WI: USSR Survives

After 1985? Even in the 1930s it was a hell of longshot by 1985 it is ASB.

Doesn't have to actually turn fascist, just have Reagan make lots more anti-Slavic/anti-Communist comments, so the USSR gets even more scared of the man. Then, they will stay together for fear of Reagan. :)D)
 

Cook

Banned
What if Gorbachev's reforms worked better, or a Communist coup succeed, leading to the USSR staying together, how does this effect the world of today, and the future?

These are two very different questions. The second one is the easiest to answer as we have examples of that in existence; Syria and North Korea are two examples depending on how pessimistic you want to be.

The first, if Gorbachev’ had been more successful could be anything up to and including the Chinese example.
 
Since we're mostly saying that you need to go back further than Gorbachyov (which I think is true) to have a good chance of keeping the USSR together and various possible divergences to improve the circumstances of the Soviet economy, I feel moved to point out another: the Soviet losses in the war were catastophic. No war is by no means a copper-bottomed guarantee that the Union holds because, as Bruce reminds as, almost nothing is a copper-bottomed guarantee of anything, but it is difficult to see how the survival of a tenth of the population, cities not being destroyed, no mass-plunder of the harvest or abduction and so on would hurt. And possibly the Soviets never acquire Galicia-Volhynia or the Baltics, which is a good thing for their prospects.
 
Trouble is that without Communism, there's not much in the way of ideological legitmacy to keep the Soviet Union together - the Chinese could use good old nationalism to prop up the regime, which would be dangerous in a state only 50% Russian proper, or fear of chaos and civil war, while for the Soviets the last time they had undergone a Cultural Revolution type fun time had been back during the 30s...

Bruce

I'm not so sure. The Russian Empire in its last decades was based on a mixture Russian nationalism and pure statism, and it wasn't nationalist agitation that brought it down. The Soviet regime is dealing with a literate educated population, but then, Soviet nationalism was much more liberal on questions of language and identity.

And there was such a thing as Soviet identity. People voted for the New Treaty in the Slavic and Central Asian countries and Azerbaijan, and went on to vote for the independence (where they did) of Soviet states based on essentially Soviet identities. Capitalist Ukraine, for instance, celebrates independence day as the day when the Soviet parliament passed the independence declaration, not any of the N other candidates, and commemorates the Great Patriotic War. This was even more pronounced in the 1990s (and would be even more even more pronounced in a Ukraine without the west).

The USSR was a Soviet state, not a Russian one, in the same way that the British state isn't English. So replace Russians with Soviets - a category from which many titular-nationals in the Baltics, Moldova, and so on would exclude themselves, but few in Belarus or Ukraine - and you have a much bigger basis for the state.

(Not to mention that not all of those 49% of non-Russians want independence before even mentioning Belarussians and Dniepr-Ukrainians. What about the Germans, Bashkirs, Kalmyks, Tatars, miscellanious Siberians, and North Caucasians who aren't from Chechnya or Dagestan? They may not be Russkiy, but are Rossiskiy. Small individually, but add 'em up...)
 
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A good start might be some kind of agricultural reform in 60's where the size of private plots is increased and thus helping a Soviet food problem. No idea how much agricultural production would increase but in the best case scenario Soviets could become the net exporter of food.
 
How about averting the war in Afghanistan?

At the very least, not throwing young men into the Afghan meatgrinder would lessen dissatisfaction with the government, and perhaps with the money that would have financed the war freed up, the Soviet economy could have shambled along long enough for reforms, maybe Gorby-type ones, to have a positive affect.
 
The west stays a lot more conservative, of course depending on tensions at the time the Soviets may try to outliberal them, at least on the surface.
 
Well, an obvious, and very early, solution is to never have Stalin come to power and set a ruthless, corrupt and wicked model to be followed by latter Soviet dictators; simply have Trotsky (or some other, sane and civilized human being) come to power. The USSR may not have industrialized as fast but everything else would be better and in the long run it would be a sustainable system that would survive: Even without enhanced industrial capacity, the USSR under Trotsky would have the massive resources and population of the country, not to mention good generalship and a sustainable system after he was dead, that would crush the Nazis long before WW2 started in OTL (say, the mid to late 1930s or so) and thus help win the hearts and minds of many people in Eastern Europe.

By the time Trotsky would leave office, the USSR would be industrialized due to its far better economic planning and lack of purges.
 
What if Gorbachev's reforms worked better, or a Communist coup succeed, leading to the USSR staying together, how does this effect the world of today, and the future?
Actually, if you want to save the USSR, even for a few more years, with the latest possible point of divergence, is to prevent the coup from happening at all. According to David Remnick, although there was reluctance all around, a new union treaty was about a day away from being signed when the coup preempted it. By the time the coup leaders were pushed out, the opportunity had been lost. Now, it's anybody's guess how long the new soviet union would last. There would be considerable differences between this USSR and the one that existed between 1917 and 1991. It would be more akin to a few different countries with a unified foreign policy/military and perhaps a unified currency. Basically the new USSR is akin to a super European Union with all the signatories of the Union Treaty.

Eventually the conflict between Gorbachev and Yeltsin, who is still President of Russia here, and yes, after the Union Treaty is signed that will actually mean something, might lead to even this weakened Union to split. In any case, there will be a conflict, and the fate of the USSR probably depends on the result. After all, if Russia leaves the USSR, the Union's center is gone, and therefore, we see another collapse.
 
