesis, for it was connected with the practical and qualitative transformation of reality, the most important task of which was the liberation of man and society from the power of all forms of alienation (referred to as "alienation"). It is of fundamental importance that the subject of these transformations was society itself. Despite the prevalence of bureaucratic tendencies, the Soviet man tried to fulfill himself as a creator of history, and in many different ways: in the 1920s as a fighter for the world revolution, in the 1930s as an enthusiast of the first five-year plans, in the 1940s as a fighter against World fascism, in the 1950s as an enthusiast in the development of virgin lands, in the 1960s as a builder of "cities that do not have a name", and in the 1970s as a builder of the Baikal-Amur Mainline. Precipitation was the fundamental principle of both Soviet history and Soviet culture, becoming the basis of their dialectical unity. Moreover, unconfiguration had the force of almost the main unwritten law of the Soviet world, which acted primarily as an ethical imperative, setting the attitude to a wide variety of things, making it understandable without words, why it is impossible to steal food in kindergartens, why it is necessary to build houses and barracks For future defenders of the country, so as not to be ashamed of himself, why, freezing from the cold, people in the besieged Leningrad did not cut down trees in the Summer Garden. This does not mean that everyone in the USSR followed this imperative. But even digressing from it, a person realized this as a violation of the fundamental principle not only of society, but also of his own dignity and conscience. It is just like the people of the Middle Ages who sinned against their conscience and repented of it after the commission of sin, unlike the Renaissance, where people, in committing the most savage crimes, in no way repented of them. And they did so because the very criterion for human behavior was then considered the self-identified individual.

But the significance of the imperative of unregulated is that it presupposes a practical overcoming of alienation, the form of which is an activity act, but which is precisely what is done as an ethical act. And in fact, in the language of Mikhail Bakhtin, we are really talking about associating the individual with the "whole" as the only being (which exists in the unity of historical and cultural reality) through the act of his personal activity, that is, through his deed (act of active morality). It is this action-action that connects the objective being and the subject (the "I") into that whole, where being becomes a being-event, and an individual is its subject. And the essence of this action is responsibility, more precisely, "unity of responsibility". It is the dialectical unity of objective being and subject that turns reality into a living life, and an anonymous individual, using the expression of Anatoly Lunacharsky, into a straightened Man. The imperative and the vector of the activity transformation of reality on the basis of the resolution of its gravest contradictions set the space-time of the USSR, which became the basis for the birth of the "kingdom of freedom". This red thread of the USSR, expressing the formation of the "kingdom of freedom," became the basis of the Victory over fascism, for which the main enemy was primarily communism, which affirmed the principle of non-alienated attitude toward alienation. Many people know the words about indifference belonging to the Czech communist and journalist Julius Fuchik: "Be afraid of the indifferent! It is with their tacit consent that all evil is committed on earth. " By the way, fascism is based on indifference to alienation, it is not accidental that its social base is a philistine, regardless of the social class to which it belongs. It is the "realm of freedom" as the red thread of Soviet history that makes its way through the resolution of the most complex contradictions of the 20th century, and this is the reason why young people turn to the subject of the USSR today. And is there such an unwritten law today that defines laws and rules in all spheres of social life? Yes, there is such a law today, but nothing is said about it in the documents, although everyone knows about it, even children who can not read. The essence of this main law: private interest as personal enrichment at any cost by the formula "money-power-money-power ..." Today everyone has experienced the power of this dictatorship of private interest and realized that his iron heel will crush anyone: both the old man and children, And the beauty of nature, and a unique architectural creation. That is why the search for a fundamentally different basis for the social world order - the main unwritten law - is what makes us today turn in the direction of the USSR, where there was no money power over man. In the USSR, people on the contrary were uncomfortable when a question of money arose between them. Moreover, money was a means of expressing contempt for man, as was well shown in Joseph Kheifits's film The Rumyantsev Case.
 
A large part of it was a vestige of the former Communist system. If salt runs out in a store or two in the US people don't suddenly panic and go on mass purchases of salt. They figure the problem will be fixed in short order. Just coming out of Communism Russia had a history of shortages coming and going over a 70 year period which would sometimes take considerable time to fix. So when people started things going short they started hoarding because if you don't buy now you may have to wait months to do so. So the USSR had a history of "panic buying" . It may take Russia decades to get to a more normal economy. It had an abnormal one for over 70 years and people were used to it.

There was a bad winter in the UK a few years back that led to an artificial shortage of snowshovels. So I'm not so sure.

And really, comparing shopping behavior to the shopping behavior of people in the USA is entirely inappropriate, since the logistical infrastructure of the US was more highly developed and US consumers much richer (and thus were less at risk if the price of basic necessities spiked). It would be better to ask: did consumers in Argentina and Brazil show similar intense panic buying that created artificial shortages.

