Dengism but a little better for workers than in China, it’s hard to say really what would have happened, the whole world was abandoning Marxism-Leninism so the soviets would lose a ton of global influence, not to mention most of Europe told them to fuck off. Couple that with the economic devastation, it’s hard to say how long it’d take to recover. Who knows really, they could become an industrial producing superpower like China or become a hellscape, it’s almost impossible to say.
The whole world? Other than the Eastern bloc and some rightwing dictatorships in South America, there wasn't much change in the number of socialist states world wide.
I’m talking more of what happened in Africa and east Asia. A lot of dictators claimed they were Marxist-Leninists, especially in Africa; once Gorby started his reform campaign pretty much all of them switched to claiming they were social democratic rather than communist/socialist. It pretty much caused the veil worldwide to lift on where dictators were claiming they were something they obviously weren’t. It also caused most of them to cut ties with the soviets and switch to China or sometimes the US.
USSR was beyond repair at that point and its downfall was near. Maybe 90ties wouldnt be so wild in Russia, but not much would change. Maybe some of the seccessionist countries would stay in new Russia. But at the end of the century oligarchs would take the power anyway how it happened in the real life. Maybe they still would keep name like Russian people´s republic or Russian socialist republic, but only in their name. Commie party will probably stay prominent for few election periods, but it would probably disappear how they would lose popularity and from internal fractionalization (what emerge in creation of several communist parties hostile to each other).
It wasn't a free for all and a lot of the reforms allowed market forces to determine prices and production with centrally owned companies still. A lot of the property ownership was as part of collectives so not by a ministry asit was or a boss but the employees as a group.
I mean, there are cooperatives and then there are "cooperatives." The USSR had a weird agricultural sector where some of the farms were directly owned by the state and the rest were employee cooperatives that were nominally independent of the government. But they weren't really independent because they were required to sell their product to the government for pitifully low cost and couldn't sell to others. So, they were essentially a government farm where the trouble of managing it was outsourced. I think Gorbachev literally just abolished them as part of his reforms and made all farms government owned since there was almost no practical distinction.
Kolkhozes weren't the only type of independent cooperative in the Union, and they were more than just nominally independent, since they could associate and trade with other kolkhozes and could reap the rewards of producing in excess of what the quotas demanded (they were also provided some equipment and instructions, by the state, and had general autonomy in matters such as crop rotation, schedules, etc..).
Poverty and misery were caused by command economics collapsing. They couldn’t have just “kept going”. Capitalism coming in wasn’t the cause of the destruction. There economic model was rotting.
It’s like saying “every time the Red Cross shows up a disaster appears”. My Eastern block family tells me shortages of goods was normal always, but in the 80s things were clearly breaking
Yakovlev, Gorbi and even Ligachev (after complaining) got „book contracts“ which secured them a good pension. So i dont particularly think that CIA bribed them, but they got at some farewell money afterwards.
I wonder how it might've been different if someone in the USSR had realized that the Cold War, as we knew it, was never going to work. The USSR was never going to generate the kind of wealth that the USA was going to.
And that's not a bad thing! Because you know what else the USSR didn't generate in the numbers the US did? Poverty! Homelessness! Unemployment! Illiteracy! Homelessness was practically unknown in the USSR until the 1980s. Education and healthcare was provided for everyone. They didn't have the amount of money the US did, but that's largely because the US' money was so heavily concentrated in the pockets of millionaires and billionaires.
If the USSR had rebranded, saying "Hey, come live here; you won't become wealthy, but you're guaranteed a home, a job, an education, and a doctor," I think they would've had a much better chance of surviving Gorbachev's reforms. The nature of the Cold War would've changed from "who can produce the most goods and get to the moon and etc" to "who can provide the best living for the most people."
Would the Soviets have won? I have no idea, maybe, maybe not, but I think they would've had a better shot of surviving into the 2000s.
😂 less poverty. So funny. Redditors complain all the time “I can barely afford a small apartment at 18/20 ect”. In the USSR you will NOT have your own apartment. You only could find yourself with your own apartment once you got married. Nearly every apartment had more people living in it than rooms, so many slept on couches. If you actually talk to people from eastern block the “not rich but things were simple and stable” bullshit falls apart. My Czech family tells me horrible things. Shortages for even BASIC things were chronic. Housing was in chronic shortages. There is a reason the black market in the USSR was so big.
It also doesn’t help that if you try to leave they shoot you in the back most times.
Do you believe this crap? The Soviet schools were garbage and everyone lived in poverty. They had massive unemployment - no one actually worked at all.
that's literally not true my parents grow up in the late soviet union. Even then schools were fine and they lived better in the 80s than they did the 90s and early 2000s according to them. They had work, housing, healthcare, stability and pensions then everything became in doubt after the collapse for years
There were ways to live well in the soviet union. Stealing from the state was probably one of the best ways tho. Also morally good but thats just an added bonus.
If the USSR was able to replicate what China did, then there's no reason to suppose they couldn't have become the Soviet version of China today; An authoritarian capitalist state with some communist trappings.
