I was 19 year old back in 1991 and as far as I can remember, the struggle between Yeltsin and Gorbachev was an important immediate cause for the final breakup of the Soviet Union. The union consisted of several republics and most of these had been a part of the Russian Empire prior to the Revolution. My impression from the time was that because Yeltsin had the Russian Republic as his base and because he wanted to weaken Gorbachev, he also weakened the Soviet Union and was therefore partly to blame for the fact that the other republics became independent, as the Soviet Union was now the only organisational link between Russia and the other republics. Would it have been enough to avoid the collapse of the Soviet Union if Yeltsin and Gorbachev had been able to arrive at some settlement. Could the union have been reorganised so as to make the different regions parts of Russia, as they had been prior to the Revolution?
No Soviet collapse or Russia keeps most of the post-Soviet republics
- Thread starter Eivind
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yourworstnightmare
Banned
I don't think you need to tweak things that much to have the USSR switch to another Union lead By Russia, where the main differences are they ditched Communism and lost the Baltic States.
Couldn't they just have made the other republics integrated parts of Russia. Most of the Soviet Union had after all been a part of Russia prior to the Revolution. My impression was that Yeltsin allowed the Soviet Union to disintegrate because he then got rid of Gorbachev, who was his main rival.
FasterThanRaito
Kicked
With the instability of the late 80's and early 90's nationalism grew to become a powerful force in the republics. Although referendum at the time showed that they didn't want complete secession, they at least wanted greater autonomy from Moscow.
It was either reform the Soviet Union into something more accommodating, or no union. The coup forced the no-union option, and the Soviet Sovereign Republics idea fell through.
The New Union was very close to becoming a reality, but never again would turks and ukrainians allow themselves to be directly ruled by russians. So no new-russian-empire/federation- not without a lot a violence.
This is actually a misconception. Yeltsin did everything he did to weaken Gorbachev at the expense of himself, but after the Coup, he tried to keep the union together. However, the individual Republics were too strong at this point and after over 90% of Ukrainians voted for independence Yeltsin had no desire to keep the Turkish Republics in a union. There wasn't much demographic (Russian majority in a larger union is much slimmer than in Russia itself) or economic (the overwhelming amount of natural resources were in Russia) point to it.
Had Yeltsin been inclined to keep Belarus, Azerbaijan, and Central Asia, then it probably would have happened. But the decentralization they would have demanded would have greatly diminished his authority, and no one could work out a way for all the Republics to be equal despite Russia having the overwhelming demographic and economic dominance of the union.
You probably have to speed up political reforms in time to get something like the New Union treaty passed. Some earlier, less disastrous crisis than the OTL August coup would be necessary IMO. For example you could have the attempted independence of the Baltic states develop into something messier, that forces the Soviet people and CPSU to consider what it is they want, without deciding that they want complete dissolution. Sentiments changed quite a bit IOTL before and after the coup; Ukraine, for instance, initially voted overwhelmingly in favor of union, but after August 1991 they voted overwhelmingly for independence.
This is my point. He was more interested in his own power than in keeping the union together. Yeltsin allowed the Soviet Union to disintegrate because this was the best way to strengthen his own power.
MarshalBraginsky
Banned
Would a situation in the post-Soviet era have ended up like Yugoslavia? We do have a TL about that scenario unfolding.
This is the one thing everyone should be very thankful to Yeltsin for, he had no real interest in a 'Greater Russia' plan. In fact didn't he sign a not-quite-so legal treaty with the President of Belarus that recognised the Russian Republic as a new nation, effectively pulling the USSR down from the centre?
yourworstnightmare
Banned
The Republics existed, nothing could be done about that. But the Soviet Union did not necessarily have to fall apart into independent republics, another Russian dominated Union could have happened.
MarshalBraginsky
Banned
Well when it comes to 'Greater Russia', there's always Zhirinovsky who might be the guy to pull it off, or even Zyuganov who wants to reconstruct a new Soviet Union.
They could have turned the union into a unitary state and just changed the name of the Soviet Union into Russia.
That would be a harder pill to swallow for the minor republics. The old Soviet Union was sold as a confederation but de facto it was but a unitary state. Names are important imho.
As you say, it was already a de facto unitary state, so this would not really be a big change.
Pretty much everyone was afraid of that, as Yugoslavia was tearing itself apart that very moment. Gorbachev threatened both to take Crimea and Eastern Ukraine and warned of another Yugoslavia happening if the union broke up. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed.
Had there been no Yugoslavia as an example of what not to do, things could've gotten bad fast.
MarshalBraginsky
Banned
Thankfully there was no records of genocide when the former Soviet Union fell apart, aside from what was happening between the Armenians and the Azeris.