Ah, I see now what this is all about. Soviet apologism and whataboutism for a thoroughly evil regime comparable with that of Hitler and Mao.

I've gotta say, I don't think invoking Hitler is useful. He's invoked so often that it obscures more than enlightens.

Then I explained to them that only force kept the Soviet Union together.

I take issue with your younger self there. The Communist Party itself was what kept the Union together (which is why everything spun out of control very quickly when Gorbachev abolished it's monopoly on power, whereas the .

I grant you that given the amount of state violence that the system used, it's pretty clear that the Communists themselves thought that force was a very important tool for keeping their revolution on track.

Gorbachev was about a decade late. That extra decade of drift under the gerontocracy allowed the rot in the economy to spread and caught the Soviets up in an arms race they could never win. Imagine Gorbachev or a similar figure taking power around 1975 and really pushing arms control and a conciliatory foreign policy with the post-Vietnam US...

I'm not so sure that arms control was possible in the 70s. The problem is that both sides wanted it (since neither wanted to bankrupt themselves with weapons spending) but both had different goals. The Soviets wanted arms control that granted security for themselves and their borderlands. So that meant that the entire Western alliance needed to balance the entire (poorer) Eastern alliance. Since equitable disarming would then leave the US militarily weaker than the Soviets, that wasn't too popular with American negotiators and decision makers.

So both sides thought the other was seeking cynical military advantage over the other and not properly getting into the spirit of the thing.

I don't see that changing unless some politically powerful idealist lands the top job on either side and can push their side to accept being at a "disadvantage" in the name of some greater purpose.

No, there can be no question of any renunciation of socialism (more precisely, the construction of socialism). Eliminating socialism, we do not simply destroy the economic system, we eliminate society itself. For you, the USSR is only repressive, but this is a primitive and prejudiced view.

Was he suggesting renunciation of socialism though? I would argue that it is possible to have a social democratic system that was much more emphatically socialist in its democracy than modern Social Democratic parties are here in the West.

Owners of small businesses often share many interests with the skilled working class, so I don't think allowing a class of small business people (perhaps call them worker-owners, to differentiate themselves from the sort of rentier capitalist that really would have an interest in opposing a socialist program in politics) would undermine the cohesion of interests and values of the population. Indeed, I'd even go so far as to say such a class would healthier than "princely" dynasties like you get in China are.

fasquardon
 
Was he suggesting renunciation of socialism though? I would argue that it is possible to have a social democratic system that was much more emphatically socialist in its democracy than modern Social Democratic parties are here in the West.

Owners of small businesses often share many interests with the skilled working class, so I don't think allowing a class of small business people (perhaps call them worker-owners, to differentiate themselves from the sort of rentier capitalist that really would have an interest in opposing a socialist program in politics) would undermine the cohesion of interests and values of the population. Indeed, I'd even go so far as to say such a class would healthier than "princely" dynasties like you get in China are.
fasquardon
The social democratic economy refers to standard state capitalism, and with it there are large private companies, and stratification. Titoism and Kadarism are far more original phenomena.
 
Could the Soviet Union Have Survived into the 21st Century?
Samuel Bendett said:
The breakup of the Soviet Union in December 1991 was arguably one of the most pivotal and surprising events of the twentieth century. What seemed like a sudden end of the Cold War ushered in a new world, along with new challenges and opportunities. Despite a nearly year-and-a-half process that led to the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991, the end of the mighty Communist superpower still caught many by surprise—in the United States and across Soviet Union itself. To Russian President Vladimir Putin, the end of the Soviet Union was a “major geopolitical disaster of the twentieth century.”

But was the breakup of the Soviet Union really inevitable? It is common knowledge today that indeed, by the end of 1991, there was no way to preserve USSR as it existed for decades after 1922. According to today’s prevailing attitudes, the political, economic and socio-cultural processes brewing in the country since 1986 eventually tore the nation part, and the relatively quick end of the largest country on the planet was more preferable to any alternatives. However, there were attempts made by the Soviet government to extend the life of their country by changing specific aspects of how it could be governed. The “what if” discussions about the end of the Soviet Union are still reverberating across Russia, as country’s intellectuals, politicians and nationalists try to understand what, if anything, could have done to keep their country together and to what ends. If we were to take a closer look at what actually happened, could USSR have actually survived into the twenty-first century?

What was

The Soviet constitution included Article 72 that allowed the constituent republics to secede. However, let's be honest here, if that would really the case then such process could have taken place well before 1990. The reality was very different. The Soviet Communist government would have never allowed its republics to freely leave the country as independent entities. Such a case would mean the permanent weakening of the Soviet state in the “zero-sum” game of the Cold War.

