If the Soviet Union survives mostly unreformed how does it look in the current year?

If the Soviet Union survives mostly unreformed how does it look in the current year
Mostly unreformed, I guess, by definition... which means like it looked in the last decades of its existence?
Which would be a tough call, for the Soviet Union reshaped a lot throughout its history.
 
I think that surviving USSR would look like ratherly PRC in 2019. It hardly can be totally isolated one man's dictatorship like Belarus is.

A reformist CCCP would almost certainly look like an enlarged Belarus with nuclear weapons, instead of China. The PRC prospered not only because of economic liberalisation, but also because they had a massive pool of idle cheap labour. The same massive growth could not be expected of the USSR, where most of the population was educated and heavily urbanized.
 
Why is a surviving USSR so unrealistic?
If the August Putsch succeeded and they were ready to shoot their own people, I don't see how they would he unable to crush the rogue SSRs and dissidents if they had the political will and military support, which thankfully, they lacked.

I would see the USSR surviving as sort of, perhaps, Iran. It's a country a lot of people hate and the West sanctions them after the Putsch, but they have some friends and allies, but all in all they're rather isolated and live in poor to normal conditions.

Economics
Soviets had become dependant on exporting oil natural gas and the natural resources to pay for food imports.
Low price of Oil caused a problem paying for imports of grain to make bread.
A successful coup faces major economic problems.
Short to medium term they risk food shortage and famine.

Why did the Soviet Union fall?
by Tyler Cowen June 13, 2007 at 6:17 am in

In a simplified way, the story of the collapse of the Soviet Union could be told as a story about grain and oil.

That is from Yegor Gaidar. In the 1980s it was necessary to import more and more grain, and Saudi Arabia was no longer supporting oil prices. It worked like this:


The timeline of the collapse of the Soviet
Union can be traced to September 13, 1985. On this date, Sheikh Ahmed
Zaki Yamani, the minister of oil of Saudi Arabia, declared that the
monarchy had decided to alter its oil policy radically. The Saudis
stopped protecting oil prices, and Saudi Arabia quickly regained its
share in the world market. During the next six months, oil production
in Saudi Arabia increased fourfold, while oil prices collapsed by
approximately the same amount in real terms.

As a result, the Soviet Union lost approximately $20 billion per
year, money without which the country simply could not survive. The
Soviet leadership was confronted with a difficult decision on how to
adjust. There were three options–or a combination of three
options–available to the Soviet leadership.

First, dissolve the Eastern European empire and effectively stop
barter trade in oil and gas with the Socialist bloc countries, and
start charging hard currency for the hydrocarbons. This choice,
however, involved convincing the Soviet leadership in 1985 to negate
completely the results of World War II. In reality, the leader who
proposed this idea at the CPSU Central Committee meeting at that time
risked losing his position as general secretary.

Second, drastically reduce Soviet food imports by $20 billion, the
amount the Soviet Union lost when oil prices collapsed. But in
practical terms, this option meant the introduction of food rationing
at rates similar to those used during World War II. The Soviet
leadership understood the consequences: the Soviet system would not
survive for even one month. This idea was never seriously discussed.

Third, implement radical cuts in the military-industrial complex.
With this option, however, the Soviet leadership risked serious
conflict with regional and industrial elites, since a large number of
Soviet cities depended solely on the military-industrial complex. This
choice was also never seriously considered.

Unable to realize any of the above solutions, the Soviet leadership
decided to adopt a policy of effectively disregarding the problem in
hopes that it would somehow wither away. Instead of implementing actual
reforms, the Soviet Union started to borrow money from abroad while its
international credit rating was still strong. It borrowed heavily from
1985 to 1988, but in 1989 the Soviet economy stalled completely…

The money was suddenly gone. The Soviet Union
tried to create a consortium of 300 banks to provide a large loan for
the Soviet Union in 1989, but was informed that only five of them would
participate and, as a result, the loan would be twenty times smaller
than needed. The Soviet Union then received a final warning from the
Deutsche Bank and from its international partners that the funds would
never come from commercial sources. Instead, if the Soviet Union
urgently needed the money, it would have to start negotiations directly
with Western governments about so-called politically motivated credits.

