The Russian Federation retains Soviet borders

What if the Russian Federation has the same borders as the Soviet Union did after the fall of communism? How would this be done? What would be the impacts of it? How would others view this? How does Russia look and interact with other groups? Thoughts or ideas?
 
Gorbachev wanted it, but was ousted and replaced by Yeltsin. He started it, but didn't want it to go far enough, at least in the (re)public's eye. Like Evertonian says the Baltic states and the other Soviet states wanted independence and Russia was in no position anymore thanks to Gobrachev to force them to stay in.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
Gorbachev wanted it, but was ousted and replaced by Yeltsin. He started it, but didn't want it to go far enough, at least in the (re)public's eye. Like Evertonian says the Baltic states and the other Soviet states wanted independence and Russia was in no position anymore thanks to Gobrachev to force them to stay in.
It was just the Baltics and Caucasus who wanted out. The Slavic and Central Asian SSRs were okay with staying until August Coup.
 

RousseauX

Donor
What if the Russian Federation has the same borders as the Soviet Union did after the fall of communism? How would this be done? What would be the impacts of it? How would others view this? How does Russia look and interact with other groups? Thoughts or ideas?
it could have kept like 95% of ussr territory

zhivornosky's russia empire is a pretty good take on it imo
 
Avoid the August Coup and you can keep this territory

tntjftrktntz.png
 
It appears Azerbaijan wanted to stay too. If the referendum was held in the independent states they would probably have the same results coming in.
 
Tbh, I really don't think all that much would be different.

I have a feeling few Americans knew what a Belarusian was before 1991.
There seems to a relationship between a nation's population being partitioned and a rise in nationalism that explains the relatively late and weaker emergence of Belarusian nationalism. Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania were all partitioned for much of the nineteenth century between some combination of Germany, Russia, and Austria, but Belarus never was.

If the interwar Polish-Soviet border partitioning Belarusians had lasted for another 70 years in a business as usual ATL without WW2, strong Belarusian nationalism might have emerged earlier. However, the near total destruction of the urban intelligentsia in the Belarusian SSR during Barbarossa, combined with a round of postwar Russification and Russian settlement, artificially slowed down the emergence of Belarusian national consciousness.
 
It would be interesting to see how the rise of Islamism is affected. Along with the war in Afghanistan, the ethnic cleansing against Bosniaks, Albanians during the Yugoslav wars and the Chechen wars attracted an ideologically motivated core of "foreign" (just fellow Muslims in their view) fighters who saw themselves fighting in a clash of civilizations with the west.

If Moscow is less internationally prostrate before NATO in this ATL '90s, the US will be more hesitant to intervene in the Balkans or the Yugoslav crisis may evolve differently. Even if Yugoslavia manages to hold together, the nineties could still have a nasty separatist insurgency in Chechnya.

In the 1990s Tajikistan had a civil war that pitted old-guard communists against a rebel coalition of islamists and reformers, if the conflict isn't butterflied away it may appear as a separatist insurgency within the USSR.
 
For the Soviet Union to have been the same as the Russian Federation, much would have been needed to be different in very early Soviet history, enough to make later Soviet history unrecognizable. Why would the Soviets not have followed through with their interest in accelerating modernization throigh the formation of nation-wide in the wider Soviet community?

If you had somehow managed to avoid a complete collapse of the Soviet state in 1991, with the Slavic and central Asian republics remaining in a reconfigured Union, I am not sure how well things could have gone How would economic reform be handled? You can have something like Yugoslavia in the 1980s, the economy failing and taking internal relationships down with them.
 
It'll be pretty busy trying to keep things together to engage in foreign adventures for a while (not to mention how awkward territorial disputes in the Caucasus are going to be).
 
The Union of Sovereign States would have held onto most of the Soviet territory as mentioned before, but it would be closer to a reformed USSR rather than a Russian federation with Soviet borders.
 
It appears Azerbaijan wanted to stay too. If the referendum was held in the independent states they would probably have the same results coming in.
Likely not in the Baltics. Armenia and Moldova were quite possibly going to have a "Yes" majority, I suppose Georgia would have had a thin margin for whatever result. While there was plenty of discontent, virulent nationalism and violence in the Caucasus area, in 1991 it is still possible that a renewed SU would have sounded attractive to many in the area.
 
It would be interesting to see how the rise of Islamism is affected. Along with the war in Afghanistan, the ethnic cleansing against Bosniaks, Albanians during the Yugoslav wars and the Chechen wars attracted an ideologically motivated core of "foreign" (just fellow Muslims in their view) fighters who saw themselves fighting in a clash of civilizations with the west.

If Moscow is less internationally prostrate before NATO in this ATL '90s, the US will be more hesitant to intervene in the Balkans or the Yugoslav crisis may evolve differently. Even if Yugoslavia manages to hold together, the nineties could still have a nasty separatist insurgency in Chechnya.

In the 1990s Tajikistan had a civil war that pitted old-guard communists against a rebel coalition of islamists and reformers, if the conflict isn't butterflied away it may appear as a separatist insurgency within the USSR.

No major insurgency is likely to happen in either Chechnya or Tajikistan within a surviving (renamed or not ) Soviet Union. Local violence, yes, but hardly much more.
 
The Union of Sovereign States would have held onto most of the Soviet territory as mentioned before, but it would be closer to a reformed USSR rather than a Russian federation with Soviet borders.

It also might have just amounted to an added stage in a different, slower disintegration of the USSR.
 
Top