WI: No USSR, but just one centralized Sovietic Republic

Which could have been the later impact if the Communist leaders would have opt for the establishment of just one centralized Sovietic Republic instead of a federation of SSR?

Would it be possible the break-up of 1990-91 if instead the OTL SSR of Latvia, Lithuania etc. there would had been the oblast of Vilnius, the oblast of Kaunas, the oblast of Riga...with little-to-none autonomy?

Would this different philosophy of organization (more centralizing) might have lead to incorporate further territory after 1945 (new oblasts taken from Poland, maybe a Berlin oblast?)?
 
Maybe have the Soviets break things up based on a more provincial system, and rotate Party secretaries and governors around the country. Could work but then again the USSR has a dozen major languages to deal with perhaps not such a great idea.
 
Maybe the Soviets emphasise something like "we are all one people under Communism", instead of "we are all Russians, or else!" of the Tsarist regime.
 
Which could have been the later impact if the Communist leaders would have opt for the establishment of just one centralized Sovietic Republic instead of a federation of SSR?

Probably a slightly harder fight during the Civil War. Conceivably that could mean an independent Ukraine emerges from the Civil War. If none of the Ukrainian groups take advantage of Lenin's different rhetoric (which is quite possible, the Ukrainian groups weren't the most organized - partly because they were getting hit from all sides by the Poles, Whites, Reds AND each-other), then probably the new Bolshevik Russia secures all the territory OTL's USSR does.

The Soviet state in this TL would only have one voice in the UN, not 3 (Belarus and Ukraine had their own UN seats). I don't think this would change anything.

If WW2 happened much as OTL, the Soviets would integrate gains like the Baltic states or Transcarpathian Ukraine directly into their state (since such could be claimed to just be re-integrating former territories/national areas). No way there would be an "Oblast of East Germany" though. And it is very unlikely Poland or Finland would ever be directly integrated.

If the USSR collapsed like OTL at some point, then it is very unlikely the state would break up, since in this situation there'd be more gluing the whole thing together than the Communist party. There'd probably be more Chechnyas (if things are like OTL Georgia could boil over into violence as could the Baltic states), but likely the rebelling nations would all be put down.

fasquardon
 
One has to remember that nominally independent Ukrainian, Belorussian, etc. Soviet republics existed in the early 1920's--a legacy of the Civil War, which the Bolsheviks won partly by appealing to non-Russians who worried about the Whites' "Russia one and indivisible" line. There was no question that with the war over these republics should be merged with the RSFSR. The question was how to do it. Stalin favored what was called "autonomization"--the non-Russian republics should join the RSFSR as "autonomous republics" with the same status as, say, the Yakut or Bashkir republics. Lenin rejected this idea, preferring instead that a new federation be formed of the RSFSR and the hitherto "independent" republics. He wanted it to be thought that the country he ruled was an "international" federation, and not specifically Russian. Stalin eventually yielded to Lenin on this point, and thus the USSR was born. As for simply doing away with the non-Russian republics (both within the RSFSR and outside it) as far as I know, nobody of any importance proposed that. It would look too much like "Russia one and indivisible"--though of course the *Communist Party* was to be one and indivisible...
 
The other SSR's "power" was basically nominal. Everything important came out of Moscow. A big reason why it broke apart when Communism fell. To most inside of the USSR outside of Russia itself the USSR was basically the Russian Empire with window dressing.
 
The other SSR's "power" was basically nominal. Everything important came out of Moscow. A big reason why it broke apart when Communism fell. To most inside of the USSR outside of Russia itself the USSR was basically the Russian Empire with window dressing.

Or what real socialists (rather than Tankie nitwits) recognize as the great tragedy of Stalinism.
 
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