If the USSR still existed today

[Sarevok]

The collapse of the Soviet Union affected all of our lives. What if the USSR did not collapse in 1991 ? How would the world be today ?

I think the world would be a very different place if the USSR still existed.

[StimNeuro]

The collapse of the Soviet Union affected all of our lives. What if the USSR did not collapse in 1991 ? How would the world be today ?

I think the world would be a very different place if the USSR still existed.

The Soviet Union never collapsed. Remeber that Simpsons episode. "That's what we wanted you to think!"

[Gandalf]

Are you including the whole Gorbachev reign in this? Because I would think a fall would be a given thing anyway, though postponed a bit. As the opening of East Berlin, and the freedom given in Czechoslovakia would have started less fear of the Government, and people would have started massive demostrations everywhere after a while.

[Vympel]

Gorbachev got it arse backwards- change the economy, then change the political system. Damn idiot deprived the West of it's coolest foe. Now it's foes suck.

[Gandalf]

Gorbachev got it arse backwards- change the economy, then change the political system. Damn idiot deprived the West of it's coolest foe. Now it's foes suck.

Maybe we should make Australia it's new foe, think about it, we have different animals, speak funny, have silly place names, and are still under the system the Americans fought to be free of.

Fear the Australian Empire!

[Sea Skimmer]

The economy of the USSR simply could not last any longer, at least not without destroying the west. So if the USSR is still around, then the whole world will be busy rebuilding from WW3. Gorbachev's actions didn't really speed up the fall of the Soviet Union, not by more then a year or two anyway. The cards where already coming down.

[Vympel]

An interesting exercise would be to determine at what point reforms could've begun to prevent the collapse of the USSR- 1980? 1970? etc ...

[Sea Skimmer]

An interesting exercise would be to determine at what point reforms could've begun to prevent the collapse of the USSR- 1980? 1970? etc ...

THe problume was they maxed out there economy in the 60's, and when the US began its buildup in the late 70's/early 1980's there was nothing sustainabul left to draw on to counter it. The Soviet economy came close to collapse in the early 1960's and only the US shift to a convetional army that ended up fighting in Vietnam let them hold on as lng as they did.

[salm]

we wouldn´t have to feed the eastern germans with our hard earned DMs and we west germans would all live in golden palaces and would buy japan. we´d have the best soccer team on earth and our educationay system wouldn´t be crumbling.

[Stuart Mackey]

What ended the USSR when it did was Gorbachev renousing the use of force to hold it together. Had he not done this it would have collapsed in 2 or 3 years later as Skimmer has said. The USSR's economy was stuffed and had been for decades.

[Peregrin Toker]

Even if the USSR didn't fall, it would still be a colossus upon clay feet... decentralization would be more or less necessary to improve things.

[Slartibartfast]

The collapse of the Soviet Union affected all of our lives. What if the USSR did not collapse in 1991 ? How would the world be today ?

My life hasn't changed a single bit with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

EDIT: unless you count that TV hasn't been pestered with as much anti-commie jingoistic shows like... well, like most US tv shows.

[CelesKnight]

Gorbachev got it arse backwards- change the economy, then change the political system. Damn idiot deprived the West of it's coolest foe. Now it's foes suck.

Maybe we should make Australia it's new foe, think about it, we have different animals, speak funny, have silly place names, and are still under the system the Americans fought to be free of.

Fear the Australian Empire!

Austria is going to be awfully mad at you. Remeber the average America's knowledge of foreign places.

[Col. Crackpot]

Gorbachev got it arse backwards- change the economy, then change the political system. Damn idiot deprived the West of it's coolest foe. Now it's foes suck.

Maybe we should make Australia it's new foe, think about it, we have different animals, speak funny, have silly place names, and are still under the system the Americans fought to be free of.

Fear the Australian Empire!

Austria is going to be awfully mad at you. Remeber the average America's knowledge of foreign places.

Which is why i propose Australia and Austria be renamed Irwin and Schwartzanegger immediately.

[CelesKnight]

An interesting exercise would be to determine at what point reforms could've begun to prevent the collapse of the USSR- 1980? 1970? etc ...

1917?

It's hard for a casual observer like myself to seperate truth from pravda, but if even a fraction of the stories about the USSR's economic and industrial policies are true, then they were doomed from the very start. Individual farmers, factory managers, local governments, and the like weren't free to follow good practices, and there wasn't enough incentives for good work. However, even with that, if Russia had focused on domestic policies and a relativly small USSR, instead of a military might and a world-class empire, then it probably could have continued indefinently.

[Sea Skimmer]

An interesting exercise would be to determine at what point reforms could've begun to prevent the collapse of the USSR- 1980? 1970? etc ...

Earlier, the death of Stalin is the latest I can see it happening. But even that is pretty dubious because of how long it would take to undo his system. On the other hand, I have doubts that the USSR would remain the USSR without the vast amount of heavy industry built up in the first two decades of Stalin. CelesKnight may be right, theres simply no way to fix the Soviet Union, it has to be built right from the ground up. But you have to do it while still getting that crash course of industry or else WW2 destroys the country, though Germany would still lose

[Stuart Mackey]

An interesting exercise would be to determine at what point reforms could've begun to prevent the collapse of the USSR- 1980? 1970? etc ...

