WI: Gorbachev Assassinated

On November 1990, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev traveled to Red Square to greet a group of Communist demonstrators. During this stage in his reign, economic downturn had weakened his popularity as both the hardliners and the liberalizers began to attack the General Secretary. While Gorbachev saw this as an opportunity to speak with the people, his security saw it as a safety risk, allowing the Red Square to be flooded by protestors and police alike.

In the midst of this chaos, one Alexander Shmonov somehow managed to sneak a hunting rifle past security to fire two bullets at Gorbachev. But as we all know, Gorbachev realized that he couldn't star in a Pizza Hut commercial with his head blown to pieces and managed to live another day. In his testimony, Shmonov declared that he planned to kill Gorbachev because “the president was responsible for the totalitarian regime in the USSR", citing the April 9th tragedy and his three arrests for distributing anti-communist flyers. In response, he was declared mentally insane and sent to a sanitorium for three years.

Years afterward, Gorbachev himself claimed that the KGB planned the assassination to intimidate him while the country was in the midst of an unstable situation. However, the assassin himself said that he only acted with the help of an anonymous accomplice who was tasked to hold back the demonstrators but betrayed Shmonov by joining the crowd. Today, Shmonov is a free man, inventing methods which he claims can "increase the average living standard of all Russian non-businessmen by two or three times within one year", "improve citizens and create copies of people" and "improve a man's sexual potential without the use of medicine," by "keeping his legs apart day and night".

But as scholars of alternate history, we must ask ourselves the question, "what if Shmonov managed to fire a few lucky shots into Gorby before being pinned down?" The obvious question is, who would replace Gorbachev? And how would this successor deal with the downfall of Lenin's brainchild? Given the economic recession and independence movements that wracked the Union during its death throes, I don't believe that it could live much longer before the people demand a change in power, one way or another.
 
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Well, my first guess is the Vice President Gennedy Yanayev. Not sure what happens with the Gang of 8 or their interactions with Boris Yeltsin...
 

hammo1j

Donor
Good premise Gorbachev was an Asb figure I believe.

Someone asked him: if he wanted to keep Su going could he have done it?

His reply: 'Da'.
 
Well, my first guess is the Vice President Gennedy Yanayev. Not sure what happens with the Gang of 8 or their interactions with Boris Yeltsin...
Well, Yanayev wasn't Gorbachev's veep until a month after the assassination attempt, so perhaps Anatoly Lukyanov ends up leading the Soviet Union. He served as First Deputy Chairman before becoming Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, making him the heir apparent. Lukyanov and Gorbachev knew each other since university and from what I can tell, Lukyanov seems to be a more orthodox communist, judging how he supported the August Coup.

He did support economic reforms and anti-corruption movements, but unlike Gorbachev, he anticipated that liberal policies would lead to the Soviet Union's collapse. This led to him being labelled the "Soviet Deng Xiaoping", which does sound a lot better than the "Soviet Dan Quayle" Gorbachev appointed. But with the people demanding democracy, how will he run a country that he called a nation on its death throes?
 
Well, Yanayev wasn't Gorbachev's veep until a month after the assassination attempt, so perhaps Anatoly Lukyanov ends up leading the Soviet Union. He served as First Deputy Chairman before becoming Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, making him the heir apparent. Lukyanov and Gorbachev knew each other since university and from what I can tell, Lukyanov seems to be a more orthodox communist, judging how he supported the August Coup.

He did support economic reforms and anti-corruption movements, but unlike Gorbachev, he anticipated that liberal policies would lead to the Soviet Union's collapse. This led to him being labelled the "Soviet Deng Xiaoping", which does sound a lot better than the "Soviet Dan Quayle" Gorbachev appointed. But with the people demanding democracy, how will he run a country that he called a nation on its death throes?

Probably try and gradually put democratic changes, but stack the deck pretty much. granted, that will require grassroots campaigns for that and bottom up and top down approaches
 
Does anyone else have ideas on how Lukyanov would deal with the decay of the Soviet Union? It was during this time when the independence movement in the Baltics had really begun to surge. Would the more hardline Lukyanov crack down harder than Gorbachev? What about the economic decline of the Union? Lukyanov supported many of Gorbachev's market reforms, so how does he try to turn the Union's finances around?
 
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