Why? The Central Asian republics were the staunchest supporters of the Union.
Romanov Ascendant: What if the Soviet Union survived?
- Thread starter Justinian
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Justinian
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I'm getting close to finishing up 1993 and releasing the 1994 update, trying to make it big. I just have a few questions if people do not mind contributing:
I want to clear up the situations in North Korea. Essentially Kim Il Sung is about to die and North Korea could go into a lot of directions, their economy is not garbage/famine tier like it was in 1993 and 1994. Their hotel was finished, and while only lightly used, they are further developing 'special industrial zones' of free market enterprise where they essentially offer sweatshop labour prices to foreign companies. They are currently working on a peaceful nuclear power development plan, while subtly instituting the architecture necessary for weaponization.
Essentially Kim Jong Il can either pivot to China or the Soviet Union for different reasons; or he can be removed by the North Korean military for those actions. I would assume that if he tries to go to China, pro soviet elements organize the coup and vice versa.
strawpoll.com
I want to clear up the situations in North Korea. Essentially Kim Il Sung is about to die and North Korea could go into a lot of directions, their economy is not garbage/famine tier like it was in 1993 and 1994. Their hotel was finished, and while only lightly used, they are further developing 'special industrial zones' of free market enterprise where they essentially offer sweatshop labour prices to foreign companies. They are currently working on a peaceful nuclear power development plan, while subtly instituting the architecture necessary for weaponization.
Essentially Kim Jong Il can either pivot to China or the Soviet Union for different reasons; or he can be removed by the North Korean military for those actions. I would assume that if he tries to go to China, pro soviet elements organize the coup and vice versa.
North Korea: - Online Poll - StrawPoll
What's your opinion? Vote now: Kim Jong Il - Leverages the weakened position of the dengist chinese to gain even greater economic and military concessions, perhaps even formal allia...
strawpoll.com
Not at all
Alexniko is absolutely correct here, while I do believe the Russian birthrate would still stay above 2.1 or 2.2; the central asians may even be 3 or more. Generally they are very loyalist, Soviet investment massively improved living standards in Central Asia and gave people from the region a lot more opportunities that they would have had, a policy going back to Brezhnev.
That's actually something I'm going to tackle in 1994 with a Soviet/Eastern Bloc "Car of the People" (Rather than People's Car for obvious reasons)
Very good question. I don't think that the soviets would like nuclear weapons in a country with such an insane leadership so... I think that the KGB could do something to change the situation but I'm not very knowledgeable about 1990s Libya so I'm not certain.
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I was talking in a joking manner, but one could justify a soviet race team as a method to prove the engeneering capabillities of the USSR
Chapter Five: War and Peace 1994
Justinian
Banned
War and Peace 1994:
FARC Rebels in Southern Colombia, ostensibly being trained by Cuban Commandos
January 4th 1994. 5:27. Southern Colombia.
The firefight had lasted for nearly 48 minutes, but almost thousands of rounds of ammo had been spent by both sides. The Colombian National Army Special Forces were American trained, some had Gen-2 night vision and advanced weapon systems, but this time they had been halted. The mission's original intent was to interdict a suspected FARC unit smuggling arms into the country; only possible by the supplying of American intelligence and surveillance information. Two of their cohort were spotted immediately and shot, as automatic fire began as both sides took cover. Tracers went back and forth, some coming from the tree line, others from the ditch near the road. Instead of wildly aimed shots from untrained rebels, this constituted directed, accurate fire and killed or wounded multiple commandos. The Colombians had two embedded Americans. A 'Green Beret' from the 7th Special Forces Group, Captain Rodriguez and his consort from the CIA Field Operations Unit for South America, Agent Mark Janner. As Rodriguez sat down and put his foot up, putting his camouflaged suppressed M14 down, Janner, wearing paramilitary clothes, kevlar and a baseball cap, with an M4 slung on his shoulder, approached and stood beside him, as they watched. The commandos had already brought up an armoured truck to remove their dead and wounded, but were neatly lining up the enemy combatants.
