I've been curious lately. People were shocked when the Soviet Union broke up, and how peaceful it was. My question is, is it possible for there to be a second civil war in Russia in the 90's or even early 2000's?
The whole system function very effectively at weeding out true believers. After Khrushchev's departure, it pretty much became a prerequisite of party membership throughout the Warsaw Pact states to be an opportunist. The apparatchiks recognized that being a true believer in the party was the first step to becoming a dissident, so they weeded them out quickly and unceremoniously.Perhaps, but it strikes me as fairly unlikely. The rapid collapse of the Soviet Union OTL looks like a classic example of a "preference cascade". It's like the story of the Emperor's New Clothes: everybody pretends to see the clothes (or favor the Soviet regime, in this case) because they think everyone else sees the cloths, too, and fear the consequences of being in a minority speaking out against it. But once open defiance reaches a critical mass, people start feeling safe voicing their true feelings.
In order to get a Soviet civil war, you'd need there to be enough influential true believers in the Soviet system to remain a viable faction even after the preference cascade swept away the bulk of the support that was given out of fear or inertia. I'm not sure that hard core of support existed in the 90s, or how to make it exist if it didn't.