What if USSR goes all out to keep its empire?

One major reason was out of control military spending. The USSR could have quietly slashed military spending which would have solved budgetary problems.

Sounds reasonable but was impossible in the reality: the military expenses had been too intervened with pretty much all other parts of the economy and cutting them (even if there was a will to do so) would result in a chaos everywhere. Not that it would guarantee solution of the problems which had been slowly killing the SU like endemic corruption, agriculture falling apart, technology increasingly lagging behind, etc.

It just needed to stop trying to keep up militarily with the West and opt for credible military at minimal cost.

Would not work either. The 1st most probable result would be disappearance of the Soviet Block and the 2nd scenario close to one happening after the fall of the SU which we can see now: "vacuum of influence" is unrealistic and it will be filled by the "West". It looks like even now in a reasonably non-ideological Russia this is causing unhappiness but for the SU this would be a complete disaster.
 
We'd basically have a soviet version of the Yugoslav wars, but many times bigger and definitely many times worse.
 
We'd basically have a soviet version of the Yugoslav wars, but many times bigger and definitely many times worse.

No.

Serbs were 36% to Croat 19%. And these two largest ethnic groups were in a tense antangonistic relationship. Then other ethnics were also significant in size.

USSR had a majority 52% Russian followed by 15% Ukrainian (rest are single digit %). But Russians & Ukrainians were close brother peoples especially due to long shared history under czars.

Baltics hated to be in USSR but most other SSRs didn't really mind such as Armenia, Central Asian -stans, etc. These also had long history under czars.

Bottom line is ethnic tensions inside USSR were significantly lower than in Yugoslavia. And in any case the Slavs were in a commanding 66% of USSR population and all Slavs inside USSR saw each other as brethren unlike in Yugoslavia.
 
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No.

Serbs were 36% to Croat 19%. And these two largest ethnic groups were in a tense antangonistic relationship. Then other ethnics were also significant in size.

USSR had a majority 52% Russian followed by 15% Ukrainian (rest are single digit %). But Russians & Ukrainians were close brother peoples especially due to long shared history under czars.

Baltics hated to be in USSR but most other SSRs didn't really mind such as Armenia, Central Asian -stans, etc. These also had long history under czars.

Bottom line is ethnic tensions inside USSR were significantly lower than in Yugoslavia. And in any case the Slavs were in a commanding 66% of USSR population and all Slavs inside USSR saw each other as brethren unlike in Yugoslavia.
I meant it would be like the Yugoslav wars as in how many states keep declaring independence and how much chaos would ensue. But yeah, I probably should've made a better comparison.
 
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