Typically FARC stood a chance during an ambush, or against regular soldiers or police, but almost always buckled when confronted by Colombian Special Forces. That's why the scenario that had just occurred and was still occurring (as other commandos were pursuing the retreating reds further into the jungle) as burst and suppressive fire went off in the distance did not necessary add up. Either to the more 'abstractly' minded CIA field agent or US Special Forces Officer. Despite the latters' direct participation in the elimination of several soldiers with his rifle, they were only dislodged when mortar fire and the arrival of another detachment of commandos made them retreat. Another aspect of this didn't add up, no prisoners. They fired, covered each other, threw smoke grenades and retreated to the safety of the jungle, probably to one of many border tunnels or safe houses now enemanting out of Venezuela.
The two discussed the situation with each other, the obvious answer being Venezuelan or even Cuban involvement, an almost expected retaliation considering recent activities. What exactly happened here and why now? One of the Commando's called the Americans over to check out the bodies. Eight of them, most of them in knockoff woodwood american style camouflage fatigues, or in the more interesting case of three, DPM Jungle Brush style, something that had only recently started appearing on FARC rebels. One of them was a lot darker than most Colombians or Venezuelans, a little older. Rodriguez examined his rifle, an odd modern AK looking rifle painted in jungle colours, he found the letters StG-940 near the lower receiver. CIA crouched beside him to take a look, lit up a cigarette, started writing in a notepad. The middle age, white Janner rattled this off, crouched beside the body, started touching it. Opening the dead man's mouth to the consternation of Rodriguez, wondering if this was going to be some kind of fucked up CIA psy op shit. Janner looked at his teeth and then got up. "I think he might be a Cuban or even Nicaraguan, possible DGI, their version of the KGB. I doubt he'll have any papers on him but this might be a lucky find, bag him, tag him and we'll start looking into his forensics." Rodriguez smirked slightly pompously, "What? Just because he's half black?" Janner replied almost instantaneously "No, look at his clean fingernails, and his teeth, he has all of them. Oh and some fillings." Rodriguez took a double take, somewhat surprised at the astute observation.
When he had returned to his field office, he discussed the situation with Rodriguez and looking at a gridsquare map of Western Colombia that focused on Vichada and Guainia, put in more coloured pins. It was quite clear that the Venezuelans were testing the Colombian border for weaknesses and strong smuggling routes, "The Hugo Chavez Trail?" laughed Rodriguez. While Janner did have a chuckle, they both coldly looked at each other as they considered the reality.
Widespread Gang Violence in Los Angeles Claims Another Victim: CNN Headline 8th January 1994
January 11th 1994. 4:35PM. Washington DC, White House.
President Ross Perot was once a literal boy scout. Then he became a self made billionaire, businessman emblematic of the American dream; even more so that he could dream of becoming president and then just making it happen despite all of the odds. He stayed married all his life and moved up from being an IBM salesman to owning his own business when IBM failed to listen to his ideas. He was socially conservative, and almost symbolized more of what 'Reagan' meant to the American people, than the man himself. His popularity at least on the campaign trail and during his early years in office reflected that. However, what differentiated him the most was his view of government spending and waste, his belief that the US Military Industrial Complex had become bloated money wasting machine just as the two mainstream parties had become bloated political swamps. Some commentators would call him a 'lame duck president' but within almost two years, he had nearly managed to squeeze the US defence budget by 9 percent, a gargantuan task that had required political finessing and mainstream popularity.
But Perot's mainstream popularity, at first a near given with his outside status, populism, and nostalgia for Reagan; was quickly coming under attack. Cocaine was only becoming cheaper, more available, and often distilled into crack for a lower class of customer that was ripe for media and drug dealer exploitation. The "crack epidemic" however was real, rates of drug addiction within the inner cities began to rise. What was not remarked on in the media was that this was found to be correspondingly with a decrease in heroin use or that the overall economic improvements, including the recovery jolted in the markets by the announcement of a planned negotiation for a free trade agreement with Canada, instead of NAFTA.
