Russian Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo

Excellent title. :)

IMO the "Autumn of Nations" in 1989-1991 was one of the rare few times in human history where things went 'right.' Everything from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the anti-Gorbachev coup should have, by rights, ended in the sort of violence that accompanied the rest of the 20th century, but it just didn't. So a bloody mess is entirely possible -- I might venture to say it was more likely than what we actually got OTL.

Just a few ways it could have turned out violent, in very rough chronological order:
- Violent suppression of the Monday protests in East Germany
- A bloody last stand at the Berlin Wall (it really would have only taken a few guards firing on the crowds to change the outcome)
- Armed Soviet opposition to the Baltic States trying to become independent
- A different end to the August 1991 coup
- Instead of a majority of republics seeking independence, only one or a handful wish to leave the USSR
- Conflict with one of the USSR's constituent republics before they actually left, or...
- Conflict with one of the newly departed republics
- A republic demanding substantially different territory than it possessed in the USSR, leading to ethnic conflict
- Refusal by one of the former Soviet republics to surrender their fleet or their nuclear weapons to Russia (Ukraine had, after all, built the R-36M/SS-18 ICBMs)

Ukraine and Georgia come to mind as republics that a different Russia might not have let leave peacefully, or which Russia might have had a conflict shortly after the disintegration of the USSR. The consequent Russo-Georgian conflict, even though it came much later, shows that such a conflict is possible.

Some of the PODs I suggested aren't directly linked to the breakup of the USSR, but if the Autumn of Nations had started out bloody -- or if it had turned bloody in any way much greater than OTL -- it may well have continued that way. IMO there was already so much momentum that the Warsaw Pact was doomed to collapse. The USSR might have stayed together under the New Union Treaty, but of course the OP requires it to fall apart.
 
Could the USSR have, instead of breaking up peacefully, dissolved violently in a Yugoslavia-style bloody mess?
Great, now you've got me thinking about what propaganda songs from the Soviet Wars would achieve Remove Kebab-esque memetic status.

(Mudžahedin, turski sin, bori se za Bosnu Adžaru srcem svim...)
 
A communist vs non-communist conflict with some separatists throw in is far more likely then everybody but the Russians or Slavs trying to leave
xXS4jN0.jpg
 
It is certainly not impossible. I think you could a civil war between hardliners and Gorbachev, though I think it would be difficult to force that into anything more than coups and counter coups due to the vastness of the country (and what was left of the Soviet military) not to mention the nuclear arsenal which inherently causes moderation in this sort of context.
 
I love the Title.
To fuck more the scenario, You could have a Western Germany intervention on Behalf of the eastern germany people that want to left the USSR but dont let them, so you have civil war/invasion scenario
 
My best bet for the USSR to go full Yugoslavia is to have the August Coup go wrong and a big civil war between the reformist government and the hardliners with various third party anti-Soviet organizations of various stripes joining in on the fray. NATO might not want to get involved directly at first but sooner or later it might do so once some nutjob on the hardliner side decides to use nukes on said side's enemies.
 
A communist vs non-communist conflict with some separatists throw in is far more likely then everybody but the Russians or Slavs trying to leave
xXS4jN0.jpg

Actually from the picture it seems that Turkic states and the Tajiks were more pro-USSR than the Slavs. (all non-muslim and non-slavic SSRs have already seceded and did not hold the referandum apperantly)
 

Geon

Donor
I love the Title.
To fuck more the scenario, You could have a Western Germany intervention on Behalf of the eastern germany people that want to left the USSR but dont let them, so you have civil war/invasion scenario

It depends on how truly nightmarish you want the scenario to be. An invasion by West Germany into East Germany couldn't help but trigger a violent Soviet response with all that entails (i.e. World War III).
 
