alternatehistory.com

This TL is about the August Coup not occuring in 1991 and Gorbachev successfully reforming the country into a looser federation. The disaster that was Yeltsin's economic policy is avoided :).



The Soviet Union Reborn



Prologue


After assuming power in 1985, Gorbachev embarked on an ambitious program of reform that was embodied by the twin concepts of perestroika and glasnost which meant economic/political restructuring and openness, respectively. These moves prompted resistance and suspicion on the part of hardliners within the establishment. The reforms also unleashed some forces and movements that Gorbachev did not expect, more specifically nationalist unrest among the USSR’s non-Russian ethnic minorities which led to fears that some or all of the member republics might secede.

The reforms, however, were necessary. In 1991, the Soviet Union was in a severe economic and political crisis. There were shortages of almost all products, and people had to stand in long lines to buy even the most essential and basic goods.

The Baltic States and Georgia had already declared their independence from the Soviet Union. In January 1991, there was an attempt by Soviet forces to restore Lithuania to Soviet rule by force which caused fourteen civilian deaths and around a thousand injured. About a week later, there was a similar attempt by local pro-Soviet forces to overthrow the Latvian authorities that had declared their independence earlier. There were continuing armed ethnic conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia as well.

Russia declared itself to be sovereign on June 12th 1990 and thereafter limited the application of Soviet laws, in particular the laws concerning finance and the economy, on Russian territory. The Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) adopted laws which contradicted Soviet laws (the so-called "war of laws").

In the March 17th 1991 union referendum, which was boycotted by Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, Armenia and Moldova, the majority of the residents of the rest of the republics expressed the desire to retain the renewed Soviet Union. Following negotiations, eight of the nine republics (except Ukraine) approved the draft of the New Union Treaty with some conditions. The treaty would make the Soviet Union a federation of independent republics with a common president, foreign policy, and military.

The Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan were to sign the Treaty in Moscow on August 20th 1991, but attempts were being made to stop it.




1991-MCMXCI


On December 11th 1990, Chairman of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, made a "call for order" over Central television in Moscow. That day, he also asked two KGB officers to prepare measures that could be taken in case the government declared a state of emergency. Later, Kryuchkov involved the USSR Defence Minister Dmitri Yazov, Internal Affairs Minister Boris Pugo, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, Vice President Gennady Yanayev, deputy Chief of the USSR Defence Council Oleg Baklanov, head of Gorbachev's secretariat Valeriy Boldin, and Central Committee Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Oleg Shenin in the conspiracy. The conspirators hoped that Gorbachev could be “persuaded” to declare the state of emergency to "restore order".

On July 23rd, a number of party functionaries and literati published an anti-Perestroika manifesto entitled ‘A Word to the People’ in the very pro-communist, anti-reformist newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya.

On July 29th, Gorbachev, President of Russia Boris Yeltsin and Kazakh President Nazarbayev discussed the possibility of replacing such hardliners as Pavlov, Yazov, Kryuchkov and Pugo with more liberal figures. This conversation was listened in to by the KGB and its contents became known to Kryuchkov who had already had Gorbachev placed under close observation as Subject 110 several months earlier.

On August 4th 1991, Gorbachev went on holiday to his dacha in Foros on the Crimean Peninsula. He planned to return to Moscow on August 20th 1991, when the union treaty was to be signed.

On August 17th the conspirators met in a KGB safe house in Moscow where they read about the new union treaty, which they believed would lead to the Soviet Union's break-up, and decided that it was time to put a stop to it. On Sunday August 18th 1991 Oleg Baklanov, Valeriy Boldin, Oleg Shenin, and Deputy USSR Defence Minister General Valentin Varennikov flew to the Gorbachev’s dacha for a meeting with Soviet leader, but the Tupolev they were flying in crashed a few kilometres west of Kharkov. Baklanov, Boldin, Shenin and Varennikov all perished instantly and Gorbachev released a statement that declared they were greatly mourned and announced they would receive a state funeral. The other conspirators lost faith in the plan and the coup attempt petered out before it had even begun without anyone ever knowing about it until many years later.

President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev returned to Moscow on August 20th where the Russian SFSR, the Byelorussian SSR, the Azerbaijani SSR, the Kazakh SSR, the Uzbek SSR, the Turkmen SSR, the Kyrgyz SSR and the Tajik SSR ratified the New Union Treaty. Ukraine’s representatives, with the vote of the March referendum in mind, signed the New Union Treaty on August 26th on the condition that the “Declaration of the State Sovereignty of Ukraine”, approved by Ukraine’s parliament on July 16th, was recognised. As a result a loose federation was founded with a common president, military, foreign policy, currency, fiscal policy and a certain number of policies that were co-governed by Moscow and the states’ governments (such as Russian being taught as a second language by all elementary and high schools). Otherwise the member states were autonomous in their internal affairs. The result was the Union of Sovereign Soviet Republics which coincidentally was also abbreviated as “USSR” and which consisted of nine republics (the new USSR excluded Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova Georgia and Armenia).

However, the political situation was not completely solved by the formation of the New Union. In Moldova, Moldovan was adopted as the only official language and the Latin alphabet was reintroduced, replacing Cyrillic. Extreme anti-minority, ethnocentric and chauvinist rhetoric as well as Russian being used only for secondary uses served to alienate minorities, and that led to violent clashes. Furthermore, the prospect of Moldovan reunification with Romania frightened minority groups further. Soviet Army troops occupied Gagauzia and Transnistria and suppressed ethnic violence between Moldavians on one side and ethnic Russians, Transnistrians and Gagauzians on the other. In a referendum organised on October 21st, Gagauzia and Transnistria both voted to join the Soviet Union rather than Moldova as “Autonomous Sovereign Soviet Republics” or ASSRs.

In Georgia, which had declared its independence on April 9th 1991, there were ethnic troubles as well in the regions of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Mingrelia with violence between separatists and the Georgian population. President of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia stoked Georgian nationalism and vowed to assert Tbilisi’s authority over the separatist regions that had been autonomous oblasts under Soviet rule which led to a state of virtual civil war similar to Yugoslavian circumstances. After several months of violence, Soviet troops intervened in October 1991 and forcibly restored peace and order in war torn Georgia. In a referendum on November 9th South Ossetia, Abkhazia and the Mingrelian region of Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti voted to decide their fate. All three decided to join the USSR although the latter did so with a very small minority and the region remains as a bone of contention between Georgia and the USSR.

Now that the Soviet Union had its house in order, it was ready to reassume a position on the world stage and begin the road to recovery.
Top