While the lot of the 'working class' in the US had improved and less of them were turning to drugs out of desperation or escape, the highly visible minority that were already on drugs anyway, those that were joining them, in addition to the increasing violence between gangs over control of the lucrative drug trade, became the fodder for a moral panic. Perot was strongly against this, reacting with a heavy crime bill, but also arguing that this was the kind of problem that the US president should be dealing with, not with international interventionism, which had helped him earn back the respect of his base. Hawks had been increasingly critical of the fact that Colombia appeared to be becoming a new Vietnam, South Africa was rife for Soviet exploitation, and the Soviets were generally going opposed, knowing that the president favored detente. President Perot's solution was a compromise. After consulting with the DEA, CIA and US Military, he decided to embark on a policy to stabilize Colombia, dislodge the narcotics smuggling operations based there and decisively end communist infiltration. The US security establishment was subtly manipulating him towards fighting the communists in Colombia; some elements of the CIA had become aware that the the Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans were using Panama and General Noriega as a vector for the smuggling of cocaine, although they never raised the alarm when USN P-3 Orion had observed a Cuban Foxtrot submarine on an irregular trajectory. While this was noted by the US defence intelligence, it was thought to do with weapon smuggling or simple training. Whereas the aforementioned element in the CIA aware of Noriega, as well as having sources in Panama, pushed for a small scale operation to begin surveillance there.
Early 1994
The Car of the People (Part One):
Living standards in the Soviet Union are approaching a level of quality of life it had never seen before in its history. High oil prices, an almost isolationist president, the revitalization of the economy and the military supremacy gained in Afghanistan through air and artillery supremacy had stopped the bleeding of young men, despite the odd WIA/KIA here or there. Medical technologies were becoming far more ubiquitous, the quality of medical training had improved. Education was improved by the introduction of computers and the expansion of primary and technical schools as well as universities. Infrastructure and housing had generally improved, although the ubiquitous concrete brutalist architecture remained vastly the most commonplace; now they bothered to paint some of the buildings, and even upkeep the exterior paint. Despite expensive defence projects in the field of stealth fighters, General Secretary Romanov had made his much lauded (secret) announcement of his plan for a Soviet Moon Landing on the year 2000, as a means of laying the groundwork for a future moonbase.
Outside of his lofty ambitions in Space, the expenditures in consumer goods were beginning to ripen as well. As it turns out, simply stealing, reverse engineering, copying or slightly modifying consumer technology from Japan, making it even cheaper and producing it in even higher numbers had results. The new generation of Soviet CRT televisions were copies of the newest Sony model, like many other different technologies, they faced no legal troubles for producing them and selling/providing them to their own population. To argue against this would require there to be a court with the authority to declare 'soviet socialism wrong or its practices illegal'. Because no such court existed, much to the detriment of the corporations or capitalists of the world, this had to be accepted. But now Soviet design bureaus, armed with the exact specifications necessary to avoid or win 'copyright' battles provided with ample information by the KGB, could now export their cheaper and sometimes more reliable consumer goods. Soviet brands became hugely popular in the Third World, like in China or South America or the Middle East.
But this wasn't enough for Romanov, who passed on that he would like to see all the nations of the Comecon come together to create a "Car of the People", which was highly publicized and propagandized. He wanted to see the streets of the Eastern Bloc filled with personal vehicles, an undeniable demonstration of the superiority and capability of Marxist-Leninism to provide for the individual's needs, both physical and mental; as well as cultural and material. Skoda, Tatra, Lada, Volga, UAZ all participated in the joint design venture. They were also heavily influenced by the dissection of a 1993 Toyota Corolla. Not only was this practical project increasing the economic links within the Comecon, and within the Soviet Union and it's allied country's but the necessary supply chains, modernizations and improved practices promoted increased inter eastern european economic development.