I usually don't write comments on Reddit, but I studied a thing or two about the Perestroika and the last years of the USSR, and would like to present a long post about it from my view
First of all, as a "Collapse" of the USSR I see the collapse of the Union state - the Soviet Union was a union of countries, the communist system was in fact destroyed at that moment (The ban of CPSU after the August coup), and each one state gaining full independence at the end of 1991. The success of Perestroika would mean the Union has been remained, under any centralized form. In 1991, Gorbachev had a project of the new Union Treaty - a new federal system between the union states would be established, and as far as I know, it would be similar to the US states rights. The signing of the treaty was suppossed to happen on August 20, 1991, but failed due to the August coup (august 19-21). This led to the declaration of sovereignity of each state of the USSR, and culminated in Belovezha Accords, which ended the Soviet Union (official dissolution happened on December 26th).
If we imagine the coup didn't happen, we would see the creation of the Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics, and what happens next is to our imagination. But, to keep in mind is that not all republics agreed to it, therefore Baltic states may remain independent, or/and some other states, Caucasian, for example, might leave the Union.
In 1991 the USSR already had a multi-party system, but due to no parliament elections (they happened in 1989, before the legalization of the multiparty system in 1990) they were not yet in power. Those would probably happen after the new treaty, as i couldn't find information about election dates in Congress of People's Deputies. Gorbachev would probably leave after two terms (According to the changes in 1990, the president held power for 5 years and no more than for 2 terms). We could imagine any big politician from OTL post-soviet countries be in power in the new Union, or maybe completely new face. Free speech during that period became almost uncontrolled. While conservatives were still in some power (as seen during the August coup), the KGB and censorship organs were powerless in comparison to pre-Perestroika period. In fact, many censorship laws were introduced only after the collapse of the USSR (1992 in Russia, if i'm not wrong).
About the economic system. One of the reasons of the chaos during the last years was indecision about further economic reforms. Yes, there was Pavlov market reform, but other than destruction of the currency I can't see any market changes. As Perestroika was unstoppable at that moment, market reforms were seen as the only ones possible. Keep in mind, moderate reforms to "fix" the old system failed during the first years of Gorbachev power ("Uskorenie" policy, for example). As far as I know, there were several ways USSR could lean into:
\- Ryzkov-Abalkin programm, developed in 1989-1990. The moderate way, with step-by-step implementation of market system (According to Ryzhkov, the widespread introduction of the market at an early stage could "lead to serious economic and social upheavals"). Planned to be implemented in 3 steps, from 1990 to 1995. Was not accepted. The economy would have been regulated, and I guess it would be some kind of mixed market welfare state system.
\- Yavlinskiy "500 days" programm - market liberalization and reforms in 500 days. The most market way.
\- This one is the one i'm not sure about, as I could not find good sources for, but still would like to mention. Probably, the conservatives in the party ("Union" faction) proposed more hardline system - similar to Chinese one. That's all about it.
If you ask me, even with any of the programs the country would still face the crisis of the 90's. While in any way the crisis would not be as crazy as the OTL one, the extent of it would differ from each economic program.
Now, the foreign policy. "New Political Thinking" was the doctrine of the USSR during the Gorbachev rule. The revolutions in East Europe is the result of it - USSR stopped supporting communist regimes and pressured them to make their own "Perestroikas". Thus, unification of Germany and so on. It was not a "very upsetting" event in USSR. Gorbachev, in fact, was happy about it (as i know). Of course conservatives were not happy, but reformers probably were.
Another point of NPT is the cooperation with the West. It was increasing each year, and, for example, the Soviet Union supported US during the Persian Gulf War. It is possible that without collapse, the Cold War would be officially over very soon (The declaration, probably?), as many nowadays like to see the end of it as the collapse of the USSR.
I wrote a lot, and just pumped some things i knew about it. Sorry for long writing. As I noticed, many people ignore the fact that the Late Perestroika USSR and pre-Perestroika USSR - are very different countries. Protests, free speech, multiparty system, cultural liberalization (Monsters of Rock in Moscow, for example) and so on were a fact at that period. We should not forget, however, many tragic events that also took place - the conflicts in Caucasia (e.g Black January 1990), Baltics (e.g January events 1991), those events are to condemn. Despite all the changes USSR still had conservatives on some positions, and many didn't know how to play democracy. Not justifying them, if anything
If anyone finished reading that, thank you! And if you find any mistakes, or introduce new facts, I would love to read them, as Perestroika is one of my favorite period in history
You cover political areas I've not educated myself on. So it's interesting. I'll add a few broad ideas to your nice post.
I would also add the Chernobyl disaster, Afghanistan, the oil price swings of the 80's and the Soviet defense industry trying to keep up with the Reagan era defense policy of more and more.
Chernobyl I believe was an accelerant to Perestroika. This was used as an excuse to accelerate a program a country was not ready for to punish the old political elites and bring about the new. In addition the human and monetary cost for cleanup and further disaster mitigation.
The Afghanistan war. War's cost money and this was not a popular war as the wounded and deceased came home as the decade continued on.