Actually from the picture it seems that Turkic states and the Tajiks were more pro-USSR than the Slavs. (all non-muslim and non-slavic SSRs have otheralready seceded and did not hold the referandum apperantly)
The Central Asian SSR had "traditional " Communist government which included among other things traditional people's democracy. Such as deciding referendum results in advance. Figures in Central Asia probably bore only a limited resemblance to reality. Remember what Juncker told Cameron about the "Remain" vote he was hoping for "I wouldn't get that in Luxembourg "
 
First of all, the end of the Cold War wasn't ALL that peaceful. OTL, there were still severe conflicts and civil wars in Transnistria, Tajikstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Chechnya.

Gorbachev did, in fact, send troops to gun down protesters in the Baltic States. In my opinion, it is a matter of things going WORSE instead of just wrong.
 
The Central Asian SSR had "traditional " Communist government which included among other things traditional people's democracy. Such as deciding referendum results in advance. Figures in Central Asia probably bore only a limited resemblance to reality. Remember what Juncker told Cameron about the "Remain" vote he was hoping for "I wouldn't get that in Luxembourg "

Well, there was also the fact that those relatively poor and underdeveloped SSRs benefitted greatly from largess from Moscow relative to the richer SSRs, and lacked the level of internal industries and potential connections to alternate suppliers to easily break from Russia's economic network Never underestimate the argument for prosperety/avoiding economic collapse
 
Well, there was also the fact that those relatively poor and underdeveloped SSRs benefitted greatly from largess from Moscow relative to the richer SSRs, and lacked the level of internal industries and potential connections to alternate suppliers to easily break from Russia's economic network Never underestimate the argument for prosperety/avoiding economic collapse
Yes but 95% or 96%? I could see 59% or 65% as reflective of genuine sentiment but that is a suspiciously large majority. There is always a sector of the population whose primary drivers are not economic and that isn't reflected here at all.
 
Yes but 95% or 96%? I could see 59% or 65% as reflective of genuine sentiment but that is a suspiciously large majority. There is always a sector of the population whose primary drivers are not economic and that isn't reflected here at all.

Well, the Central Asian populations had never experienced national autonomy, so I assume that nationalism wasn't an important factor. I suspect that they considered the Soviet Union just as another empire dominating the region, and decided that it was more beneficial to be part of a world power with a decent economy and infrastructure than to be on their own.
 
Nationalism in the sense a European might understand it possibly not but tribal or religious identity were real factors as was anti-Russian sentiment. Post independence behaviours really don't suggest that these had been completely eroded in Central Asia so I take 95% as an old fashioned rigged vote. There might possibly have been a wide acceptance of the status quo but that is an unnaturally high figure. You wouldn't have had 95% support for British participation in WW2 or American opposition to the USSR in the Cold War. Overwhelming public support translates to about 80-85% support statistically speaking. There are enough contrarians, religious fundamentalists and
holders of minority or eccentric political opinions in any large population to be statistically significant.
 
Yes but 95% or 96%? I could see 59% or 65% as reflective of genuine sentiment but that is a suspiciously large majority. There is always a sector of the population whose primary drivers are not economic and that isn't reflected here at all.

I agree; I would never deny that nationalist/religious/ideological sentiment alone would make those figures unrealistic. I was just making sure that it was recognized that party corruption wasn't the only factor that produced the appearance of pro-Soviet sentiment, as the post I was responding to could imply. There was a strong enough core of said sentiment to make at least the vague idea of "strong Pro-Soviet vote" sound reasonable from the outside
 
Nationalism in the sense a European might understand it possibly not but tribal or religious identity were real factors as was anti-Russian sentiment. Post independence behaviours really don't suggest that these had been completely eroded in Central Asia so I take 95% as an old fashioned rigged vote. There might possibly have been a wide acceptance of the status quo but that is an unnaturally high figure. You wouldn't have had 95% support for British participation in WW2 or American opposition to the USSR in the Cold War. Overwhelming public support translates to about 80-85% support statistically speaking. There are enough contrarians, religious fundamentalists and
holders of minority or eccentric political opinions in any large population to be statistically significant.

So you're arguing that the referendum was rigged?

I find no evidence supporting this claim.
 
I am arguing that the result was statistically implausible and dissimilar to any ever recorded in a free poll. Make of that what you will.
 
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