FARC Rebels in Southern Colombia, ostensibly being trained by Cuban Commandos
January 4th 1994. 5:27. Southern Colombia.
The firefight had lasted for nearly 48 minutes, but almost thousands of rounds of ammo had been spent by both sides. The Colombian National Army Special Forces were American trained, some had Gen-2 night vision and advanced weapon systems, but this time they had been halted. The mission's original intent was to interdict a suspected FARC unit smuggling arms into the country; only possible by the supplying of American intelligence and surveillance information. Two of their cohort were spotted immediately and shot, as automatic fire began as both sides took cover. Tracers went back and forth, some coming from the tree line, others from the ditch near the road. Instead of wildly aimed shots from untrained rebels, this constituted directed, accurate fire and killed or wounded multiple commandos. The Colombians had two embedded Americans. A 'Green Beret' from the 7th Special Forces Group, Captain Rodriguez and his consort from the CIA Field Operations Unit for South America, Agent Mark Janner. As Rodriguez sat down and put his foot up, putting his camouflaged suppressed M14 down, Janner, wearing paramilitary clothes, kevlar and a baseball cap, with an M4 slung on his shoulder, approached and stood beside him, as they watched. The commandos had already brought up an armoured truck to remove their dead and wounded, but were neatly lining up the enemy combatants.
Typically FARC stood a chance during an ambush, or against regular soldiers or police, but almost always buckled when confronted by Colombian Special Forces. That's why the scenario that had just occurred and was still occurring (as other commandos were pursuing the retreating reds further into the jungle) as burst and suppressive fire went off in the distance did not necessary add up. Either to the more 'abstractly' minded CIA field agent or US Special Forces Officer. Despite the latters' direct participation in the elimination of several soldiers with his rifle, they were only dislodged when mortar fire and the arrival of another detachment of commandos made them retreat. Another aspect of this didn't add up, no prisoners. They fired, covered each other, threw smoke grenades and retreated to the safety of the jungle, probably to one of many border tunnels or safe houses now enemanting out of Venezuela.
The two discussed the situation with each other, the obvious answer being Venezuelan or even Cuban involvement, an almost expected retaliation considering recent activities. What exactly happened here and why now? One of the Commando's called the Americans over to check out the bodies. Eight of them, most of them in knockoff woodwood american style camouflage fatigues, or in the more interesting case of three, DPM Jungle Brush style, something that had only recently started appearing on FARC rebels. One of them was a lot darker than most Colombians or Venezuelans, a little older. Rodriguez examined his rifle, an odd modern AK looking rifle painted in jungle colours, he found the letters StG-940 near the lower receiver. CIA crouched beside him to take a look, lit up a cigarette, started writing in a notepad. The middle age, white Janner rattled this off, crouched beside the body, started touching it. Opening the dead man's mouth to the consternation of Rodriguez, wondering if this was going to be some kind of fucked up CIA psy op shit. Janner looked at his teeth and then got up. "I think he might be a Cuban or even Nicaraguan, possible DGI, their version of the KGB. I doubt he'll have any papers on him but this might be a lucky find, bag him, tag him and we'll start looking into his forensics." Rodriguez smirked slightly pompously, "What? Just because he's half black?" Janner replied almost instantaneously "No, look at his clean fingernails, and his teeth, he has all of them. Oh and some fillings." Rodriguez took a double take, somewhat surprised at the astute observation.
When he had returned to his field office, he discussed the situation with Rodriguez and looking at a gridsquare map of Western Colombia that focused on Vichada and Guainia, put in more coloured pins. It was quite clear that the Venezuelans were testing the Colombian border for weaknesses and strong smuggling routes, "The Hugo Chavez Trail?" laughed Rodriguez. While Janner did have a chuckle, they both coldly looked at each other as they considered the reality.
