PP: Soviet Liberalization

[Killer300]

Okay, I term this a plausibility problem, because I see it as a constant theme brought up in timelines, however its difficulties aren't adequately addressed. Now, this thread is one that I would actually like to be disproven by those with good knowledge of this particular subject, however lets get started already.

I have three issues that need to be answered for any Soviet liberalization timeline.

1. The Soviet Union isn't China: To elaborate, the Soviet Union can't get foreign investment like China did, because the latter has a unique diplomatic situation. The Soviet Union is still a pariah, which no one in the West will invest in, and won't give credit. China, by comparison, was a tactical ally during the Cold War, and therefore, was able to gain foreign investment, among other things. This means that the Soviet Union won't be able to liberalize like China did, as no one will provide the capital from foreign sources.

Another reason this doesn't work is because the Soviet Union has a very different type of economic situation to liberalize out of than China. China just came out of an utterly worthless economic system that no one attempted to liberalize under Mao. The Soviet Union is coming out of a system that has actually worked okay before, and additionally, had attempted liberalizations. China has virtually no industry because of the failure of Mao's policies, while the Soviet Union has massive amounts of heavy industry because of Stalin's policies, and later central plans.

Now, the Soviet Union isn't completely disadvantaged, for example it has superior natural resources to China with which to liberalize, and it doesn't have to industrialize from scratch to some extent. However, unlike China, it doesn't have endless manpower with which to drive economic growth, and it doesn't have diplomatic relations with which to gain foreign capital. If anything, it actually has significant population problems, as its economic problems caused it to need more labor than it should have, and it had demographic problems going back to WW2, which means under this scenario, it may have to import manpower somehow in order to help liberalize.

2. 1980s Too Late: Namely, having the Soviet Union liberalize successfully in the 1980s is borderline ASB. It has decayed too long, and it doesn't have the capital to do it. It can't cut the military significantly enough because of the need for a garrison force in Eastern Europe, and it doesn't have enough money from oil unless somehow the Middle East flares up again. Additionally, because of reasons mentioned above, it won't have access to foreign capital or investment to help finance the process, hence, has to afford it completely on its own.

3. Multiple Attempts: Namely, the Soviet Union actually tried to reform, multiple times. Even in the 1970s, under Brechev, they tried to reform, as he actually introduced that Soviet firms had to make a profit, as if they were private firms. Before hand, we have the attempted reforms of Nikita Krushchev, which if successful, weren't enough. And, we have the reforms of Gorbachav, that led to the Soviet Union dissolving, and the utter train wreck of shock economics.

My point with the last is this. Under such an attempt of liberalization, how is the Soviet Union going to do it that it somehow didn't do in OTL that will be successful? They can't do it like China, and their own attempts in OTL either did nothing, or made the situation even worse.


My over all point with this isn't that it's impossible for the Soviet Union to successfully liberalize. However, if it's going to, it's going to have to conquer challenges that China did not, some of which I haven't even mentioned, only the major issues I have with most timelines of this type. Additionally, whatever it liberalizes into will have a very different economic structure than China, or for that matter, any other post-Communist state.

Thoughts on this?

 

[Incognito]

Multiple Attempts

The problem with that one, so far as I know, is that Soviet Union after Stalin had flip-flopped between pro-liberalization and conservative leaders. When a conservative replaced a liberalizer he would undue his predecessor's progress and vica versa. Get several like-minded pro-liberalization leaders in a row or get one to somehow hold onto power for a long time like Stalin did and you may see better results.

 

[Killer300]

The problem with that one, so far as I know, is that Soviet Union after Stalin had flip-flopped between pro-liberalization and conservative leaders. When a conservative replaced a liberalizer he would undue his predecessor's progress and vica versa. Get several like-minded pro-liberalization leaders in a row or get one to somehow hold onto power for a long time like Stalin did and you may see better results.

While this is true, to some extent, the problem is that the leaders aren't quite that clear cut. After all, Brechev even tried to reform with requiring firms to make a profit, and he is quite the conservative by Soviet terms. Additionally, you have to take into account why the conservative leaders appeared when they did, which was partially because of failures of past liberalizations.

And even with that, you still have to overcome the hurdles of the first two, which are hardly easy issues to overcome.