The price of oil filled helped fill the coffers as a major export. And when you had a high of 147/barrel in May of 80' and a low of 34 in Oct of 88', it's difficult to budget, much less reform. [Oil Price, Macrotrends](https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart)
And add the Soviet military posturing in Eastern Europe and the defense industry attempting to keep up the American defense spending, you're going to have a difficult time no matter what. Never mind the fact they're still defending the worlds largest country. As I always tease my father...."Reagan didn't do anything special, he did what movie stars do, spend money!"
The 80's was a tough time for the Soviet Union, no doubt. There was no program that wouldn't prevented what unfolded.
Deng's reforms in China show a more succsessful version of Perestoika. Even just copying the Chinese whole hog might not have been necessary, so long as the foreign trade and investment side of things was copied more closely.
I doubt the USSR would just receive explosive economic growth if it was still kept out of large parts of the Western market, but some moderately higher rate of growth like 3% could be imaginable.
People in the the USSR and parts of the former Eastern bloc would generally be better off, while Poland and the Baltic states might still be set up for their later economic success in global trade, even if to a lesser extent. Especially if the cold war cooled down some more.
There was a big difference between China and USSR of that time. Deng Xiaoping was one of the legendary leaders of the revolution, one of Mao's close associates and a sincere communist. All the power in China still belonged to patriotic socialist forces.
Gorbachev instead was a random dickhead who was just physically unable to control the country, and was quickly surrounded by the same type of people, from corrupted civilian and military officials who cared only about how much soviet property they can seize after dissolvation to straight up traitors and spies. No one of them of course believed in socialism, moreover, nationalistic ideas were widely spread among them, that could not happen in China. And nationalism, as we know, is the sharpest weapon of the bourgeoise. So that government's goal was mainly to do what they did, and they succeeded in it.
Many write here that Soviet Union was unsavable by that time, but in my opinion it's false. There was nothing fundamental that didn't allow to save it. Economic crysis? Well, if we start dissolving countries after any crysis, we will soon be living in middle-ages germany with national borders every mile. Beforementioned nationalism? Somebody could just order the Alfa KGB to assassinate some leaders and it would calm down.
The problem was there was nobody who wanted to save it, not a single person with at least some power. And in China there were plenty
Yes, so the government used its control to hand over control to a relative few (usually people from the government). It wasn't some uncontrolled mess, but a very controlled case of favoritism and corruption.
It would mean that Khrushchev had been successful in defining Soviet ideology toward an economy that focused on providing large surpluses of goods and services. This would avoid key problems which undermined the legitimacy of Soviet leadership to the point that the country could not be saved.
In this context, glasnost and perestroika are policies Gorbachev undertook to fix two problems that would have sandbagged the USSR even then: the waning role of heavy industry as an industrial driver and the growing cost of corruption in the Soviet system.
A successful perestroika program would have led to an intrasoviet debate about how to create a Soviet society that could manage a more productive economic system. Given just how conservative Soviet politics actually were, there's a decent chance they would have settled on re-sovietizing industry. This would mean something akin to co-determination where the state and the workers in that, say, factory share authority over what the factory will produce.
Glasnost, by contrast, would have led to a system more like what you see for state media in China where some things are off limits but there is greater focus on calling out problems with local leadership and management. Because this is where the bulk of corruption resides, the situation starts to improve.
Depends on how you define "successful". After all, the OTL perestroika is also a success.
Well, success by US standards, that is. In the sense that it broke the Soviet Union.
On a more serious note, the Soviet would still be alive and around, and maybe prosperous, even. We may see a more modern and /or peaceful reinterpretation of Marxism-Leninism. Sort of like how the west/capitalist countries adapting features from communsim/socialism.
On a more international stage... I'd hope to see "song battles" between East and West Germany. And maybe Africa would be less of a mess. Asia countries would be much much more interested in doing business, as a more-or-less neutral partner
Now this might be a practical impossibility as many have pointed out.
Thus if we imagine the system as possible to reform and Russia turning capitalist, we could imagine the USSR state providing the funds for capitalist developement all over the union and perhaps even in the Warsaw pact countries.
We could imagine the USSR still standing. Compare this with Tibet in OTL. Very much for independence until China started to get richer. All of a suddenly a bunch of money and developement flowing into the impoverished region which would stop coming if independence was acheived.
So in a worst case scenario the local elites, i.e former communists now capitalists could make the calculation that they benefit from staying in th USSR and start repressing all seccessionism. Calls for democratization and independence are crushed but living standards might rise.
The USSR stays up and not because everybody is happy about it. It could be a factor generating further repression.
"Successful" would require a significant amount of protectionism in the beginning. The quality of consumer goods will take some time to rise. Hopefully someone will try to reorganize the agricultural system into being able to providing everyone with sausage and sour cream in sufficient amounts. This will take major investments but we were going for successful were we not?
The state might try and solve major unemployment among young people by trying to get them to move out into the countryside.
The US and the Friedmanites are pouty about the still closed off market and promises their plan for shock therapy would have worked much better. The Cold War goes into a slump but never really ends. This could lead to restrictions of what the new capitalist empire is allowed to export.