Widespread Gang Violence in Los Angeles Claims Another Victim: CNN Headline 8th January 1994
January 11th 1994. 4:35PM. Washington DC, White House.
President Ross Perot was once a literal boy scout. Then he became a self made billionaire, businessman emblematic of the American dream; even more so that he could dream of becoming president and then just making it happen despite all of the odds. He stayed married all his life and moved up from being an IBM salesman to owning his own business when IBM failed to listen to his ideas. He was socially conservative, and almost symbolized more of what 'Reagan' meant to the American people, than the man himself. His popularity at least on the campaign trail and during his early years in office reflected that. However, what differentiated him the most was his view of government spending and waste, his belief that the US Military Industrial Complex had become bloated money wasting machine just as the two mainstream parties had become bloated political swamps. Some commentators would call him a 'lame duck president' but within almost two years, he had nearly managed to squeeze the US defence budget by 9 percent, a gargantuan task that had required political finessing and mainstream popularity.
But Perot's mainstream popularity, at first a near given with his outside status, populism, and nostalgia for Reagan; was quickly coming under attack. Cocaine was only becoming cheaper, more available, and often distilled into crack for a lower class of customer that was ripe for media and drug dealer exploitation. The "crack epidemic" however was real, rates of drug addiction within the inner cities began to rise. What was not remarked on in the media was that this was found to be correspondingly with a decrease in heroin use or that the overall economic improvements, including the recovery jolted in the markets by the announcement of a planned negotiation for a free trade agreement with Canada, instead of NAFTA.
While the lot of the 'working class' in the US had improved and less of them were turning to drugs out of desperation or escape, the highly visible minority that were already on drugs anyway, those that were joining them, in addition to the increasing violence between gangs over control of the lucrative drug trade, became the fodder for a moral panic. Perot was strongly against this, reacting with a heavy crime bill, but also arguing that this was the kind of problem that the US president should be dealing with, not with international interventionism, which had helped him earn back the respect of his base. Hawks had been increasingly critical of the fact that Colombia appeared to be becoming a new Vietnam, South Africa was rife for Soviet exploitation, and the Soviets were generally going opposed, knowing that the president favored detente. President Perot's solution was a compromise. After consulting with the DEA, CIA and US Military, he decided to embark on a policy to stabilize Colombia, dislodge the narcotics smuggling operations based there and decisively end communist infiltration. The US security establishment was subtly manipulating him towards fighting the communists in Colombia; some elements of the CIA had become aware that the the Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans were using Panama and General Noriega as a vector for the smuggling of cocaine, although they never raised the alarm when USN P-3 Orion had observed a Cuban Foxtrot submarine on an irregular trajectory. While this was noted by the US defence intelligence, it was thought to do with weapon smuggling or simple training. Whereas the aforementioned element in the CIA aware of Noriega, as well as having sources in Panama, pushed for a small scale operation to begin surveillance there.
Early 1994
The Car of the People (Part One):
Living standards in the Soviet Union are approaching a level of quality of life it had never seen before in its history. High oil prices, an almost isolationist president, the revitalization of the economy and the military supremacy gained in Afghanistan through air and artillery supremacy had stopped the bleeding of young men, despite the odd WIA/KIA here or there. Medical technologies were becoming far more ubiquitous, the quality of medical training had improved. Education was improved by the introduction of computers and the expansion of primary and technical schools as well as universities. Infrastructure and housing had generally improved, although the ubiquitous concrete brutalist architecture remained vastly the most commonplace; now they bothered to paint some of the buildings, and even upkeep the exterior paint. Despite expensive defence projects in the field of stealth fighters, General Secretary Romanov had made his much lauded (secret) announcement of his plan for a Soviet Moon Landing on the year 2000, as a means of laying the groundwork for a future moonbase.
