Saving the USSR, but not the USSR - AHQ

No coup attempt - or at least have it immediately crushed by forces loyal to Gorbachev.

The hard-line Communist coup that displaced Gorbachev was the death knell for the USSR, because it convinced all of the liberalizing factions and SSRs seeking greater internal freedom that they could never count on a liberalizing Soviet Union to be permanent. And once Yeltsin climbed on that tank with the tricolor the fate of the USSR was sealed.

Had Gorbachev's liberalizing policies had been allowed to mature, which would have let the USSR evolve smoothly in the direction of a more liberal union of Republics, I don't see why the disintegration of the USSR was inevitable, even if it still "lost" the Cold War. Yes, this USSR would still have been dominated by Russia, but except for the Baltics possibly, most of the Republics could have been satisfied with that if they had more internal autonomy and could be more flexible with Communist orthodoxy.
 
No coup attempt - or at least have it immediately crushed by forces loyal to Gorbachev.

The hard-line Communist coup that displaced Gorbachev was the death knell for the USSR, because it convinced all of the liberalizing factions and SSRs seeking greater internal freedom that they could never count on a liberalizing Soviet Union to be permanent. And once Yeltsin climbed on that tank with the tricolor the fate of the USSR was sealed.

Had Gorbachev's liberalizing policies had been allowed to mature, which would have let the USSR evolve smoothly in the direction of a more liberal union of Republics, I don't see why the disintegration of the USSR was inevitable, even if it still "lost" the Cold War. Yes, this USSR would still have been dominated by Russia, but except for the Baltics possibly, most of the Republics could have been satisfied with that if they had more internal autonomy and could be more flexible with Communist orthodoxy.


Except Gorbachev's agreement would have turned the USSR into a commonwealth anyways. That is the point, the central government would have little more power than US government had under the Articles of Confederation .

Outside of Russia itself, Byelorussia and Eastern Ukraine there were few people who considered themselves Soviets first. The USSR fell apart so quickly because nothing but force was holding it together in the first place. Once the fear was gone its breakup was all but inevitable.
 
Except Gorbachev's agreement would have turned the USSR into a commonwealth anyways. That is the point, the central government would have little more power than US government had under the Articles of Confederation .

Outside of Russia itself, Byelorussia and Eastern Ukraine there were few people who considered themselves Soviets first. The USSR fell apart so quickly because nothing but force was holding it together in the first place. Once the fear was gone its breakup was all but inevitable.

I may be wrong, but one big reason the USSR fell apart was because Russia seceded from it, and this was entirely the result of the Coup and Yeltsin's reaction to it. A USSR that evolved smoothly out of a Russian-dominated USSR would probably still preserve the notion that it is a commonwealth headed by Russia.
 
I may be wrong, but one big reason the USSR fell apart was because Russia seceded from it, and this was entirely the result of the Coup and Yeltsin's reaction to it. A USSR that evolved smoothly out of a Russian-dominated USSR would probably still preserve the notion that it is a commonwealth headed by Russia.


Russia seceded in part because everyone outside Russia was bitching about how Russia was ruining everything. Once the fear was gone and people could speak freely a lot of anti-Russian sentiment that was suppressed came out. That caused a backlash of "We don't need these ingrates anyways" among Russians which resulted in secession.
 
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Except it wasn't united under Communism or anything else. The only thing holding it together was the Army and KGB. The USSR never "gelled" , neither did the non-Russian areas of the Russian Empire for that matter. There were only three countries that broke up after the Fall of Communism. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia which were countries that dated only as far back as WWI and the USSR.

You are not giving the CPSU enough credit.
It was the communist party who was in-charge of the Soviet Union.
The influence of the Army was never even close.

Countries that were already "gelled" like Poland , Hungry and Romania didn't break up.

These were national states, unlike the USSR, CSSR and Yugoslavia.

You need to have some reason for the non-Russians to consider themselves Soviets instead of their nationality. That obviously never happened.

Non-Russians were no less Soviets than Russians.
As pointed out by zoomar, it was Russia who finished the Soviet Union by seceding.
Many ethnic Russians did not want a continuation of the Union.

