Greetings and salutations.
Just tossing a thought out there: if we assume a Soviet Union similar to OTL up to the death of Brezhnev, in which Gorbachev has a tragic tractor-related accident while visiting Collective Farm 375 in '76, what sort of trajectory does it follow over the last 30 years? That the Soviet economy was by Brezhnev's death deeply and fundamentally screwed up, kept afloat mainly by high oil prices, is now the general consensus. But what sort of policies might the USSR have followed with leaders that did not follow Gorbachev's "destroy the Communist Party to save the Communist Party" philosophy?
Brezhnev was apparently scared to death of the notion of intervening in Poland when Solidarity was in full bloom, and was very much relieved when Jaruzelski proved loyal and clamped down. Sans a Gorbachev, it's likely another blowup would happen in Eastern Europe before the end of the 80's: would future Soviet leaders be willing to intervene militarily? Results of either: 1. An eastern European pupper government collapsing while the Soviets stood by or 2. military intervention that turns into a total clusterfuck? (IIRC, the Red Army made an utter botch of logistics when invading Czechoslovakia in 1968).
If oild prices had remained high through the 80's (Soviet intervention in the Iranian revolution? Soviet-Arab anti-Israel alliance in full bloom? Arabs just behave like dicks?) would the Soviets have used the breathing space to seriously reform the system, or would they have been more likely to just continue put things off while oil was providing a cushion?
What exactly would Soviet reform have looked like? By the 80's, the Soviet Union hardly _had_ anymore a peasant class like that which OTL started off the great reforms: you had essentially a rural proletariat, which much like the urban workers, pretended to work while the Collective pretended to pay them, and a massive agricultural beureocracy with a stake in preventing change. (Note how slow Russian agriculture was to show any change after 1991). And then there was an economically negative-valued "rust belt" far larger than that of the US, and dwarfing that of China in 1979. What could be done with that except continuing to shoulder the burden, when millions upon millions would be thrown out of work by "rationalization?"
If reform is tried and fails, how will Russians react? Will there be a return to Real Existing Stalinism, or are the post-1953 checks and balances created by the Party for their own protection prevent any efforts at genuine brute-force mass mobilization? In that light, how likely is a military coup? A KGB coup (probably in alliance with the Army)?
What happens in an essentially "gridlocked" situation, where reform requires changes on a scale that it is impossible to implement, because it would upset far too many applecarts? How long can such a stalemate exist, and what forces might break it?
If the economy reaches the "shooting food-rioters in the streets" levels of badness, how long before soldiers start turning their guns on their superiors? The USSR of the pre-Gorbachev 80's, bad as it was, was not North Korea. And if things get that bad, do we get a collapse of authority as in '91, or will there be a fight? If general X takes over the Kremlin and announces an "emergency government", will the provinces obey? The states of Central Asia OTL were quick enough to recognize the coup government, but would they have done so after another decade of slow decay?
Is a Soviet civil war (possibly with nukes) at all possible, or will a collapse of legitamacy at the center simply lead to the local governments going thei own way? Without Gorbachev, will fear still work? If the central government orders mass arrests of "disloyal" local leaders and political oppenents, will the army and KGB obey, or will they twiddle their thumbs until they are sure they aren't going to be on the losing side? Does the USSR still end with a whimper, or with a bang?
Just how big a mess could Eastern Europe turn into, anyway?
The economy was essentially stagnant when Gorbachev came into office, started to shrink when various efforts at reform proved unworkable or damaged the authority and ability of the party to get things done (and often provoked footdragging if not outright sabotage) while oil prices dropped, and went into freefall after 1991 and the breakup of the USSR. What happens to the Soviet economy if the old system is maintained and we simply get a Andropov-ish tightening of controls and perhaps (as in China today) a few symbolic heads roll? Was the system entirely played out or was there perhaps a few more years of (sluggish) economic growth in it?
Could a closer and more effective economic integration of the USSR with Eastern Europe have helped the situation, or would it just be sabotaged by local elites and/or cause Eastern Europe to boil over sooner?
If said Eastern European mess leads to a bloody crackdown, and there is a new US embargo, how hungry do the Soviets get? Can they successfully wean themselves off US food imports?
There was often some speculation that the USSR might indulge in a "short, victorious war" to improve it's position if desperate enough. If the USSR invaded Iran, would that be likely to touch off WWIII? If it backed Saddam Hussiein and placed nuclear missiles in Iraq, would Saddam have held Kuwait, or, again, WWIII?
Silly thought: the USSR's economy was always more about increasing inputs rather than increasing productivity. Population growth was sluggish by the 80's, if still a bit above the First World: what if Soviet Leader Nutzikoff decides, circa 1988, that the Soviet union needs more people and pushed for unrestricted immigration from the third world? How many move to the USSR, and how many try to get back out agains as soon as possible? (Yes, I know - Russian xenophobia makes this improbable.)
How much would it have helped if the Soviets manage somehow to make themselves self-sufficient in food again? (synthetics? Mass use of urban hydroponics? Simply improving storage and transportation might have increased food available at the store end of things by 30%. And heck, it wasn't impossible for a Communist nation to have a decently productive agricultural sector - Hungary made out OK).
How might Soviet ideology evolve in the years that weren't OTL? China is increasingly turning to good ol' nationalism as a glue, but China is over 90% Han: the USSR was only about 50% Greater Russian in its last years, and that's about 36% of the Soviet Block as a whole. A move to "capitalize" the Soviet Union would be an admission that Communism didn't work, which would undermine the legitimacy of the system. Defender of the Third World? A nation By and For the Proletariat? (You could still get some sort of capitalized economy with that line, but it couldn't be anything like OTLs robber-baron capitalism without falling on it's face through sheer absurdity). How could the USSR reform its economy while maintaining the faith that they were
different in a good way from the Capitalist nations? Soviet environmentalism, of course, would be a bad joke...
So, thoughts and ideas about how the USSR might evolve without Gorbachev, and given that the economic gap between the US and USSR was likely to increase even if the USSR managed to avoid the massive per capita drop of OTL, what are its failure modes? Where and when do things begin to unravel, and what is the most likely sequence of events? Civil war? Fairly non-violent melting away fo central authority, possibly combined with temporary failed efforts to reverse it, similar to OTL? Utter chaos? Military dictatorship and withdrawal from the less valuable bits of Empire?
Note the question is not "how do we save the USSR": it is, what is the most likely trajectory of events 1982-2010 without Gorbachev? (And if you think the answer is "WWIII: we all die", please show your work.

)
Now this had been talked about before, but I've found such threads tend to peter out rather quickly. Let's see if we can give the idea a good working over for a change: I just haven't seem very many good "No Gorbachev, USSR survives" TLs, although I vaguely remember some wanks...
Bruce