All fifteen Soviet republics were tied and interconnected together by a complicated economic matrix that placed the Russian Federated Socialist Republic (today’s Russia) at the center of all major industrial, economic and political activity across the country. We can hear the echoes of such an arrangement today in a complicated relationship between Russia and Ukraine. Even in the midst of conflict between the two countries, Russian military is still reliant on Ukrainian military products, and Ukrainian factories and industrial conglomerates still reap dividends by selling their technology to the Russians. In fact, Moscow only recently announced that it is capable of “import substitution” of Ukrainian military wares starting in 2018. The Soviet Union held its vast regions and republics together by a system of subsidies and fixed economic quotas, with many of its less developed regions receiving Soviet tech and consumer products in exchange for raw materials and agricultural goods. In some cases, Moscow supplied both finished and raw materials to make up for lack of industrial base and economic development in certain regions.

As the Soviet economy showed signs of a major slowdown in 1980s, the population and many of the USSR’s policy makers became restless. Recently enacted Soviet policies that encouraged political openness and discussion unleashed forces that were shaking the legitimacy of the ruling Communist Party and undermining the very foundations of the state. Fast forward to December 8, 1991. The dissolution of the country was made possible by the so-called Belavezha Accords that took place in Belarus. The heads of three Soviet constituent republics—Russia, Ukraine and Belarus—signed the document that officially dissolved USSR. The signers actually referred to the afore-mentioned Article 72 of the constitution that allowed for “peaceful” secession from the state. To be clear, this was a decision neither made after canvassing the general population nor announced publicly months in advance. As the shock of the Belavezha decision still reverberated across around the world, another summit took place on December 21, this time in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan. There, the heads of the eleven of the Soviet republics (minus Baltics and Georgia) finally dissolved what was left of the Soviet Union. No doubt that the second summit was underwritten by the earlier Belavezha Accords, which laid the legal foundation and a final precedent for the eventual and irreversible dissolution of the USSR. On December 25, 1991, in a Christmas gift to the United States and its allies, the Soviet flag was lowered in the Kremlin and replaced with a current Russian tri-color, ending the Cold War and ushering in a new and uncertain world.

What could have been

In hindsight, the bulk of the Soviet population wanted to preserve USSR in some shape or form. But such preservation and eventual survival of the Soviet state required different management, with a more decisive government apparatus ensuring that it was not challenged by alternative political or ethnonational models. Prior to the August 1991 coup that gravely weakened then-Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and propelled Boris Yeltsin to prominence, the Soviet government debated the merits of a Union of Sovereign States (USS). On March 17, 1991, a popular referendum was held in the nine Soviet republics—Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. The vast majority of voters supported maintaining the federal system of the Soviet Union. Following the results of the referendum, the Soviet central government signed an agreement with its nine republics on April 23, 1991. Following the full implementation of this treaty, the USSR would have become a federation of independent republics with a common president, foreign policy and military. How that arrangement would have worked in reality is difficult to answer, considering major political and social changes already taking place across the country. By August 1991, nine republics, except Ukraine, approved the draft of the new treaty. Unfortunately for Gorbachev and his last-ditch efforts, the Soviet hardliner August 1991 coup permanently sidelined him from political stage and ended any further efforts to reform the country.

Was it actually possible?

Perhaps USS was an idea whose time has come, but its eventual existence was already undermined by the political forces that were tearing USSR apart. In 1986, Gorbachev unveiled two processes that led to the eventual death of his country. Glasnost is loosely defined as political openness, while perestroika means political and economic restructuring. Meant to slowly liberalize certain aspects of state management and interaction with people, both actually weakened Soviet oversight and control, resulting in economic and political chaos, with rising nationalist and secessionist movements in many republics. Perhaps in light of such events, the signers of the Belavezha Accords thought their actions were inevitable, and therefore felt justified that they were doing the right thing at that time. But what if Gorbachev, in his desire to reform and re-invigorate the country, launched a different set of reforms? What if the Soviet Communist Party were to oversee a set of policies aimed at liberalizing only the economy of the USSR, keeping a firm grip on political ideology?

There was a precedent for such a move. The New Economic Policy (NEP) was enacted in 1921 following the Soviet government’s victory over Tsarist and anti-Bolshevik forces in the 1918–1920 civil war. With the country’s economy in ruins, limited private enterprises was allowed to coexist alongside emerging state industrial sector. Although the results were mixed, the NEP nonetheless resulted in an almost complete recovery of the new nation’s economy to pre-WWI levels, before being abruptly abolished in 1928 by Joseph Stalin. One has to wonder about the fate of the Soviet Union if NEP were allowed to continue. Small and light industries, as well as agriculture, would be in the hands of the private sector. The “commanding heights” of the economy, such as mines and heavy industry, would be under state management. If this sounds a lot like China today, that’s probably the case—the Chinese economic miracle took place under the strict control of the Communist Party that tolerated no political dissent in any form.