In 1985 the idea that the Soviet Union would begin bargaining for
money in exchange for political concessions would have sounded
absolutely preposterous to the Soviet leadership. In 1989 it became a
reality, and Gorbachev understood the need for at least $100 billion
from the West to prop up the oil-dependent Soviet economy.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/06/why_did_the_sov.html
 
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even if the oil price recovered, and did some years afterwards, well you need to get it out. the economic system collapsying meant that maybe the will be able to get decreasing quantities of it because of lack of maintenance and investment - as it happens now in venezuela for instance.
 
even if the oil price recovered, and did some years afterwards, well you need to get it out. the economic system collapsying meant that maybe the will be able to get decreasing quantities of it because of lack of maintenance and investment - as it happens now in venezuela for instance.

What they need is economic reform in food production.
Soviet union was importer of food after communism fell Russia and Ukraine become major exporters of grain.
Tsarist Russia before 1914 was a major exporter of grain.
 
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How much of the Soviet Union is being kept? Georgia and Lithuania was already mostly out the door around the time of the coup (I think) and the other Baltic and Caucasian states also had issues going on. Would there be any favoritism between groups? The junta apparently controlled Azerbaijan around the time of the coup, but I don't know what effect they had on any attempts to stop the massacres by some Azerbaijani groups and the Armenian ones that followed. Not giant mass grave massacres, but more people getting run out of town or shot up as things collapsed and everyone tried to get as much land for themselves and their coethnics as possible. There would probably be scenes that looked like ethnic cleansing if the GKCHP (should we use that term to refer to the junta?) got power as they would be putting down areas with ethnic nationalist revolts. Anyone think any ASSRs and other areas will be formed or abolished? Ahhh, and do we have any mutinies or massacres in Russia? This is the sort of stuff that will let us decide just how well the regime is going to do, given how absolutely everyone might hate them.
 
First, dissolve the Eastern European empire and effectively stop
barter trade in oil and gas with the Socialist bloc countries, and
start charging hard currency for the hydrocarbons. This choice,
however, involved convincing the Soviet leadership in 1985 to negate
completely the results of World War II. In reality, the leader who
proposed this idea at the CPSU Central Committee meeting at that time
risked losing his position as general secretary.

Interesting. I could imagine the Soviets could trade "reunification" of eastern Germany for enormous sums of political money from Western Germany.
 
Interesting. I could imagine the Soviets could trade "reunification" of eastern Germany for enormous sums of political money from Western Germany.

No matter how much money the Germans give them it only postpones the end.
Economic reform is what is needed. Central planned economics are very wasteful and the soviet put a lot of resources in to place like North Korea and Cuba etc.
For the Soviet union to survive it needs market economics and a lot less spending on weapons. But if it had market economics would it still be a communist country?

The surprising thing about the Soviet Union was not that it collapsed.
The surprising thing was that it lasted so long with such wasteful economics.
In the end the vast natural resources of the Soviet Union were not enough to keep such a wasteful system going in the long term.
 
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I will leave it to others to say how, but with an existing USSR, I doubt there would be a Gulf War 1. Without that there would be no 9/11 in its OTL form, and thus no Gulf War 2 and no invasion of Afghanistan. Without those global events, the downstream consequences become hard to track.
 
A surviving, unreformed Soviet Union releases so many butterflies it's likely the Internet and globalization don't happen as we know them.

The free trade and globalization that started in the 90s will not happen and the internet as we know it will not be truly global. If we see more free trade and globalization, like the internet it will not be global. US foreign and domestic policies will be different enough that they may not make the same trade deals they made with China OTL because of the stigma associated with communism and communism will not be considered dead like it is today. If that happens then China will not be as strong as OTL today. Even if tensions died down and things like German unification still happened, there would still be a Soviet Russia as a nuclear power. The internet we know will exist within the first and third world. The second world will have their own internet and China might make their own too.