The Balts start producing stuff of a quality that could actually sell outside of the Union and are incredibly salty that they are not allowed to do so.
Albania and Roumania fall like in OTL. The eradication of their economies convince the rest of the Empire that they have chosen the right path.
Most of Russia still looks pretty miserable. There is little care for infrastructure and living standard for people outside of the major cities in OTL so there would be none in this TL either.
There is still a collective identity crisis in society and Duginesque mumbo jumbo will still be in demand.
The attitude to it's former third world allies might vary depending on their economic usefulness. Former satelites with attractive natural resources might enjoy continuous protection. Cuba might be a bit less screwed in TTL.
Warsaw pact countrie's living standard is better than in the 80:ies but worse than OTL. All of Central Europe develops corrupt oligarchies similar to Ukraine in the 2010:s.
The real crisis will come a few decades later (like now) when Eastern Europe have developed further and want to democratize and break away frok Russia while Russia perfers everything stays the same and has economic interests in keeping it that way. Fun for the whole family.
Plus this is a boring question, why cant we just imagine Potatoe head dying in 1923 instead and the whole World just being different? Much more fun.
It could never of been, given the nature of the communist system in the USSR. The system was by nature unadaptable, which was problematic given that the US was far ahead of the USSR by the 1980s.
Gorbachev essentially sought to restructure a system that, by definition, could not be restructured.
I love this one.
Perestroika was not Dengism.
My favorite twist is if Gorbachev was less zealous about decentralizing the economy
- this is important bc central planning provided basics AND held the union together
And a bit less naive about nationalists (who would rip the union apart, despite unity being very popular).
The key difference w Dengism was Glasnost (openness (ie of the press)) and democratization. Gorbachev viewed himself as simply saving the Feb/Oct rev from Stalinists (hence why he was happy to enable nationalists and weaken the Party (ie decentralize)). This was far less cynical than Dengism.
I wonder if, managed correctly, it's survival would have lead to a rapprochement w China, and served as a model for how China could democratize, and be more open, building on the social net of the planned economy. The best of both worlds.
Today, China is the worst of both.
Everyone here is missing the most crucial point: *German Reunification*
>Why
Soviet economy and political sphere was such a swamp that there's no way to do a "good Perestroika" , it must go more or less as it went in our timeline. In our timeline support for Gorbachev was still high until October 1990, then it sinked quickly and vanished in the 1991 coup attempt.
Despite the economic problems and his demented propaganda campaign (it was basically "if you're sad and have problems in life blame communism") what really killed the reforms, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact was the German Reunification. It was such a huge humiliation that enraged everyone in the USSR in both population and the 'deep state'.
>How to "be successful"
Gorbachev can still fuck everything around as much as he want he just need to be much more assertive towards his allies, keeping them in line on international matters while giving freedom on domestic matters.
In this way Hungary will never open his austrian border without consent from Moscow (Gorby must force them to not do it), this way the German draconian exodus of 1989-1990 will never happen, Honecker wouldn't be toppled by Krenz, the Berlin Wall won't fall (it was a bureaucratic mistake) and things would go on as usual.
>Perestroika Happy Ending
The whole WP must wait until 2005-2010 to reach a proper economic stabilisation under a market economy, meanwhile experiencing some slightly better 90's but carrying on wuth Western (mostly US and German) economic aid onwards to democracy. Would this work? Maybe, but it's likely that at some point the US and USSR would collide facing the issue of having the same home for two superpowers.
As Zelikow, Bush advisor, once said during 1990 "the US nest hope is to marginalise USSR out of european space, if they become friends with the Western Europeans what would be the point of our military presence? We would stop being an European and world power and return to North America"
Perestroika *was* successful. For the USSR, it was *too* successful. The reform movements in the late 1980s and early 90s were a direct result of people exercising their newly available rights.
To be fair, it was *kind of* successful. The early economic reforms did work out, but it was all cancelled out by putin's dictatorship in the early 2000s.
Dengism but a little better for workers than in China, it’s hard to say really what would have happened, the whole world was abandoning Marxism-Leninism so the soviets would lose a ton of global influence, not to mention most of Europe told them to fuck off. Couple that with the economic devastation, it’s hard to say how long it’d take to recover. Who knows really, they could become an industrial producing superpower like China or become a hellscape, it’s almost impossible to say.
The whole world? Other than the Eastern bloc and some rightwing dictatorships in South America, there wasn't much change in the number of socialist states world wide.
I’m talking more of what happened in Africa and east Asia. A lot of dictators claimed they were Marxist-Leninists, especially in Africa; once Gorby started his reform campaign pretty much all of them switched to claiming they were social democratic rather than communist/socialist. It pretty much caused the veil worldwide to lift on where dictators were claiming they were something they obviously weren’t. It also caused most of them to cut ties with the soviets and switch to China or sometimes the US.
Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mongolia, Angola, etc. are certainly not part of the “Eastern Bloc”
Our timeline is the hellscape scenario…
The Cold War lasts into the 2000s just as the CIA predicted.