Well, an obvious, and very early, solution is to never have Stalin come to power and set a ruthless, corrupt and wicked model to be followed by latter Soviet dictators; simply have Trotsky (or some other, sane and civilized human being) come to power. The USSR may not have industrialized as fast but everything else would be better and in the long run it would be a sustainable system that would survive: Even without enhanced industrial capacity, the USSR under Trotsky would have the massive resources and population of the country, not to mention good generalship and a sustainable system after he was dead, that would crush the Nazis long before WW2 started in OTL (say, the mid to late 1930s or so) and thus help win the hearts and minds of many people in Eastern Europe.

By the time Trotsky would leave office, the USSR would be industrialized due to its far better economic planning and lack of purges.

Trotsky had very little chance of being Lenin's successor. Pretty much all the Bolshevik leadership disliked and distrusted him, perhaps aside from Lenin himself. Since the next leader is going to be the consensus choice of that leadership, Trotsky has very little chance of emerging as the new leader. Even if, through some miracle, or coup, Trotsky is Lenin's successor, industrialization and collectivization probably occurs as it did. I could be wrong, but if I remember Trotsky advocated similar policies prior to Stalin's leadership. Trotsky, if I have my facts straight, was a leading advocate of the left wing of the Bolshevik party, yes I know how ridiculous that sounds in an American context. Basically the Soviet left advocated speedy industrialization and the "militarization" of society. A real Trotsky led USSR would resemble Stalin's in the way industrialization and collectivization are handled. Of course, considering his unpopularity within the party, Trotsky is going to have serious problems diverting blame for the resulting crises the way Stalin did. Trotsky isn't Stalin, so the result of his leadership isn't going to be identical. He'll pursue similar policies, but there will be much more opposition. Trotsky being thrown out at some point is far more likely than Stalin being thrown out historically. Depending on how long Trotsky lasts, you see mass industrialization and collectivization, but you might not see purges of the military. (You might still see something that resembles party purging simply because of Trotsky's massive unpopularity within the inner circles of the Bolshevik party). In any case, a Trotsky led USSR is kind of like a Beria led USSR, interesting, but not particularly likely to have occurred.
 
The USSR survives in its 1939 borders as a Commonwealth of Independent States with more bite to the Commonwealth bit.

That's sort of the issue, I can't see that easily happening once they open the door for nationalist movements in Central Asia, Europe, and the other SSRs. Today the CIS really seems to have a perception among Central Asian states as a new way for Moscow to do the same shit to them as it always had, for reasons of economic necessity, they play Moscow's game, but they probably aren't too happy to do so.

Moscow would have to make a lot of concessions that its leaders may well not have been willing to make, with the exception of Gorby.
 
That's sort of the issue, I can't see that easily happening once they open the door for nationalist movements in Central Asia, Europe, and the other SSRs. Today the CIS really seems to have a perception among Central Asian states as a new way for Moscow to do the same shit to them as it always had, for reasons of economic necessity, they play Moscow's game, but they probably aren't too happy to do so.

Moscow would have to make a lot of concessions that its leaders may well not have been willing to make, with the exception of Gorby.

These misconceptions really need to be fixed:

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=4557469&postcount=47

http://www.gallup.com/poll/109894/Support-CIS-Partnerships-Strong-Even-Georgia.aspx

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?p=4848163#post4848163

Central Asian states aren't unhappy for Moscow to continue what it used to do. In fact, remember that Kyrgyzstan's government actually requested Russian intervention during the recent violence and Moscow politely declined?
 
I think the guy you'd really want to take the most power would be Kosygin. Maybe if you knock off Brezhnev and give this guy the reigns, the economic condition of the USSR would be looking much better. IIRC he had plans, some of which were successfully implemented, to liberalize the economy and stuff. When his reforms were enacted the standard quality of life was greatly improved.

Yeah, I agree.

Kosygin.

I also think Khrushchev staying around a bit longer would have helped. Sure he had failures, but he was thinking of reform.

If the USSR had Khrushchev, followed by Kosygin and then by Andropov (either have him in power earlier or not die when he did) and I think the USSR would have pre-empted the Deng Xiaoping model of China.

The USSR wouldn't be China, of course. It doesn't have the population to become the world's factory as China did, but it would be similar in some economic respects I think.
 
These misconceptions really need to be fixed:

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=4557469&postcount=47

http://www.gallup.com/poll/109894/Support-CIS-Partnerships-Strong-Even-Georgia.aspx

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?p=4848163#post4848163

Central Asian states aren't unhappy for Moscow to continue what it used to do. In fact, remember that Kyrgyzstan's government actually requested Russian intervention during the recent violence and Moscow politely declined?

I'm not saying they don't ever cooperate, they have mutual interests (such as security) in which Moscow is a useful gang to have around for protection, just saying though, things like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which do include a lot of Central Asian former SSRs have issues because the Central Asian states need to be properly convinced that it isn't just a way to have their resources exploited by larger powers.
 
I'm not saying they don't ever cooperate, they have mutual interests (such as security) in which Moscow is a useful gang to have around for protection, just saying though, things like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which do include a lot of Central Asian former SSRs have issues because the Central Asian states need to be properly convinced that it isn't just a way to have their resources exploited by larger powers.

Look at the polls I linked you to. On average 60-70% of the Central Asian respondents don't seem to have the concerns you think they have. If the vast majority of respondents in those polls either want to completely reunify the CIS (which would necessarily include Russia) or at least have an economic union, I doubt they need to be convinced that the CIS, SCO and EurAsEC (Eurasian Economic Community) are actually in their interests. In fact the polls would seem to indicate that they don't believe those organizations (or at least the CIS) go far enough in serving their interests.
 
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