 

[Aelita]

I think the first point is most important, because it provides one of the core underlying reasons why OTL's reforms were ultimately doomed. The Soviet Union is in an uncomfortable place: they are too powerful to be anything but a pariah in the international capitalist system, but they are not powerful enough to face the West on even terms.

So the China route is simply never going to be available to them. They're doomed to some level of autarky, unless they can build their own separate trading bloc. Which ultimately proved impossible IOTL. The Soviet satellite regimes proved surprisingly independent when it came to economics and trade. Far more independent than any American satellite state, and they made COMECON a joke organization.

Trying to go China would have to mean massive unilateral disarmament of both conventional and strategic nuclear forces, and the subjugation of the nation to the global capitalist system. It's easy to see why this is not a political possibility. And they simply didn't have the means, either in hard power or soft-power, to build an alternate, functional trading bloc in Eastern Europe, let alone among their other allies around the world.

 

[Killer300]

Additionally, from an AH perspective, it's not only ludicrous, it's lazy. It's another case of substituting the economic/political situation of one country for another, and assuming it's going to work. It shows a lack of research on the part of the person doing the TL, and ignores the intricate details needed to write such a timeline.

 

[LeX]

Why not just have a Gorbachev appear a little earlier, like in 1975? Let Detente settle in and replace the Cold War. Let the Soviets encounter worse luck in their international overtures between 1945 and 1975 and thus be more inclined to reconcile with the West. Maybe for some reason the Middle East becomes a bad place to get oil from (there was a crisis in 1973 OTL), so the Russians begin to sell some of theirs and from then on trade with the West gets jumpstarted?

I think that liberalization can happen, you just need to think outside the box.

 

[Killer300]

Why not just have a Gorbachev appear a little earlier, like in 1975? Let Detente settle in and replace the Cold War. Let the Soviets encounter worse luck in their international overtures between 1945 and 1975 and thus be more inclined to reconcile with the West. Maybe for some reason the Middle East becomes a bad place to get oil from (there was a crisis in 1973 OTL), so the Russians begin to sell some of theirs and from then on trade with the West gets jumpstarted?

I think that liberalization can happen, you just need to think outside the box.

Well, two issues with this.

1. Gorbachev isn't really that good, or at least, not necessarily good enough to reform the Soviet Union that way.

2. The West was partially what kept detente from occurring, not just the Soviet Union. The West has to be willing to stop treating it like a pariah, which just isn't going to happen in short enough time for liberalization to work.

With that in mind, yes, one has to think outside the box. The question is whether one gets so far from the box that the TL isn't recognizable by OTL standards.

 

[Aelita]

It's a classic prisoner's dilemma actually. The Soviets moves are always based on the conflict with the United States. Reform and liberalization in the Soviet Union requires cooperation from the West. It may be the high equilibrium, but the US can gain more relative advantage by defecting. So they're stuck in the low equilibrium of arms race, confrontation and Cold War.

 

[Killer300]

Which means, ironically, the Soviet Union has to achieve detente before liberalizing, not the other way around. This would mean, to some extent, actually beating the West first.

Setting aside the likelihood of that, this still means that they can't liberalize, because under detente, relations will be icy, at best. It will take decades for the Western powers to be willing to trade with it again, and in the meantime, the Soviet Union has to find an economic system that works.

Really, they might as well try to find an economic system that works in autarky, as they'll be stuck doing that for awhile. Whatever that system is, it's not traditional capitalism, or even state capitalism in the style of China.

 

[EternalCynic]

A wrinkle with the first point is that during China's initial years of market reforms, most foreign investment actually came from the large and wealthy Chinese diaspora and not from western multinationals. There definitely was a significant and wealthy Russian diaspora which would have been willing to invest in their homeland regardless of the global political situation. The Cold War did not in itself prevent the Soviet Union from taking a Chinese path.

 

[Killer300]

A wrinkle with the first point is that during China's initial years of market reforms, most foreign investment actually came from the large and wealthy Chinese diaspora and not from western multinationals. There definitely was a significant and wealthy Russian diaspora which would have been willing to invest in their homeland regardless of the global political situation. The Cold War did not in itself prevent the Soviet Union from taking a Chinese path.

Okay, this is interesting, however still doesn't quite solve the problem.