Outside of his lofty ambitions in Space, the expenditures in consumer goods were beginning to ripen as well. As it turns out, simply stealing, reverse engineering, copying or slightly modifying consumer technology from Japan, making it even cheaper and producing it in even higher numbers had results. The new generation of Soviet CRT televisions were copies of the newest Sony model, like many other different technologies, they faced no legal troubles for producing them and selling/providing them to their own population. To argue against this would require there to be a court with the authority to declare 'soviet socialism wrong or its practices illegal'. Because no such court existed, much to the detriment of the corporations or capitalists of the world, this had to be accepted. But now Soviet design bureaus, armed with the exact specifications necessary to avoid or win 'copyright' battles provided with ample information by the KGB, could now export their cheaper and sometimes more reliable consumer goods. Soviet brands became hugely popular in the Third World, like in China or South America or the Middle East.
But this wasn't enough for Romanov, who passed on that he would like to see all the nations of the Comecon come together to create a "Car of the People", which was highly publicized and propagandized. He wanted to see the streets of the Eastern Bloc filled with personal vehicles, an undeniable demonstration of the superiority and capability of Marxist-Leninism to provide for the individual's needs, both physical and mental; as well as cultural and material. Skoda, Tatra, Lada, Volga, UAZ all participated in the joint design venture. They were also heavily influenced by the dissection of a 1993 Toyota Corolla. Not only was this practical project increasing the economic links within the Comecon, and within the Soviet Union and it's allied country's but the necessary supply chains, modernizations and improved practices promoted increased inter eastern european economic development.
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Great update. Just a minor correction though - the US and Canada already had a FTA since 1988. NAFTA took the existing agreement and added Mexico into the agreement. Also I think Perot might look into working with the leader of the House of Representatives Democrats, Dick Gephardt, on trade. Gephardt was also opposed to NAFTA but wanted to renegotiate it so that there are environmental and labour standards that could be enforced.
Justinian
Banned
Maybe I should clarify, I meant an expanded one, the one Cretian campaigned on but managing to get an agreement due to the lack of political controversy regarding American-Canadian trade relations. Maybe more protections for some Canadian industries, while also making some concessions to the US. Gephardt would probably be on board with this, Perot would naturally be against too much regulation, but the three probably could have reached a mutual consensus.
Mengistu seems like the likely candidate. Without the weakening of the Soviet Union, the flow of military and economic aid to the country doesn't stop so Mengistu can probably maintain his position. Though it's possible that the Eritrean People's Liberation Front is still successful, leading to the party replacing him.
Mengistu did not have the political will or strength to defeat the ethnonationalists its either
-they are still warring against him and his regime is at the brink
-he is couped by more moderate Derg officers who make more reforms (the 89’ coup attempt happens in 93’) (ethnic federalism, an independent Eritrea)
-or Mengistu solicits a permanent Cuban or Russian presence by joining the Warsaw Pact and the resistance by EPRP and TPLF continues but underground (kind of like the Communists in the Phillipines)
Wonder who's gonna be more threated by the PRC's rise, the US or USSR? The Asia-Pacific will definitely be a future powder-kei, more so then IOTL.
I think that most likely one is a combination of the second and third possibility because a more moderate Derg that brings reforms would surely help but an independent Eritrea is a non-starter (the Derg would lose all of their remaining political support and would also landlock the country) and there is almost zero possibility for Ethiopia to join the Warsaw Pact(no country outside of Europe was ever allowed to join). They could however sign a treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviets like India did and get more aid this way. You also need to consider that in TTL the Cubans will not find themselves as isolated as in OTL and so they can ship more troops abroad.
When was the last time we saw East Germany inside this timeline?
and, I've legit wondered if The Soviet Union gets a new gaming scene if it goes past 1991, would a SEGA Genesis and Super SNES be possible or Sold in that country?
and, I've legit wondered if The Soviet Union gets a new gaming scene if it goes past 1991, would a SEGA Genesis and Super SNES be possible or Sold in that country?
The stg 940 is the newest piece of east german tech, chambered in 5,56x45mm nato, the stg 942 is chambered in 5,45x39mm (same as ak-74 variants)
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