No soviet invasion of Afghanistan how long does the soviet union last

Say there no 1978 Afghan coup and Afghanistan remains neutral in the cold war

How long would the soviet union last

What would the end of the soviet union long like if it lasts longer
 
Say there no 1978 Afghan coup and Afghanistan remains neutral in the cold war

How long would the soviet union last

What would the end of the soviet union long like if it lasts longer

Without the war in Afghanistan the Soviet Union might well have lasted slightly longer or even collapsed earlier. The economic costs of the war were minuscule and even human casualties tolerable (15000 over 10 years in a totalitarian society).

The basic problems of Soviet Union were still there. Reliance on oil and Western credit, gigantic defense budgets, aging industrial machinery, an economy suited to produce early 20th Century goods...

The invasion of Afghanistan resulted in more confrontation with the West which may have hastened or lengthened the life of Soviet Union. Without confrontation there probably would not have been the "rallying around the flag" effect. The Soviet propaganda would have been even less succesfull internally and externally, as confrontational rhetoric of Western politicians was great material for them. "Madman in the White House on the red button" was a widely believed (wrongly!) meme during 1980's all around the world. (As in real life Reagan was probably the US Cold War president least inclined to use nuclear weapons).

With no apparent threat there would be no reason for gigantic military spending and economic hardship. There would be also more Western contacts on lower and higher level resulting in even faster knowledge on Western cultural and economic progress.
 
Does oil price still collapse in the 1980's? If so, they do.

I wonder for how long even higher oil prices could have sustained the Soviet system? Especially as higher oil prices would have probably resulted in earlier efforts for fuel efficiency and fracking?
 
No-one has mentioned the reason for the breakup of the USSR yet? Is Gorbachev and the Baltic Blunder not going to be mentioned, the ticking time-bomb of soviet destruction since the start of the second world war? There are simply to many forces at play to say whether or not the abortion of invasion of Afghanistan would have saved the USSR, primarily because it isn't the thing that brought it down, comparatively speaking.
 
No Gorbachev, and the Soviet Union is still around. Not necessarily a nice place to live, but Gorbachev turned an economic crisis into a political one.
 
No Gorbachev, and the Soviet Union is still around. Not necessarily a nice place to live, but Gorbachev turned an economic crisis into a political one.

Do you mean some "Frozen Cuba" or "Assad on River Don" -type of a scenario? Against this it must be taken into account that Soviet Union had built it's image as being a main competitor to the United States. As Soviet economy would inevitably collapse or at very least be visibly more and more behind West it would have hard time keeping the Eastern European vassals in bay, and after that many republics would be trying to see their way out. Would Soviet state of 1980's be capable of mass violence needed to keep things in order, nevertheless who was in charge? Even in 1981 the apparently strong USSR was unable to intervene militarily in Poland.
I'm not saying USSR could not have lasted some years longer, but for how long?

Of course we have the "Cyrillic China" concept in which USSR effectively abandons race with the west and turns into world's factory, but I'm not sure how to do that? Perhaps China turns into a giant rogue state with nuclear weapons in 1980's?
 
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