Namely? China got where it was today out of being an export economy, but the Soviet Union can't do this because it's, once again, a pariah state. No one will buy Soviet made products in the United States, or the United Kingdom. China has practically overloaded both in certain areas.

Even with that, this still doesn't solve the problem of Russia having a very different resource situation from China, in that they don't have enough manpower, and hence, can't partially use that cheap manpower to finance economic growth.

 

[omnimercurial]

I have a few ideas if you are interested. I need some info from you though regarding POD's. Are POD's pre WW2/mid WW2 acceptable or are only post war divergences allowable per your challenge?

 

[Killer300]

I have a few ideas if you are interested. I need some info from you though regarding POD's. Are POD's pre WW2/mid WW2 acceptable or are only post war divergences allowable per your challenge?

Well, this isn't quite a challenge, however a POD before WW2 somewhat invalidates things to the point of going too far from the box, so to speak. Mid World War 2 on the other hand... well, I'd accept that.

 

[Incognito]

Namely? China got where it was today out of being an export economy, but the Soviet Union can't do this because it's, once again, a pariah state. No one will buy Soviet made products in the United States, or the United Kingdom. China has practically overloaded both in certain areas.

USA? Probably not.

U.K.? Well what if the "special relationship" between U.S.A. and U.K. source and U.K. wants to expend its options when it comes to trading partner. Or if not U.K, what about some other western nation(s) (France, Germany, Scandinavian nations, Canada etc.)?

 

[Killer300]

Switzerland? Perhaps, that neutrality may help. But not France, West Germany, or the UK, the Cold War impacted their culture too much.

So... well, the USSR is effectively locked out of the largest consumption markets.

 

[Incognito]

Switzerland? Perhaps, that neutrality may help. But not France, West Germany, or the UK, the Cold War impacted their culture too much.

So... well, the USSR is effectively locked out of the largest consumption markets.

You sure about France? I know they were not exactly friendly with USSR OTL but they had their issues with Anglos/USA/NATO too. So maybe with a POD in 1950s you could get a France that goes its separate way and finds USSR to be an ally of convenience against the Anglo-USA block. Their relations develop from than.

Also, could some of the non-alined nations prove to be a good source of investment? I know that each of those nations by themselves may lack the consumer base and capital to jump start things, but if USSR manages to secure a market in several of them would they collectively pose a large enough market/investment base? Just wondering out-loud...

 

[Pesterfield]

The Soviet satellite regimes proved surprisingly independent when it came to economics and trade. Far more independent than any American satellite state, and they made COMECON a joke organization.

If the Soviet Union needs trading partners can COMECON be made not a joke?

 

[omega21]

If the Soviet Union needs trading partners can COMECON be made not a joke?

Stalin founded it as a tool of control rather than of trade, so this mindset might need to change.

 

[Simreeve]

Maybe if you get rid of Stalin a bit earlier (say 1943) and replace him with somebody who's not only saner but willing to try dealing in good faith with the west? Even Molotov might have been a better choice...

 

[Urban fox]

1. The Soviet Union isn't China: To elaborate, the Soviet Union can't get foreign investment like China did, because the latter has a unique diplomatic situation. The Soviet Union is still a pariah, which no one in the West will invest in, and won't give credit. China, by comparison, was a tactical ally during the Cold War, and therefore, was able to gain foreign investment, among other things. This means that the Soviet Union won't be able to liberalize like China did, as no one will provide the capital from foreign sources.

The Soviet Union had fairly bad diplomatic relations with many countries that is not the same things as being a pariah. It also could very well attract investment in a less tense diplomatic climate and had a massive internal market, which was to an extent under-exploited. In addition to a highly-educated population, world-class academic & scientific institutions and an existing indusrial base that could be modernized.

The idea that the U.S.S.R needed outside invest to liberalize is hard to sustain. It would be helpful but not utterly vital.

Another reason this doesn't work is because the Soviet Union has a very different type of economic situation to liberalize out of than China. China just came out of an utterly worthless economic system that no one attempted to liberalize under Mao. The Soviet Union is coming out of a system that has actually worked okay before, and additionally, had attempted liberalizations. China has virtually no industry because of the failure of Mao's policies, while the Soviet Union has massive amounts of heavy industry because of Stalin's policies, and later central plans.