By the time of Gorbachev it was way too late. You would need to have the republics outside of Russia to have meaningful input on how the country was run. In reality the various Republican governments had little to say what was going on in their own republic not talking about the central government.

Do you think that the government of the RFSFR had more influence on the Soviet central government?
 
You are not giving the CPSU enough credit.
It was the communist party who was in-charge of the Soviet Union.
The influence of the Army was never even close.



These were national states, unlike the USSR, CSSR and Yugoslavia.



Non-Russians were no less Soviets than Russians.
As pointed out by zoomar, it was Russia who finished the Soviet Union by seceding.
Many ethnic Russians did not want a continuation of the Union.



Do you think that the government of the RFSFR had more influence on the Soviet central government?


The Red Army was controlled by the CPSU I never denied that but it was the KGB and the Red Army that backed up the decrees by force. Now that is true to some extent by any government but it is and was particularly the case in dictatorships, even more so in totalitarian ones.

My point is the USSR never became a nation-state and it needed to. It was an empire made up of various nations. It needed to wipe out the other national cultures to form only one or give enough power to the other nationalities so that their cultures become more Russian. It did neither. Once the fear was gone the various nations broke apart.

The other nationalities considered themselves their nationalities first, Soviets second. The Russians left in large part because Russians were genuinely shocked on how little they were liked in the other republics. The Russians actually believed in a "Soviet Culture" while the others did not. When Glasnost allowed such complaints to come out there was a growing feeling of "If they feel that way we don't need the ingrates."

In the end it mattered little if RSSR had more influence on the central government or not. All the orders flowed from Moscow which meant the orders were Russian.

Instead of being the "glue" holding it together the five year plans, if anything, drove it apart. Every local could blame anything that people didn't like as "orders from Moscow" even if Moscow gave the orders or not. Every time a road wasn't fixed on time they could blame Moscow because they didn't get enough cement or asphalt in time. Every time someone died of an infectious disease they could blame Moscow for not providing the proper vaccine

. In short when everything is so centralized the central government gets all the blame. When things go right the locals take the credit by saying they got Moscow to do this or that.
 
Russia seceded in part because everyone outside Russia was bitching about how Russia was ruining everything. Once the fear was gone and people could speak freely a lot of anti-Russian sentiment that was suppressed came out. That caused a backlash of "We don't need these ingrates anyways" among Russians which resulted in secession.
Aside from the Baltics and the Caucasus (and perhaps Moldova), pro-Union sentiment is still alive - the Central Asians, like Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, were even the most pro-Union. Even the USA is pro-Union, too.

What made Russia quit the Union was when Ukraine quitted - this results in Central Asian republics outnumbering the Slavic republics. The August Coup and then Yeltsin-owned Russian government is taking over the Union government didn't help as it both weaken the centre.

Yeltsin's clique have also reasoned that leaving the Union is a strategic retreat, and they made estimates of returning back on "near abroad" in 10 years.
 
Aside from the Baltics and the Caucasus (and perhaps Moldova), pro-Union sentiment is still alive - the Central Asians, like Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, were even the most pro-Union. Even the USA is pro-Union, too.

What made Russia quit the Union was when Ukraine quitted - this results in Central Asian republics outnumbering the Slavic republics. The August Coup and then Yeltsin-owned Russian government is taking over the Union government didn't help as it both weaken the centre.

Yeltsin's clique have also reasoned that leaving the Union is a strategic retreat, and they made estimates of returning back on "near abroad" in 10 years.


To some extent but it hasn't been enough to get mass movements to rejoin Russia has it? Outside of Byelorussia and Russian enclaves in the other former Republics there hasn't been a whole lot of clamoring for the Russians to take over again. At most you will get a kind of commonwealth. There isn't a whole lot of people wanting to be dictated to by Moscow.
 
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Have you seen the vote percentages in those republics? Rule of thumb, any time you have over 99% of the people agreeing to something, it's rigged.

If you're talking any reasonable degree of democracy, you're going to have to let at least the Baltics go. Not autonomy, because that's not what they want at a democratic level.