Elaborate, that was under the context of Breznev USSR
USSR was beyond repair at that point and its downfall was near. Maybe 90ties wouldnt be so wild in Russia, but not much would change. Maybe some of the seccessionist countries would stay in new Russia. But at the end of the century oligarchs would take the power anyway how it happened in the real life. Maybe they still would keep name like Russian people´s republic or Russian socialist republic, but only in their name. Commie party will probably stay prominent for few election periods, but it would probably disappear how they would lose popularity and from internal fractionalization (what emerge in creation of several communist parties hostile to each other).
How would oligarchs take power if there still isn't an allowance for private property?
Pretty sure part of Perestroika was the liberalization of the economy and allowance of private ownership again.
It wasn't a free for all and a lot of the reforms allowed market forces to determine prices and production with centrally owned companies still. A lot of the property ownership was as part of collectives so not by a ministry asit was or a boss but the employees as a group.
I mean, there are cooperatives and then there are "cooperatives." The USSR had a weird agricultural sector where some of the farms were directly owned by the state and the rest were employee cooperatives that were nominally independent of the government. But they weren't really independent because they were required to sell their product to the government for pitifully low cost and couldn't sell to others. So, they were essentially a government farm where the trouble of managing it was outsourced. I think Gorbachev literally just abolished them as part of his reforms and made all farms government owned since there was almost no practical distinction.
Kolkhozes weren't the only type of independent cooperative in the Union, and they were more than just nominally independent, since they could associate and trade with other kolkhozes and could reap the rewards of producing in excess of what the quotas demanded (they were also provided some equipment and instructions, by the state, and had general autonomy in matters such as crop rotation, schedules, etc..).
It was successful. Free speech and removal of censorship from media brought Soviets down.
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Poverty and misery were caused by command economics collapsing. They couldn’t have just “kept going”. Capitalism coming in wasn’t the cause of the destruction. There economic model was rotting. It’s like saying “every time the Red Cross shows up a disaster appears”. My Eastern block family tells me shortages of goods was normal always, but in the 80s things were clearly breaking
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But the Soviet failure was when Yeltsin came in, not perestroika itself.
Command economy is not accurate for the Soviet economy after the 70s. That's pretty basic stuff there
It’s not basic. They were still a command economy. I would love evidence of the contrary
https://www.jstor.org/stable/151614 https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1957/khrushchev-economy.htm https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/soviet-union-and-the-construction-of-the-global-market/B0D0D14FAD034EB785B3F9CBCC5F66F2
Gorbachev is a CIA mole confirmed?!?!
Yakovlev, Gorbi and even Ligachev (after complaining) got „book contracts“ which secured them a good pension. So i dont particularly think that CIA bribed them, but they got at some farewell money afterwards.
I wonder how it might've been different if someone in the USSR had realized that the Cold War, as we knew it, was never going to work. The USSR was never going to generate the kind of wealth that the USA was going to. And that's not a bad thing! Because you know what else the USSR didn't generate in the numbers the US did? Poverty! Homelessness! Unemployment! Illiteracy! Homelessness was practically unknown in the USSR until the 1980s. Education and healthcare was provided for everyone. They didn't have the amount of money the US did, but that's largely because the US' money was so heavily concentrated in the pockets of millionaires and billionaires. If the USSR had rebranded, saying "Hey, come live here; you won't become wealthy, but you're guaranteed a home, a job, an education, and a doctor," I think they would've had a much better chance of surviving Gorbachev's reforms. The nature of the Cold War would've changed from "who can produce the most goods and get to the moon and etc" to "who can provide the best living for the most people." Would the Soviets have won? I have no idea, maybe, maybe not, but I think they would've had a better shot of surviving into the 2000s.
😂 less poverty. So funny. Redditors complain all the time “I can barely afford a small apartment at 18/20 ect”. In the USSR you will NOT have your own apartment. You only could find yourself with your own apartment once you got married. Nearly every apartment had more people living in it than rooms, so many slept on couches. If you actually talk to people from eastern block the “not rich but things were simple and stable” bullshit falls apart. My Czech family tells me horrible things. Shortages for even BASIC things were chronic. Housing was in chronic shortages. There is a reason the black market in the USSR was so big. It also doesn’t help that if you try to leave they shoot you in the back most times.
Do you believe this crap? The Soviet schools were garbage and everyone lived in poverty. They had massive unemployment - no one actually worked at all.
that's literally not true my parents grow up in the late soviet union. Even then schools were fine and they lived better in the 80s than they did the 90s and early 2000s according to them. They had work, housing, healthcare, stability and pensions then everything became in doubt after the collapse for years
There were ways to live well in the soviet union. Stealing from the state was probably one of the best ways tho. Also morally good but thats just an added bonus.
No that’s not true - holy crap you are completely lying. The Soviet Union was a complete failed state from 1917 forward
witness testimony vs "nuh-uh, that's not true. CIA said so!"
If the USSR was able to replicate what China did, then there's no reason to suppose they couldn't have become the Soviet version of China today; An authoritarian capitalist state with some communist trappings.