For such a scenario to succeed in late 1980s, Gorbachev would need to convince his fellow Communists that his new policies would not erode the party’s standing and reputation. In reality, by the late 1980s, Soviet population’s cynicism and distrust towards party slogans and overall management were at their highest. Loss of confidence in the ability to properly govern and to provide for its citizens propelled alternative political thoughts and movements, ultimately resulting in the Belavezha and Alma-Ata Accords. But what if Gorbachev were able to convince his colleagues that better economic conditions across Soviet Union would result in people’s restored trust in the party and their country? As March 1991 vote showed, plenty across USSR still believed in being part of one united state. A reformed economic plan would have left medium- and large-sized enterprises in the hands of the state, while allowing Soviet people to conduct small-scale economic activity, especially in agriculture. In this scenario, there would be no “glasnost,” no open discussion and critique of the state, no facing up to the dark Soviet past and no rising ethnonationalism in far-flung republics. Soviet government would have to make small-scale commercial loans available for its budding entrepreneurial class, with most successful of such entrepreneurs eventually becoming members of the Party in order for the government to keep tabs on its most active citizens. This strictly economic approach would have redirected the energies of many individuals towards economic gain and profit, and away from antistate activities and protests—as it eventually did in China, although with some notable exceptions. The Soviet society in mid-1980s was ready for such incremental economic changes, and may have embraced greater economic freedoms. This does assume, however, that such economic transformation would have been well managed by the state. It’s tempting to think that even if the Soviet system suffered numerous deficiencies along the way, the absence of strong political competition to Gorbachev could have allowed the slowly reforming Soviet Union to overcome internal problems and to emerge past 1991 in some new and reinvigorated form. Absence of secessionist movements that took place in the Baltics and Caucasus, and absent the August 1991 coup, the plan for the eventual transformation of the Soviet Union into a more economically liberal entity may have had a greater chance to succeed.

The new union?

Would such a new country still effectively compete with the United States, Western Europe and a rising China on the global stage? Perhaps over the years and decades, the Soviet Communist Party itself would liberalize, as we are starting to observe with China’s persistent attempts at reinventing the same Communist message for its evolving cadres. Would this new union (let’s call it NU) scale back its numerous international commitments in order to preserve resources and hard currency? Perhaps that too would have to take place, with Eastern Europe’s eventual detachment from the Warsaw Pact. The new union’s commitments in Africa and Latin America may have to be diminished as well—although if this new Soviet country would be able to reform its economy as it did by 1928, then the West would be eventually faced with a strong, united Soviet state aiming to keep its place as the competing superpower.

It is likewise hard to predict how the NU would deal with rising China as a direct competitor to its Communist oversight over liberalizing economy. Perhaps the two would find ways to cooperate, considering emerging similarities in the ways they would be run and administered. Fast forward to 2017, with many countries adopting or contemplating Chinese model of state-run capitalism, and its not that far-fetched to imagine Soviet-run capitalism model emerging as competition to American, Western European and Chinese ones. Still, the NU surviving past the 1990s would have required a committed and strong Communist leadership capable of making hard decisions on behalf of the state. The Chinese themselves had to make such choices in 1989 when the military crushed pro-democracy demonstrations on Tiananmen Square. Moreover, the NEP’s success in the 1920s was possible due to the entrepreneurial class that still survived the Soviet Revolution and the Russian Civil War. However, by the 1980s, these people and their commercial knowledge were long gone, and the Soviet government lacked experts with working knowledge and the skill sets required to succeed in a free market.

Today, the emerging consensus is that Gorbachev, despite the willingness to use force to put down protests in the Baltics, would not have been able to keep the country together by sheer force. Or perhaps he was not there at the right time—were he to come to power later, as the NU would attempt its evolution towards state-managed capitalism, his skills and his visions may have made him a better manager. Its likewise important to note that despite the post-1991 euphoria in the Western world, the end of the USSR was not a foregone conclusion. The events of December 1991 caught the vast majority of analysts and policy-makers by surprise. Therefore, if the NU were to endure, it would have faced the same hostile American and NATO policies aimed at containing Moscow. Despite slowly implementing market principles across the country, the NU would still be a Communist state that would view its next evolution as the logical step towards global competition with the West.

Perhaps the Soviet Union could not be saved, given the circumstances that the country found itself by the late 1980s. Back then, various internal mechanisms and political processes ensured that even the enforcement of the general consensus would be hard to implement. Alternatively, the idea of a reformed Soviet Union may survive today in some form with a set of economic, military and political alliances forged by Russia (the USSR’s legal successor) with its neighboring former Soviet states. The Eurasian Economic Union, encompassing Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, and closer integration between Russian and Armenian militaries points to this Soviet legacy. The USSR may not have been destined to survive, but the questions and deliberations about its potential evolution will continue to intrigue for years to come.
 
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