400px-New_Union_Treaty.svg.png


Here is a link that has the results by SSR
 

Well, the ASSRs are mostly Russian two were in Georgia, and one in Azerbaijan. The rest are Russian. The Central Asian Republics are all over 95% which makes their validity questionable as they are most likely rigged. Also , as stated before it would have been closer to a commonwealth or confederacy as it states " a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics" than a true union.
 
Have you seen the vote percentages in those republics? Rule of thumb, any time you have over 99% of the people agreeing to something, it's rigged..

Just curious here, which vote percentages are you referring to? Because even a quick google search on the results brings up the wikipage on the referendum and the only ones where you have "over 99% of the people agreeing" on the referendum were the unofficial polls in places like Georgia, where it was only held in Abkhazia and South Ossetia (both places where the non-Georgians had an interest in remaining in some sort of union with Russia), and Lithuania (where it was likely held among only the population of East Slav migrants into the republic).

The rest of the results generally range from 70-80% support in the East Slav republics (Russia, Ukraine and Belarus) with turnouts of 75-80% (so total active support being somewhere between 52-64% of the registered voters) to 94-98% in the Central Asian and Caucasus republics (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikstan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan) with turnouts of 75-99% (so total active support being somewhere between 70-97% of the registered voters).

I wouldn't be very quick to dismiss the nature of the vote in the Central Asia and Azerbaijan though since:

1. if it was being rigged, why bother allowing some republics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Moldova and Armenia) to boycott it?

2. Even up to 2006-2008, a well reputed western polling agency (Gallup) found 40-50% of respondents in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan favoured the idea of the CIS becoming either a "one country" or a "federal state" (I provide links to the polls as well as the poll results and more discussion on them here). The support in Russia for the same question was around 42% and was in general lower than in Central Asia (excepting Kazakhstan). If 15 years after the referendum, support in Central Asia was broadly higher for having the former USSR re-made as a federation or possibly even unitary state (!), then it seems believable that the support would be higher in Central Asia than in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus for the continuation of the federation of the USSR in the 1991. If we take the actual difference to have been 10% greater support then even if there was rigging, the unrigged vote might well have been somewhere between 80-90% of the raw vote and 60-70% of the total registered voters (which is only about 10-20% more than in the Gallup poll of 15 years later anyway).

3. The rule of thumb that a 99% vote (or something similar) is generally rigged isn't that rigid as there have been a number of exceptions over the years: The Dominican Republic in 1870 (99.93% in favour of annexation to the United States although with a 30% turnout), Norway in 1905 (99.95% voting in favour of independence from the union with Sweden with an 85.4% turnout), Iceland in 1918 (with 92.6% in favour of the new personal union with Denmark, although with only a 43.8% turnout), Iceland again in 1944 (99.5% in favour of independence/abolishing the union with Denmark with a 98.4% turnout and 98.5% in favour of the proposed constitution with the same 98.4% turnout), Gibraltar in 1967 (99.64% voted in favour of continued ties to the UK with a 95.67% turnout), Djibouti in 1977 (99.8% in favour of independence with a 77.2% turnout), Armenia in 1991 ( 99.5% in favour of independence with a 95% turnout), Lithuania in 1991 (93.2% in favour of independence with a 74.9% turnout), Macedonia in 1991 (96.4% in favour of independence with a 75.7% turnout), Croatia in 1991 (93.24% in favour of independence with a 83.56% turnout), Turkmenistan in 1991 (94.06% in favour of independence with a 97.4% turnout) and Uzbekistan in 1991 (98.3% in favour of independence with a 94.1% turnout), Georgia in 1991 (99.5% in favour of independence with a 90.6% turnout), Azerbaijan in 1991 (99.8% in favour of independence with a 95% turnout), Gibraltar again in 2002 (98.48% reject shared sovereignty with Spain in favour of the status quo with an 87.9% turnout), South Sudan in 2011 (98.83% in favour of independence with a 97.58% turnout), and the Falkland Islands in 2013 (99.8% vote for continued British rule with a 91.94% turnout).

Even if one wanted to discount the various referenda in the Soviet and Yugoslav states, the others demonstrate that a poll with an incredibly high turnout and 90% or more support in favour of a poll option does not have to be rigged. And that over 90% of a population can actively vote for independence wouldn't mean it was impossible for over 90% of a population to vote for unification or continued unification.
 