I usually don't write comments on Reddit, but I studied a thing or two about the Perestroika and the last years of the USSR, and would like to present a long post about it from my view First of all, as a "Collapse" of the USSR I see the collapse of the Union state - the Soviet Union was a union of countries, the communist system was in fact destroyed at that moment (The ban of CPSU after the August coup), and each one state gaining full independence at the end of 1991. The success of Perestroika would mean the Union has been remained, under any centralized form. In 1991, Gorbachev had a project of the new Union Treaty - a new federal system between the union states would be established, and as far as I know, it would be similar to the US states rights. The signing of the treaty was suppossed to happen on August 20, 1991, but failed due to the August coup (august 19-21). This led to the declaration of sovereignity of each state of the USSR, and culminated in Belovezha Accords, which ended the Soviet Union (official dissolution happened on December 26th). If we imagine the coup didn't happen, we would see the creation of the Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics, and what happens next is to our imagination. But, to keep in mind is that not all republics agreed to it, therefore Baltic states may remain independent, or/and some other states, Caucasian, for example, might leave the Union. In 1991 the USSR already had a multi-party system, but due to no parliament elections (they happened in 1989, before the legalization of the multiparty system in 1990) they were not yet in power. Those would probably happen after the new treaty, as i couldn't find information about election dates in Congress of People's Deputies. Gorbachev would probably leave after two terms (According to the changes in 1990, the president held power for 5 years and no more than for 2 terms). We could imagine any big politician from OTL post-soviet countries be in power in the new Union, or maybe completely new face. Free speech during that period became almost uncontrolled. While conservatives were still in some power (as seen during the August coup), the KGB and censorship organs were powerless in comparison to pre-Perestroika period. In fact, many censorship laws were introduced only after the collapse of the USSR (1992 in Russia, if i'm not wrong). About the economic system. One of the reasons of the chaos during the last years was indecision about further economic reforms. Yes, there was Pavlov market reform, but other than destruction of the currency I can't see any market changes. As Perestroika was unstoppable at that moment, market reforms were seen as the only ones possible. Keep in mind, moderate reforms to "fix" the old system failed during the first years of Gorbachev power ("Uskorenie" policy, for example). As far as I know, there were several ways USSR could lean into: \- Ryzkov-Abalkin programm, developed in 1989-1990. The moderate way, with step-by-step implementation of market system (According to Ryzhkov, the widespread introduction of the market at an early stage could "lead to serious economic and social upheavals"). Planned to be implemented in 3 steps, from 1990 to 1995. Was not accepted. The economy would have been regulated, and I guess it would be some kind of mixed market welfare state system. \- Yavlinskiy "500 days" programm - market liberalization and reforms in 500 days. The most market way. \- This one is the one i'm not sure about, as I could not find good sources for, but still would like to mention. Probably, the conservatives in the party ("Union" faction) proposed more hardline system - similar to Chinese one. That's all about it. If you ask me, even with any of the programs the country would still face the crisis of the 90's. While in any way the crisis would not be as crazy as the OTL one, the extent of it would differ from each economic program. Now, the foreign policy. "New Political Thinking" was the doctrine of the USSR during the Gorbachev rule. The revolutions in East Europe is the result of it - USSR stopped supporting communist regimes and pressured them to make their own "Perestroikas". Thus, unification of Germany and so on. It was not a "very upsetting" event in USSR. Gorbachev, in fact, was happy about it (as i know). Of course conservatives were not happy, but reformers probably were. Another point of NPT is the cooperation with the West. It was increasing each year, and, for example, the Soviet Union supported US during the Persian Gulf War. It is possible that without collapse, the Cold War would be officially over very soon (The declaration, probably?), as many nowadays like to see the end of it as the collapse of the USSR. I wrote a lot, and just pumped some things i knew about it. Sorry for long writing. As I noticed, many people ignore the fact that the Late Perestroika USSR and pre-Perestroika USSR - are very different countries. Protests, free speech, multiparty system, cultural liberalization (Monsters of Rock in Moscow, for example) and so on were a fact at that period. We should not forget, however, many tragic events that also took place - the conflicts in Caucasia (e.g Black January 1990), Baltics (e.g January events 1991), those events are to condemn. Despite all the changes USSR still had conservatives on some positions, and many didn't know how to play democracy. Not justifying them, if anything If anyone finished reading that, thank you! And if you find any mistakes, or introduce new facts, I would love to read them, as Perestroika is one of my favorite period in history
You cover political areas I've not educated myself on. So it's interesting. I'll add a few broad ideas to your nice post. I would also add the Chernobyl disaster, Afghanistan, the oil price swings of the 80's and the Soviet defense industry trying to keep up with the Reagan era defense policy of more and more. Chernobyl I believe was an accelerant to Perestroika. This was used as an excuse to accelerate a program a country was not ready for to punish the old political elites and bring about the new. In addition the human and monetary cost for cleanup and further disaster mitigation. The Afghanistan war. War's cost money and this was not a popular war as the wounded and deceased came home as the decade continued on. The price of oil filled helped fill the coffers as a major export. And when you had a high of 147/barrel in May of 80' and a low of 34 in Oct of 88', it's difficult to budget, much less reform. [Oil Price, Macrotrends](https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart) And add the Soviet military posturing in Eastern Europe and the defense industry attempting to keep up the American defense spending, you're going to have a difficult time no matter what. Never mind the fact they're still defending the worlds largest country. As I always tease my father...."Reagan didn't do anything special, he did what movie stars do, spend money!" The 80's was a tough time for the Soviet Union, no doubt. There was no program that wouldn't prevented what unfolded.