Earlier, the death of Stalin is the latest I can see it happening. But even that is pretty dubious because of how long it would take to undo his system. On the other hand, I have doubts that the USSR would remain the USSR without the vast amount of heavy industry built up in the first two decades of Stalin. CelesKnight may be right, theres simply no way to fix the Soviet Union, it has to be built right from the ground up. But you have to do it while still getting that crash course of industry or else WW2 destroys the country, though Germany would still lose

Indeed, How does one fix a system that is fatally flawed from the start? Lenin saw the problems inherent in the communist system and tries to reform it {I forget what that programme was called, but it led to the slaughter of the Kulacks} but stopped it when he relised that it could only leed to capitilism and the fall from power of the communists.

[His Divine Shadow]

The economy of the USSR simply could not last any longer, at least not without destroying the west. So if the USSR is still around, then the whole world will be busy rebuilding from WW3. Gorbachev's actions didn't really speed up the fall of the Soviet Union, not by more then a year or two anyway. The cards where already coming down.

I would have thought the solution as simple as not to bother with the US and their trying to stretch their muscles, Reagan almost drove the US into the ground trying to break the USSR, they should simply not have answered the challenge and focused at building their own economy, in their own pace.

[Shrykull]

Gorbachev got it arse backwards- change the economy, then change the political system. Damn idiot deprived the West of it's coolest foe. Now it's foes suck.

What ever happened to Gorby, I never saw again in any publication whatsoever, after Yeltsin took over, did he kill anyone directly or indirectly during his reign?

[Sea Skimmer]

I would have thought the solution as simple as not to bother with the US and their trying to stretch their muscles, Reagan almost drove the US into the ground trying to break the USSR, they should simply not have answered the challenge and focused at building their own economy, in their own pace.

Accepting a massive military inferiority compared to the capitalist powers would be simply unacceptable. As for Regan, he certainly did not come close to driving the US into the ground and the nation could have supported even larger expenditures. Indeed back the mid 1950's the US was for some time spending about 500 billion a year on defence, Regan only got up to about 400 billion with an economy several times larger to draw from.

[LT.Hit-Man]

[quote="His Divine Shadow
I would have thought the solution as simple as not to bother with the US and their trying to stretch their muscles, Reagan almost drove the US into the ground trying to break the USSR, they should simply not have answered the challenge and focused at building their own economy, in their own pace.[/quote]


Heres an intresting thought what if both the USSR and the US colasped due to milltry spending juring the cold war?
What would thw world be like then?

[Sea Skimmer]

Heres an intresting thought what if both the USSR and the US colasped due to milltry spending juring the cold war?
What would thw world be like then?

The US wouldn't collapse from excessive military spending without a dramatic change in government and a few other things. Plus the US doesn't have a large number of states pushing for independences as the Soviets did nor does that seem likely to occur because of economic problems.

[CelesKnight]

Heres an intresting thought what if both the USSR and the US colasped due to milltry spending juring the cold war?
What would thw world be like then?

There would be 10 million active US soldiers, underground bunkers for 200 million people, 50 aircraft carriers, and permanent bases on the moon?

I don't know what the exact figures would be, but my point is that the US econemy would allow the US to build a lot more than it did in real life before collapsing becomes probable.

[CelesKnight]

Plus the US doesn't have a large number of states pushing for independences as the Soviets did nor does that seem likely to occur because of economic problems.

Interesting observation. The Russians blaim their own collapse on their inability to assimilate conquered lands, and their lack of friends; but claim that the hard times (from miiltary spending) didn't have anythign to do with it.

Luck No 6: In 1991 the second super-state, mighty Soviet Union, self-disbanded, its leaders willing to become "little kings" in their "own regions". Some people think that the Soviet Union has crashed because of the Afghan War of 1979-1988, but there were yet harder times in
its history, however it didn't crash.

....

Inability Number One: it seems Russians are absolutely unable to assimilate other peoples (but they claim themselves to be a very advanced one; this is usually called "imperial thinking").

Examples:

1) United States annexed California from Spain in 1848,
2) Russia annexed Ukraine from Poland back in 1648.

Main population of the United States are Anglo Saxons, and of California, Spaniards. Main population of Russia is Russians and Ukrainians, a Slavic people closer to Russians than Spaniards to Anglo-Saxons.

However, during 150 years Anglo-Saxons assimilated California in such a measure than almost nobody there recalls that it was once a province of Spain. During 350 years Russia with its "imperial thinking", half-feudal and half-capitalist formation, and regard of Ukraine as "Minor Russia", "Malorossia" in Russian, made so that Ukraine left it as soon as an "opportunity" arose, i.e. when the Soviet Union self-disbanded in 1991.

....

When the United States started their operation in Iraq in 2003, they had at least two reliable allies whose contribution to the war was not symbolic: Great Britain and Poland.

Of course, take anything said there with a boulder of salt. In the lead up to GWII, Pravda seriously claimed aliens from outer space crashed in Iraq and were helping Saddam. After the war, they claimed that the US couldn't fight Russia in the same way b/c Russian technology (in lasers, "plasma weapons" etc) is "at least" 50 years ahead of the US.

[Stuart Mackey]

Of course, take anything said there with a boulder of salt. In the lead up to GWII, Pravda seriously claimed aliens from outer space crashed in Iraq and were helping Saddam. After the war, they claimed that the US couldn't fight Russia in the same way b/c Russian technology (in lasers, "plasma weapons" etc) is "at least" 50 years ahead of the US.

Wouldnt do them much good. New Zealand and Fiji have in orbit cloaked ISD's.