Just curious here, which vote percentages are you referring to? Because even a quick google search on the results brings up the wikipage on the referendum and the only ones where you have "over 99% of the people agreeing" on the referendum were the unofficial polls in places like Georgia, where it was only held in Abkhazia and South Ossetia (both places where the non-Georgians had an interest in remaining in some sort of union with Russia), and Lithuania (where it was likely held among only the population of East Slav migrants into the republic).

The rest of the results generally range from 70-80% support in the East Slav republics (Russia, Ukraine and Belarus) with turnouts of 75-80% (so total active support being somewhere between 52-64% of the registered voters) to 94-98% in the Central Asian and Caucasus republics (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikstan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan) with turnouts of 75-99% (so total active support being somewhere between 70-97% of the registered voters).

I wouldn't be very quick to dismiss the nature of the vote in the Central Asia and Azerbaijan though since:

1. if it was being rigged, why bother allowing some republics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Moldova and Armenia) to boycott it?

2. Even up to 2006-2008, a well reputed western polling agency (Gallup) found 40-50% of respondents in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan favoured the idea of the CIS becoming either a "one country" or a "federal state" (I provide links to the polls as well as the poll results and more discussion on them here). The support in Russia for the same question was around 42% and was in general lower than in Central Asia (excepting Kazakhstan). If 15 years after the referendum, support in Central Asia was broadly higher for having the former USSR re-made as a federation or possibly even unitary state (!), then it seems believable that the support would be higher in Central Asia than in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus for the continuation of the federation of the USSR in the 1991. If we take the actual difference to have been 10% greater support then even if there was rigging, the unrigged vote might well have been somewhere between 80-90% of the raw vote and 60-70% of the total registered voters (which is only about 10-20% more than in the Gallup poll of 15 years later anyway).

3. The rule of thumb that a 99% vote (or something similar) is generally rigged isn't that rigid as there have been a number of exceptions over the years: The Dominican Republic in 1870 (99.93% in favour of annexation to the United States although with a 30% turnout), Norway in 1905 (99.95% voting in favour of independence from the union with Sweden with an 85.4% turnout), Iceland in 1918 (with 92.6% in favour of the new personal union with Denmark, although with only a 43.8% turnout), Iceland again in 1944 (99.5% in favour of independence/abolishing the union with Denmark with a 98.4% turnout and 98.5% in favour of the proposed constitution with the same 98.4% turnout), Gibraltar in 1967 (99.64% voted in favour of continued ties to the UK with a 95.67% turnout), Djibouti in 1977 (99.8% in favour of independence with a 77.2% turnout), Armenia in 1991 ( 99.5% in favour of independence with a 95% turnout), Lithuania in 1991 (93.2% in favour of independence with a 74.9% turnout), Macedonia in 1991 (96.4% in favour of independence with a 75.7% turnout), Croatia in 1991 (93.24% in favour of independence with a 83.56% turnout), Turkmenistan in 1991 (94.06% in favour of independence with a 97.4% turnout) and Uzbekistan in 1991 (98.3% in favour of independence with a 94.1% turnout), Georgia in 1991 (99.5% in favour of independence with a 90.6% turnout), Azerbaijan in 1991 (99.8% in favour of independence with a 95% turnout), Gibraltar again in 2002 (98.48% reject shared sovereignty with Spain in favour of the status quo with an 87.9% turnout), South Sudan in 2011 (98.83% in favour of independence with a 97.58% turnout), and the Falkland Islands in 2013 (99.8% vote for continued British rule with a 91.94% turnout).

Even if one wanted to discount the various referenda in the Soviet and Yugoslav states, the others demonstrate that a poll with an incredibly high turnout and 90% or more support in favour of a poll option does not have to be rigged. And that over 90% of a population can actively vote for independence wouldn't mean it was impossible for over 90% of a population to vote for unification or continued unification.

It's been dormant for a week, and I might be accused of bringing up corpses, but I gotta retract my statement that the USSR won't be able to survive with a POD of 1991. It is possible.
 
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