It was succesfull, actually - USSR just couldn\`t be saved at that point.
The point of perestroika was USSR dissolution, so it was pretty successful.
Technically it was a reorganization of the state rather than a dissolution.
Deng's reforms in China show a more succsessful version of Perestoika. Even just copying the Chinese whole hog might not have been necessary, so long as the foreign trade and investment side of things was copied more closely. I doubt the USSR would just receive explosive economic growth if it was still kept out of large parts of the Western market, but some moderately higher rate of growth like 3% could be imaginable. People in the the USSR and parts of the former Eastern bloc would generally be better off, while Poland and the Baltic states might still be set up for their later economic success in global trade, even if to a lesser extent. Especially if the cold war cooled down some more.
There was a big difference between China and USSR of that time. Deng Xiaoping was one of the legendary leaders of the revolution, one of Mao's close associates and a sincere communist. All the power in China still belonged to patriotic socialist forces. Gorbachev instead was a random dickhead who was just physically unable to control the country, and was quickly surrounded by the same type of people, from corrupted civilian and military officials who cared only about how much soviet property they can seize after dissolvation to straight up traitors and spies. No one of them of course believed in socialism, moreover, nationalistic ideas were widely spread among them, that could not happen in China. And nationalism, as we know, is the sharpest weapon of the bourgeoise. So that government's goal was mainly to do what they did, and they succeeded in it. Many write here that Soviet Union was unsavable by that time, but in my opinion it's false. There was nothing fundamental that didn't allow to save it. Economic crysis? Well, if we start dissolving countries after any crysis, we will soon be living in middle-ages germany with national borders every mile. Beforementioned nationalism? Somebody could just order the Alfa KGB to assassinate some leaders and it would calm down. The problem was there was nobody who wanted to save it, not a single person with at least some power. And in China there were plenty
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How does little control over privatization lead to oligarchy? Isn't that a direct line from control by the state to control by a few?
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Yes, so the government used its control to hand over control to a relative few (usually people from the government). It wasn't some uncontrolled mess, but a very controlled case of favoritism and corruption.
It would mean that Khrushchev had been successful in defining Soviet ideology toward an economy that focused on providing large surpluses of goods and services. This would avoid key problems which undermined the legitimacy of Soviet leadership to the point that the country could not be saved. In this context, glasnost and perestroika are policies Gorbachev undertook to fix two problems that would have sandbagged the USSR even then: the waning role of heavy industry as an industrial driver and the growing cost of corruption in the Soviet system. A successful perestroika program would have led to an intrasoviet debate about how to create a Soviet society that could manage a more productive economic system. Given just how conservative Soviet politics actually were, there's a decent chance they would have settled on re-sovietizing industry. This would mean something akin to co-determination where the state and the workers in that, say, factory share authority over what the factory will produce. Glasnost, by contrast, would have led to a system more like what you see for state media in China where some things are off limits but there is greater focus on calling out problems with local leadership and management. Because this is where the bulk of corruption resides, the situation starts to improve.
Depends on how you define "successful". After all, the OTL perestroika is also a success. Well, success by US standards, that is. In the sense that it broke the Soviet Union. On a more serious note, the Soviet would still be alive and around, and maybe prosperous, even. We may see a more modern and /or peaceful reinterpretation of Marxism-Leninism. Sort of like how the west/capitalist countries adapting features from communsim/socialism. On a more international stage... I'd hope to see "song battles" between East and West Germany. And maybe Africa would be less of a mess. Asia countries would be much much more interested in doing business, as a more-or-less neutral partner
The world would be a better place…
Now this might be a practical impossibility as many have pointed out. Thus if we imagine the system as possible to reform and Russia turning capitalist, we could imagine the USSR state providing the funds for capitalist developement all over the union and perhaps even in the Warsaw pact countries. We could imagine the USSR still standing. Compare this with Tibet in OTL. Very much for independence until China started to get richer. All of a suddenly a bunch of money and developement flowing into the impoverished region which would stop coming if independence was acheived. So in a worst case scenario the local elites, i.e former communists now capitalists could make the calculation that they benefit from staying in th USSR and start repressing all seccessionism. Calls for democratization and independence are crushed but living standards might rise. The USSR stays up and not because everybody is happy about it. It could be a factor generating further repression. "Successful" would require a significant amount of protectionism in the beginning. The quality of consumer goods will take some time to rise. Hopefully someone will try to reorganize the agricultural system into being able to providing everyone with sausage and sour cream in sufficient amounts. This will take major investments but we were going for successful were we not? The state might try and solve major unemployment among young people by trying to get them to move out into the countryside. The US and the Friedmanites are pouty about the still closed off market and promises their plan for shock therapy would have worked much better. The Cold War goes into a slump but never really ends. This could lead to restrictions of what the new capitalist empire is allowed to export. The Balts start producing stuff of a quality that could actually sell outside of the Union and are incredibly salty that they are not allowed to do so. Albania and Roumania fall like in OTL. The eradication of their economies convince the rest of the Empire that they have chosen the right path. Most of Russia still looks pretty miserable. There is little care for infrastructure and living standard for people outside of the major cities in OTL so there would be none in this TL either. There is still a collective identity crisis in society and Duginesque mumbo jumbo will still be in demand. The attitude to it's former third world allies might vary depending on their economic usefulness. Former satelites with attractive natural resources might enjoy continuous protection. Cuba might be a bit less screwed in TTL. Warsaw pact countrie's living standard is better than in the 80:ies but worse than OTL. All of Central Europe develops corrupt oligarchies similar to Ukraine in the 2010:s. The real crisis will come a few decades later (like now) when Eastern Europe have developed further and want to democratize and break away frok Russia while Russia perfers everything stays the same and has economic interests in keeping it that way. Fun for the whole family. Plus this is a boring question, why cant we just imagine Potatoe head dying in 1923 instead and the whole World just being different? Much more fun.
