Do you think the Soviet Union could've survived if they never invaded Afghanistan, or at least, how much longer would've they have lasted otherwise? The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is said to have been the mistake that led to the end of the USSR, but others would say that Afghanistan alone wasn't the core issue, it just exacerbated existing ones.
Throughout the 1980s, Afghanistan played a major role with Soviet politics internally. Notably, many citizens who were blissfully ignorant about the problems knew something was wrong at the 1980 Olympics, the big event held in the Soviet's own capital (and thus a major event for them), when the western world didn't show up to Moscow out of protest. It was a major unraveling the revealed the flaws of the Soviet's system, and outside the USSR, the Soviet's failure to quell the Mujahideen revealed just how much of a paper tiger the seemingly unstoppable Soviet Red Army truly was.
Suddenly, a lot less people around the world were afraid of them, and fear played a major role in their power. It's a major reason the Soviet Union's official dissolution in December 1991 actually wasn't that big of an event, instead it was second fiddle to Operation Desert Storm (kind of anticlimactic when you think about it). The sentiment was that by that point, it was basically over. Hell, thematically, the Berlin Wall coming down is often used more as the image showing that the Cold War was over than the Soviet flag coming down at Moscow two years later.
A change in timing can mean everything. The invasion was ordered by Leonid Brezhnev, a final failure by an infamously corrupt, incompetent and dying man, who himself passed just three years after the war began, and was ultimately replaced by Mikhail Gorbachev. He tried to save the Soviet Union through reforms, allowing more free speech, adopting neo-capitalist elements and thawing out the Cold War by making the USSR much more friendly. But funnily enough, those same well-meaning efforts ended up destroying the USSR completely because only sheer force held it together by 1985.
However, without Afghanistan to expose and multiply the Soviet's problems internally and externally, while also ratcheting up tensions with the world, could the USSR have been saved? Brezhnev would've died in 1982 regardless, as he was old and it was a natural death, and Gorbachev would've likely taken the same spot in 1985. Could he have his vision realized without this war?
The POD here is simply that Afghanistan doesn't have a communist revolution. That's basically it. Once it does, it's a rabbit hole of which there's no escape, so here it just remains a friendly nation on the USSR border that isn't communist but also not Western-aligned and thus isn't a focus at large.
Just curious about what you think.
Throughout the 1980s, Afghanistan played a major role with Soviet politics internally. Notably, many citizens who were blissfully ignorant about the problems knew something was wrong at the 1980 Olympics, the big event held in the Soviet's own capital (and thus a major event for them), when the western world didn't show up to Moscow out of protest. It was a major unraveling the revealed the flaws of the Soviet's system, and outside the USSR, the Soviet's failure to quell the Mujahideen revealed just how much of a paper tiger the seemingly unstoppable Soviet Red Army truly was.
Suddenly, a lot less people around the world were afraid of them, and fear played a major role in their power. It's a major reason the Soviet Union's official dissolution in December 1991 actually wasn't that big of an event, instead it was second fiddle to Operation Desert Storm (kind of anticlimactic when you think about it). The sentiment was that by that point, it was basically over. Hell, thematically, the Berlin Wall coming down is often used more as the image showing that the Cold War was over than the Soviet flag coming down at Moscow two years later.
A change in timing can mean everything. The invasion was ordered by Leonid Brezhnev, a final failure by an infamously corrupt, incompetent and dying man, who himself passed just three years after the war began, and was ultimately replaced by Mikhail Gorbachev. He tried to save the Soviet Union through reforms, allowing more free speech, adopting neo-capitalist elements and thawing out the Cold War by making the USSR much more friendly. But funnily enough, those same well-meaning efforts ended up destroying the USSR completely because only sheer force held it together by 1985.
However, without Afghanistan to expose and multiply the Soviet's problems internally and externally, while also ratcheting up tensions with the world, could the USSR have been saved? Brezhnev would've died in 1982 regardless, as he was old and it was a natural death, and Gorbachev would've likely taken the same spot in 1985. Could he have his vision realized without this war?
The POD here is simply that Afghanistan doesn't have a communist revolution. That's basically it. Once it does, it's a rabbit hole of which there's no escape, so here it just remains a friendly nation on the USSR border that isn't communist but also not Western-aligned and thus isn't a focus at large.
Just curious about what you think.