Reagan was indispensable?

If ,For any reason, Ronald Reagan was not become President of United States in 1981, The USSR would fall same?
Without Reagan and his politics we would have Gorbaciov,the fall of Berlin Wall,the end of Soviet Union?
 
If you're asking that Reagan was essential to all of those things happening, no he wasn't. But the nature of counterfactuals means that we can't simply handwave all of them still happening even if Reagan is removed from the picture.
 
short answer: Yes


the problems that lead to the USSR's fall was internal and deep rooted the Brezhnev years were a managed decline, where the system slowly failed and corruption on all levels grew and grew
 
I think he's integral to those things happening in that order at those times - but as for them happening period? No. They might happen later or earlier and maybe in a different order, but somehow htey might happen.
 
If ,For any reason, Ronald Reagan was not become President of United States in 1981, The USSR would fall same?
Without Reagan and his politics we would have Gorbaciov,the fall of Berlin Wall,the end of Soviet Union?

Arguably, Reagan kept the cold war going single handedly. The truth of the Soviet Union was that the Politburo was uniformly old sick men who had come to power through WWII. During Reagan's term, they kept dying in office - Breznev, Andropov, Chernenko. Andropov in particular, was convinced that the US was going to launch a sneak attack and start WWIII any day now. Reagan's aggressive posture and military build up persuaded them that they had to hold onto a hard line, and that meant holding down moderates.

Gorbachev basically came to power 20 or 30 years younger than his predecessors, and out of the Agriculture ministry. It's pretty clear that under the circumstances, this guy with his glasnost and perestroika was the last guy that they'd have wanted to pick. But they were going fast.

So I'd say that there's a pretty reasonable argument to suggest that without Reagan, Gorbachev may have come to power faster, and that the Soviet Union might well have dissolved earlier.

Certainly the key factors underlying the dissolution of the soviet union - their deeply rooted economic problems and the aging out of the old guard, had nothing to do with Reagan.
 
Well arguably, Reagan's Presidency delayed glasnost by about three years by rallying the conservatives around the time of Brezhnev's death...

Yes, which means earlier reforms could easily butterfly away Yeltsin's rise, and the USSR could survive.

I still expect the Cold War to end in the 1980s, like OTL, probably earlier than OTL, but the USSR itself could survive.
 

yourworstnightmare

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USSR had been in decline for a while already. They put up a front by investing more in the military and their nuclear arsenal. The Soviet citizens had lost their confidence in the system, and were not ready to fight for it anymore, in other words they had stopped to care. So, no, the Soviet Union could not be saved anymore at this point.
 
The mythology surrounding Reagan is just that, a myth. It speaks volumes that the Independent Counsel investigating the Iran-Contra scandal found that he could not depose Reagan due to advanced Alzheimer's, he had been out of office less than a year at that point.

Any credit that Reagan gets for the collapse of the USSR is way overstated. America would be well served if an honest read of this corrupt administration were possible.
 
The mythology surrounding Reagan is just that, a myth. It speaks volumes that the Independent Counsel investigating the Iran-Contra scandal found that he could not depose Reagan due to advanced Alzheimer's, he had been out of office less than a year at that point.

Any credit that Reagan gets for the collapse of the USSR is way overstated. America would be well served if an honest read of this corrupt administration were possible.

From what I've heard on this very board, that seems very much likely to happen anyway. The general gist I've gotten from people is that once his supporters and fans start to really die off so will his legacy and the notion that he was in any way a great or even competent president. Hell almost all of his policies whether military, political, or economic (especially that last one) have already been shown to be straight up failures or just plain terrible.
 
In some ways I think the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and its Soviet style governments began with one event. And that is when white smoke rose from the Sistine Chapel on October 15th, 1978. Regan, like John Paul II and Thatcher, were part of the political landscape that the Soviet Union now had to deal with. Add in the Afghan mis-adventure, corruption, a failing agricultural sector (and they choose Gorbechev??????????????), a bloated military sucking at the Soviet economy* along with other factors and tne USSR was bound to fall apart. IMO we are just lucky it did not turn into a civil war with nuclear weapons.

* Yes the US's military was bloated too.
 
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