alternatehistory.com

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?
Top