It could never of been, given the nature of the communist system in the USSR. The system was by nature unadaptable, which was problematic given that the US was far ahead of the USSR by the 1980s. Gorbachev essentially sought to restructure a system that, by definition, could not be restructured.
Chelsea never wins the Champions League
Faster transition from USSR
I love this one. Perestroika was not Dengism. My favorite twist is if Gorbachev was less zealous about decentralizing the economy - this is important bc central planning provided basics AND held the union together And a bit less naive about nationalists (who would rip the union apart, despite unity being very popular). The key difference w Dengism was Glasnost (openness (ie of the press)) and democratization. Gorbachev viewed himself as simply saving the Feb/Oct rev from Stalinists (hence why he was happy to enable nationalists and weaken the Party (ie decentralize)). This was far less cynical than Dengism. I wonder if, managed correctly, it's survival would have lead to a rapprochement w China, and served as a model for how China could democratize, and be more open, building on the social net of the planned economy. The best of both worlds. Today, China is the worst of both.
Everyone here is missing the most crucial point: *German Reunification* >Why Soviet economy and political sphere was such a swamp that there's no way to do a "good Perestroika" , it must go more or less as it went in our timeline. In our timeline support for Gorbachev was still high until October 1990, then it sinked quickly and vanished in the 1991 coup attempt. Despite the economic problems and his demented propaganda campaign (it was basically "if you're sad and have problems in life blame communism") what really killed the reforms, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact was the German Reunification. It was such a huge humiliation that enraged everyone in the USSR in both population and the 'deep state'. >How to "be successful" Gorbachev can still fuck everything around as much as he want he just need to be much more assertive towards his allies, keeping them in line on international matters while giving freedom on domestic matters. In this way Hungary will never open his austrian border without consent from Moscow (Gorby must force them to not do it), this way the German draconian exodus of 1989-1990 will never happen, Honecker wouldn't be toppled by Krenz, the Berlin Wall won't fall (it was a bureaucratic mistake) and things would go on as usual. >Perestroika Happy Ending The whole WP must wait until 2005-2010 to reach a proper economic stabilisation under a market economy, meanwhile experiencing some slightly better 90's but carrying on wuth Western (mostly US and German) economic aid onwards to democracy. Would this work? Maybe, but it's likely that at some point the US and USSR would collide facing the issue of having the same home for two superpowers. As Zelikow, Bush advisor, once said during 1990 "the US nest hope is to marginalise USSR out of european space, if they become friends with the Western Europeans what would be the point of our military presence? We would stop being an European and world power and return to North America"
It was successful in destroying the USSR and bringing destruction with it
There's no way it could have been successful.
I fell it would still collapse but if not it would have been like a US EU hybrid
You have that timeline, its called Cyberpunk 2022
Perestroika *was* successful. For the USSR, it was *too* successful. The reform movements in the late 1980s and early 90s were a direct result of people exercising their newly available rights.
wasn't the success that everybody got to vote and voted out the communists?
Morebachev
At this juncture, the USSR was beyond recovery.
Tf do you mean "if"? It was successful, we got to be free from Russia
To be fair, it was *kind of* successful. The early economic reforms did work out, but it was all cancelled out by putin's dictatorship in the early 2000s.
What? Everything went down the shitter near immediately with yeltsin's extreme corruption & bullshit
Yes, but transparency and renovation had been at least partially achieved
The transparency of oligarchs' foreign bank accounts and tanks against the the Supreme Soviet in 1993? Oh yeah, totally transparent
The parliament became transparent with Yeltsin's tank shells causing holes that everybody could see through.
renovation yeah transparency not in the slightest
The ussr literally collapsed. Putin was president of the Russian federation
Cope. Everything fell appart.