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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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