North Korea will be in a better place if they continue to receive Soviet money.

Lets say the coup against Gorbachev succeeds and the hardliners assert control keeping the old policies more or less the same. How do the Soviets react to the events of the modern era?

They would have to make some reforms to not collapse. The DPRK has been embracing limited economic reform since the 1990s. Many would have already declared independence by this time and German unification would have already begun. The USSR will be smaller. They will be able to hold onto Belarus. If they cannot hold Ukraine they can annex the eastern, russian part and crimea.

The PRC prospered not only because of economic liberalisation, but also because they had a massive pool of idle cheap labour.

I cannot speak of belarus, but north korea has had some economic liberalization since the end of the cold war under Kim Jong Un and his father.
 
Lets say the coup against Gorbachev succeeds and the hardliners assert control keeping the old policies more or less the same. How do the Soviets react to the events of the modern era?

The coup was too late to save the USSR, and absolutely too late for it to be "mostly unreformed".

No-one wanted to return to Stalinist levels of violence, but that's what it would take to break the nationalists and return to a one-party state.

The minimum PoD required is in 1987, and for Gorbachev to decide against ending the Communist Party's monopoly on power that in OTL ripped the skeleton out from inside the USSR. During the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks had built their revolutionary state around the Bolshevik Party, since the Party was what they had to work with. And the Party was still a load bearing component of the Soviet system in 1987. Even with such a minimum PoD and no further reforms by Gorbachev or his successors, the process started by Gorbachev's reforms before 1987 had caused processes of change that would be ongoing for the next generation, at least. Hardly "mostly unreformed".

I will leave it to others to say how, but with an existing USSR, I doubt there would be a Gulf War 1. Without that there would be no 9/11 in its OTL form, and thus no Gulf War 2 and no invasion of Afghanistan. Without those global events, the downstream consequences become hard to track.

I am dubious.

1) The USSR had a strong interest in establishing international borders as inviolate without consent. The Soviets endured truly horrific abuse at the hands of the Germans in WW2 and didn't want wars of conquest to have a shred of legitimacy. They also didn't want the Americans to ever start thinking that it would be OK to invade the Soviet Union and liberate the Soviet conquests from WW2, some of which the US never recognized (the Baltics). Backing their ally's invasion of Kuwait when that ally was unreliable, hadn't consulted them before the invasion and arrogantly assumed he'd have Soviet support against the US with all its nukes is an idea with a very long "con" column and a very short "pro" column. It isn't completely out of the question that the Soviets join the US in actively smacking Saddam down. The best I can see Iraq getting is Soviet efforts to keep the US from invading Iraq after driving the Iraqi army out of Kuwait.

2) The Iraqi invasion was both a big threat and a huge opportunity for the US. Intervening against Iraq has a very long "pro" column and a very short "con" column. So even if the Soviet leadership were crazy or so superannuated that they blundered into a confrontation with the US over this matter, the US is not going to give up without pushing the matter and the US can afford to push much further on this issue, since not only do they gain so much from a successful intervention, they also just have more power to bid with.

3) Even if there were a PoD back in the 70s that means that the Soviet Union is doing WAY better economically than OTLs USSR, the Gulf War happens at a low point (because it takes a long time for long-term investments to come to fruit and the Soviets made a bunch of bad investment decisions in the 70s that were going to lead to a tough time in the late 80s and early 90s - avoiding that requires a PoD in the 60s, and with a PoD that far back the odds of something resembling OTL's Gulf War being butterflied are high).

So it's pretty likely that the Soviets allow Saddam to reap what he's sown.