Post-Mao China was an utter wreck, three decades of Mao's metaphysical disregard for reality and the Cultural Revolution had saddled China with a substantial amount of industry. Unfortunately it was a rust belt almost from the start.

As for attempts to liberalize, the PRC did in fact do so several times. This was one of the reasons, beyond lust for god-like power that Mao wanted to crush the ''Captalist-Roaders''.

Now, the Soviet Union isn't completely disadvantaged, for example it has superior natural resources to China with which to liberalize, and it doesn't have to industrialize from scratch to some extent. However, unlike China, it doesn't have endless manpower with which to drive economic growth, and it doesn't have diplomatic relations with which to gain foreign capital. If anything, it actually has significant population problems, as its economic problems caused it to need more labor than it should have, and it had demographic problems going back to WW2, which means under this scenario, it may have to import manpower somehow in order to help liberalize.

Soviet natural resources would yield an increasing benefits as Europe’s dependence of Russian oil & gas grows. As for manpower the U.S.S.R’s population was growing steadily. Particularly in the under-developed Central Asian SSR’s.

Soviet diplomatic realtions were good enough with many top-tier economies to make investment possible assuming a profit can be made, and unlike China the Politburo hadnt been acting like lunatics for the better part of ten years. Also to call China an ally during the Cold War is an outright falsehood.

As for WW2 losses, the worst effects were post-war. Forty years later not so much, the Russian piopulation had almost doubled after all.

2. 1980s Too Late: Namely, having the Soviet Union liberalize successfully in the 1980s is borderline ASB. It has decayed too long, and it doesn't have the capital to do it. It can't cut the military significantly enough because of the need for a garrison force in Eastern Europe, and it doesn't have enough money from oil unless somehow the Middle East flares up again. Additionally, because of reasons mentioned above, it won't have access to foreign capital or investment to help finance the process, hence, has to afford it completely on its own.

Uh, for one thing I think you overstate the amount of force needed to hold Eastern Europe, the Soviets needed to do both that and ensure it could stand up to NATO. Even the military was aware of the need to cut defence spending.

As for decay, it's true the Stalinist economic system had long since outlived it’s usefulness, and reforms could cause a degree of hardship. Still despite everything I highly doubt a reforming U.S.S.R would come near the clusterf**ks & implosions in the post-Soviet former SSR'S & Russia itself.

3. Multiple Attempts: Namely, the Soviet Union actually tried to reform, multiple times. Even in the 1970s, under Brechev, they tried to reform, as he actually introduced that Soviet firms had to make a profit, as if they were private firms. Before hand, we have the attempted reforms of Nikita Krushchev, which if successful, weren't enough. And, we have the reforms of Gorbachav, that led to the Soviet Union dissolving, and the utter train wreck of shock economics.

Brezhnev’s reforms were superficial and his overall policies were regressive, Khrushchev’s on the other hand were utterly hare-brained (though not near as bad as Mao's). On this subject the ‘’Anti-Party Group’’ were right.

My point with the last is this. Under such an attempt of liberalization, how is the Soviet Union going to do it that it somehow didn't do in OTL that will be successful? They can't do it like China, and their own attempts in OTL either did nothing, or made the situation even worse.

The post-Stalin Soviets never really made a sustained & full-blooded attempt at reform even under Gobachev (he flip-flopped endlessly and was a fundamentally weak man, thats why he f**ked everything up) mostly it was half-mesures or power-plays. Nevertheless the economy was stable and had grown dramatically and living standards had also improved a great deal since Stalin’s days. It wasnt like the total basket-case Deng had to fix.

My over all point with this isn't that it's impossible for the Soviet Union to successfully liberalize. However, if it's going to, it's going to have to conquer challenges that China did not, some of which I haven't even mentioned, only the major issues I have with most timelines of this type. Additionally, whatever it liberalizes into will have a very different economic structure than China, or for that matter, any other post-Communist state.

Thoughts on this?

In many ways the U.S.S.R was much better placed than China, yet you make the rise of the latter sound almost inevitable, while it's all doom & gloom for the Soviets. Remember different events, policies & leaders produce different results.

Think what China would've turned into under the rule of the Gang of Four.