WI: Coup against Gorby in 1989

In the movie World War 3, Gorbachev is deposed immediately upon returning from his trip to East Germany in October 1989 and replaced by a hardline general who within months escalates the crisis in Eastern Europe into a thermonuclear war.

What would happen if the generals who plotted against Gorby in August 1991, made their move as in the movie? Would things seriously spiral out of control so quickly, or would the coup collapse as in OTL 1991?
 
Ummm...

well, nobody would be reading alternatehistory.com on account of the fact that most of the people in Europe, Russia, and North America would be dead :eek:
 
In 91 the Soviet people had seen deomcracy in action for 2 years in the easternblock and opposed the coup. IN 1989 it might have succeded
 
Didn't they land troops to grab the Alaskan pipeline?

If the Soviets land troops on American soil, it's going to be bad.

But the Americans aren't going to launch over this. They will move against the troop there while trying to negotiate a way out.

But the real problem was that the Soviets Generals wanted war.

You can't fix that.
 
Well, I'm wondering after watching it just how so many people were available to make the documentary and recall the events if a truly all out nuclear war was fought.

The way I figured it was that Bush launched a first strike and took out most of the Soviet ICBMs limiting the damage the U.S. and Europe suffered.

Because supposedly, Bush was already implementing SIOPs after the Soviets detonated the nuclear warhead in the North Sea.

And apparently, Soviet early warning systems were gone as it was pointed out that the Sovs were relying mostly on the western press for their intel.
 
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