Of course, 9/11 may still not happen, since it seems to me that is a very contingent event and we're talking about something that's happening at least a decade after any PoD we're discussing here. And even if 9/11 did happen, the Soviets may have used the post-Gulf War isolation of Iraq to make Iraq into a more suitable ally and so even with a Gulf War and a 9/11 attack there may be no Gulf War 2 due to the Soviets still being an Iraqi ally and a US invasion under dubious pretexts absolutely being a thing that activates that alliance, in a way that wasn't the case with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. So there may be no Gulf War 2 due to that being a thing that would trigger a nuclear war. And an invasion of Afghanistan... Well. If the Soviet Union has survived, the Communist regime in Afghanistan has probably survived too - the Soviets had actually won their war in Afghanistan - but when the Soviets collapsed, the Allied Afghan regime wasn't getting the subsidies they needed to keep on top of the still restless situation, so it all slid into another civil war.

So IF there is a 9/11 and IF Bin Laden is still hiding amongst allies in Afghanistan at the time of the attacks (quite possible - the Afghan-Pakistan border would probably be a wonderland for Islamic militants), the most likely thing that happens is that the US president asks the Soviet general secretary to help the Americans get those responsible when the Soviet leader calls up to give his condolences after the attacks.

US foreign and domestic policies will be different enough that they may not make the same trade deals they made with China OTL because of the stigma associated with communism and communism will not be considered dead like it is today. If that happens then China will not be as strong as OTL today.

On the other hand, China will still be a valuable party in containing the Soviets, so the US will have a strong interest in doing what they can to keep China more aligned with them than the USSR.

fasquardon
 
On the other hand, China will still be a valuable party in containing the Soviets, so the US will have a strong interest in doing what they can to keep China more aligned with them than the USSR.

As much as they did OTL during the cold war. China played off both sides and was not friends with the Soviet Union or America. The premise is assuming a soviet union that is either stagnant, in continued decline or marginally improving because of the situation of the USSR in 1990 and what those unreformed policies were. China would still be a rising power without the same level of USA investment, in contrast to the weakened Soviets.
 
As much as they did OTL during the cold war. China played off both sides and was not friends with the Soviet Union or America. The premise is assuming a soviet union that is either stagnant, in continued decline or marginally improving because of the situation of the USSR in 1990 and what those unreformed policies were. China would still be a rising power without the same level of USA investment, in contrast to the weakened Soviets.

It is worth remembering that even today China is no-where near as powerful militarily as the Soviet Union was and they only recently passed the level of per capita development that the Soviets were at at the time of fall.

The US had already decided it wanted to entice China into their camp. China was already being integrated into the system of international institutions that the Allies had woven around themselves after WW2 (and though the Soviets had worked to help build many of those institutions, they didn't join and then as the Cold War started to rev up no-one wanted to let them in anyway).

And since both the Soviets and China were getting over the Mao-Khrushchev rift and working together to settle their differences, the US couldn't depend on poor Sino-Soviet relations continuing on their own. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a real gift in this respect, and set Sino-Soviet relations back a decade, but there aren't that many ways either the Soviets or Chinese can mess things up absent someone really crazy getting into power.

Also, while I do think that China will be slowed down some by perhaps choosing to bear a higher military burden and due to the West not having quite as much growth in the 90s, they will have much more opportunities to trade with the Soviets than they did in OTL with the post-Soviet states. If China is slowed down some (quite possible) I don't think it will be slowed down by much. I could see them maybe being 5 years behind their OTL level of development by alt-2019.

fasquardon
 
A surviving, unreformed Soviet Union releases so many butterflies it's likely the Internet and globalization don't happen as we know them.
Even in 1989, Archie and Gopher are just around the corner. Inexpensive(for the time) 9600 baud modems, BBS will connect to each other and be able to transfer pictures, as well as text.
Fidonet had almost 6000 nodes in 1989

Something like Mosaic would hit shortly after that, and more and more netowrks would interconnect. Fidonet, USENET, Compuserve,AOL, all that would mesh together. USSR shambling onwards doesn't change that.
 
I cannot speak of belarus, but north korea has had some economic liberalization since the end of the cold war under Kim Jong Un and his father.

Belarus reformed quite a bit. They are now free market but with strategic sectors and enterprises remaining under state control. The governmental apparatus of the BSSR is mostly unchanged, the KGB still exists, and religion is not suppressed.
 
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