Preservation of Territorial Integrity for Post-USSR Superstate

Is there any way that the USSR could have reformed and become a new centralized superstate where they didn't have to see half of their population and a third of there territory become sovereign independent nations? Or was the USSR doomed to either break up if its constitution changed or be perpetually totalitarian in order to keep the union together when it was formed?
 

Pomphis

Banned
Is there any way that the USSR could have reformed and become a new centralized superstate where they didn't have to see half of their population and a third of there territory become sovereign independent nations?

Yes. With a POD in 1922 or so.
 
Avoid Gorbachev, instead have either hardcore hardliner, or Deng-Xiaoping-like capitalist roader.
Gorbachev killed USSR, because he tried to reform it, and he did it in worst way possible: gave people freedom of speech, but didn't fill their stomachs.
 

Pomphis

Banned
Avoid Gorbachev, instead have either hardcore hardliner, or Deng-Xiaoping-like capitalist roader.

In both cases it will remain a totalitarian dictatorship. The OP was about the USSR continuing to exist without remaining that.
 
Avoid the August Coup. Do that and nine out of fifteen SSRs will likely ratify Gorbachev's New Union Treaty. It wouldn't be centralized, but it'd be much more of a super state than Yeltsin's Russia, avoiding much of the perceived humiliation on the Russian side from that era, resulting in a less nationalistic, aggressive foreign policy down the road.

Alternatively, there's the uglier route of some kind of coup against Gorbachev succeeding and putting people in charge willing to use military force to keep as much of the USSR together as possible. Even in 1991 the communist party was strong in the Central Asian SSRs. Byelorussia, in the meantime, didn't have a strongly developed national identity and could have been kept too (it's a Russian puppet now IMHO). Azerbaijan was also fairly pro-Moscow IIRC. The ugliest would have been eastern Ukraine, which would have needed to be attached to Russia manu militari, as mentioned at the start of this paragraph. The Baltics would have been ugly too, but could have been hung on to by virtue of Russia's sheer size. Heck, the 1991 coup might have done this if it had been carried out competently. This course of keeping the USSR together would require a lot of luck though. It could just as easily turn into Yugoslavia on steroids.
 
In both cases it will remain a totalitarian dictatorship. The OP was about the USSR continuing to exist without remaining that.
Nope.
OP said it has to reform and do not break apart, but did not specify how far reform must go, for it to qualify as successor state of USSR, instead of direct continuation of USSR. Does dropping communism in economy qualify as reform? I'd say yes, since it fundamentally changes nature of a country. But that is irrelevant, since OP also asked whether USSR was doomed to remain totalitarian in order to not break up, and my answer was more or less "it would have helped it to stay together, but I do not deny possibility of other options".
 
Avoid the August Coup.
Problem with avoiding August coup, was that it was done by generals and ministers Gorbachev himself promoted to their posts. He was obviously clueless if he put men so disloyal to him in so important governmental posts. You can't have Gorbachev in charge, and have no August Coup.
 
Problem with avoiding August coup, was that it was done by generals and ministers Gorbachev himself promoted to their posts. He was obviously clueless if he put men so disloyal to him in so important governmental posts. You can't have Gorbachev in charge, and have no August Coup.

In a TL a long time ago I had a couple of the key players die in a plane crash and the entire thing fell apart before it could happen.
 

B-29_Bomber

Banned
Avoid Stalin's slide towards support of Russian Nationalism and thus the deportations.


Or just kill Stalin in or before 1922.
 
Simple. Make the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics the Soviet Socialist Republic at its inception. Avoid Lenin's nationalities policy and make the would-be republics a bunch of separate areas. Might be difficult for say, Armenia, but it would be easy (and fairly effective) for Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

It would also help if you didn't have Stalin deport/starve/shoot large swaths of the Soviet Union, including entire ethnic groups (witness the pretty universal rejection of Russian rule by the Crimean Tatars).

Having an Andropov like figure instead of Gorbachev would help. Not only to keep the support of the army/KGB (which cared more about the state than communism), but to nip nationalist-populists like Yeltsin in the bud. A ruthless, China style totalitarianism would be needed to transition from a state economy to capitalism without the country falling apart. Alternately, start reform earlier and you might not need as much mass repression to muddle through.

And finally, avoiding Molotov-Ribbentrop would also be useful. Areas like Lviv and the Baltic states were perennial headaches for the Soviet Union, and without them the independence movements are less significant.

Any of these could theoretically lead to a still extant Soviet Union.
 
By 1990, the Baltic States, Moldova, Armenia and Georgia were pretty much gone. There might have been a chance to keep Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Central Asian Republics together, however.
 
Establish a major naval base in Estonia. Eventually the retired Russian sailors will out-number the Estonian-speaking natives. Add a corrupt, dis-organized, Estonian-speaking intelligentsia and the region will never get its act together to separate from Greater Russia.
This is the same scenario that Russia is currently expiring in Crimea and the Eastern Ukraine.
 
Establish a major naval base in Estonia. Eventually the retired Russian sailors will out-number the Estonian-speaking natives. Add a corrupt, dis-organized, Estonian-speaking intelligentsia and the region will never get its act together to separate from Greater Russia.
This is the same scenario that Russia is currently expiring in Crimea and the Eastern Ukraine.

There was a major Soviet naval base in Estonia. To create a Russian/Slavic majority in Estonia in a few decades through just a single naval base you'd need it to pretty much house the entirety of the OTL Soviet navy.

That said, what with the USSR and the OTL demographic trends of 1945-1990 continuing into the 21st century, the Estonian SSR would have had a Russian/Slavic majority by the 2030s. Had the Soviet leadership really wanted to make the Estonians a minority in their own country, in a consistent, programmatic fashion, they could have easily accomplished it through encouraging/forcing more ethnic Russians to move into the Estonian SSR and scattering more Estonians around the other SSRs.
 
There was a major Soviet naval base in Estonia.
I actually took a hire car around the former submarine base about five years ago. It was pretty much the creepiest place I've ever been.

As for the USSR - I think that 1990-level territory is pretty much impossible to keep. The Baltics are gone at a very minimum. I think that by the end of the century simply too much has happened in neglecting nationalist sentiment that the situation is beyond repair. Gorbachev realized this (whilst refusing to acknowledge it, logically) and that was the source for his reforms. It would take near ASB levels of reconciliation to save the Soviet Union by Gorbachev.
 
one issue with the union treaty is once you have established that a loose union where membership is voluntary members can just leave if they don't like what the central authority is doing. I don't feel that the Union treaty would have lasted all that long.
 
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