Would the Soviet Union have survived if it wasn't for the August 1991 coup attempt?

CaliGuy

Banned
In your honest opinion, would the Soviet Union have survived if it wasn't for the August 1991 coup attempt?
 
Yes, for at least a few more years and possibly for the forseeable future. There was (and continues to be) enough support in the nine remaining SSRs for it to keep on trucking.

The 1990s would probably be tough, but not quite as tough as a total collapse was.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Yes, for at least a few more years and possibly for the forseeable future. There was (and continues to be) enough support in the nine remaining SSRs for it to keep on trucking.

The 1990s would probably be tough, but not quite as tough as a total collapse was.
Would oligarchs still loot throughout the Soviet Union during the transition to capitalism in this TL?
 
In your honest opinion, would the Soviet Union have survived if it wasn't for the August 1991 coup attempt?

If your PoD is the coup itself, then no, not even in name, and certainly not as any sort of real, cohesive central state. The New Union Treaty, which was due to be signed the day after the coup took place, would have changed the state's name to the Union of Sovereign States, and effectively stripped the central government of almost all powers. Such absurdities as the Republics pursuing their own foreign policy independent of the Kremlin were already a reality before the coup. I suspect the USS would have quickly dissolved into the same sort irrelevance as the Commonwealth of Independent States 'enjoys' today.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
If your PoD is the coup itself, then no, not even in name, and certainly not as any sort of real, cohesive central state. The New Union Treaty, which was due to be signed the day after the coup took place, would have changed the state's name to the Union of Sovereign States, and effectively stripped the central government of almost all powers. Such absurdities as the Republics pursuing their own foreign policy independent of the Kremlin were already a reality before the coup. I suspect the USS would have quickly dissolved into the same sort irrelevance as the Commonwealth of Independent States 'enjoys' today.
Do you have a source that the SSRs were already seeking to have their own foreign policies before the August 1991 coup attempt?
 
Do you have a source that the SSRs were already seeking to have their own foreign policies before the August 1991 coup attempt?

I came across it in a book that I don't have in front of me right now, but probably either Moscow, December 25 1991 or The Last Empire. A quick Google search turned up this:

The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) of the Soviet Union began developing a separate foreign policy and diplomacy some time before the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991. The Russian Republic had possessed a foreign ministry and the "right" to conduct foreign policy since the 1936 Soviet constitution was amended in 1944. This power remained undeveloped, however, until the election of Boris N. Yeltsin as president of Russia and Russia's declaration of sovereignty in June 1990. Among the foreign policy institutions and procedures that emerged in Russia in this early period, some paralleled and others competed with those of the Soviet Union.

Similarly, the July 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine proclaimed that Ukraine had the right to set up its own army, currency and remove itself from military blocks (a pretty major foreign policy area). The Baltic States of course had all declared outright independence (not just the uniquely Soviet flavour of "sovereignty") by mid 1990.
 
In your honest opinion, would the Soviet Union have survived if it wasn't for the August 1991 coup attempt?

No. As Adam Ulam wrote in *Understanding the Cold War: A Historian's Personal Reflections,* "One must agree with the hapless [August] conspirators on one thing: there was no earthly chance that the proposed new constitution could hold the country together. It was at once vague and too specific, vague in delineating the authority of the center, but very specific in granting constituent units powers amounting to virtual independence." https://books.google.com/books?id=wgtCaPUPIlwC&pg=PA354
 
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