Making the USSR Great Again!

[JohnLynch]

In the early 80s the Russians were researching teleportation technology. Their plan was to have the ability to send missiles anywhere in the world in a manner that would make interception technology obsolete. On 31st March 1985 the Russians had their first successful wormhole created that allowed them to send covert spies onto American soil and then retrieve them with the same wormhole technology. It took the Russian government 20 days to authorise a military strike on American soil. On the 26th April 1985 they sent 10 nuclear missiles to strike against 10 strategic American bases across the globe, including Washington DC. All of the missiles went through the wormholes, but in the days that followed not a single missile was reported as having hit their location. For 12 months the Russian scientists worked on uncovering what went wrong. Then, exactly 1 year after the initial strike, a single nuclear missile was sent through a wormhole and into the scientific research station which was located just a stone's throw from Chernobyl. The Russians would eventually claim that the Chernobyl reactor had a meltdown.

In the days that followed American troops arrived in Chernobyl through wormholes. What had happened was the Russians had successfully created wormhole technology. But instead of the wormholes opening up portals to other locations, it was opening up portals to other locations on parallel Earths. Eight parrallel earths in total were attacked in April of 1985. From 1986 onwards Russia became embroiled in a secret war against parallel earths, a war it was losing terribly against a coalition of several USAs and it's allies across many Earths. Russia itself began reaching out to other Russian states, but they were wary of allying with Russia and were instead quite happy to allow their own American state to be distracted with the inter-Earth war and give them a moment to gather their own forces.

Eventually the Russian scientists were able to put in a measure in 1990 that blocked the opening of wormholes in the Chernobyl region. But this was too late and the Soviet Union collapsed soon thereafter.

In 2014 Russia was once again invaded by a parallel Earth who had found a way to get around the block. The strike was swift, strategic and total. However it was not a parallel America that had struck Russia. No. This was a Russian Empire that had built up it's forces and spanned across 17 different Earths in the years since wormhole technology was first invented. Today the president of Russia acts as a regional governor, enacting the will of the Emperor of the Interplanetary Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. With their control over Russia secured, they are now turning their sights against the rest of the world. But instead of facing a failing military power who was lagging behind technologically speaking, they are facing an empire that has the technology of (almost) 17 Earths at their disposal. While Russia cannot devote the military force of the entire 17 Earths against this one (they have to stop insurgents from rising up on the other Earths and also work at quashing the last few remaining independent states) they can share the technological advancements and the knowledge of the state of America and the other countries from the other Earths (which while not 100% reliable, can be reliable enough to allow them to use it to their advantage).

[Daigoro]

The so-called collapse of the USSR has been one of the most successful psy-op propaganda campaigns in the history of the world.

The Cold War was an endless drain on their resources, so the way to win it was to appear that they had lost it. By pretending to disband and become democratic federations, the Politburo were able to relieve a large portion of the military threat aligned against them while continuing to maintain control of their own military assets by a covert network of loyalists.

A major part of the psy-op campaign has been shifting America's focus away from their own activities and toward fighting a War on Terror. Thus the conspiracy theories about 9-11 and such being false flag operations are true, it's just that it was the KGB who instigated them.

Soon, their 30 Year Plan will come to fruition, when a larger, stronger and completely dominant USSR reveals itself in 2021.

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

The so-called collapse of the USSR has been one of the most successful psy-op propaganda campaigns in the history of the world...

Was talking to my teenage son, and I was saying "....yadda yadda yadda fall of the Soviet Union..." and he interrupted me to say "The Soviet Union never fell. It just relocated to the vacant Nazi moon base..."
I was so proud.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip

"The Soviet Union never fell. It just relocated to the vacant Nazi moon base..."

Of course, that's we're they're running the country from. There's a hidden staircase behind Lenin's Tomb leading to the basement lunar base teleporter.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Stalin dies or is removed somehow several years before World War II. The new ruler may not be a nice guy, but he refrains from purging the officer corps so intensely, and this lets the Red Army operate somewhat more effectively.

The purge, while tragic for those affected due to methods was not actually likely that harmful to the fighting effect of the Red army beyond the immediate effect and certainly would be compensated by 1941.
The people purged were really mostly officers from an another era/way of fighting.

As a idea of the scale:
About 40 000 officers were removed, but already by may 1940 more than 11 000 had been reinstated and overall about 80% were reinstated by 1941. with rein statements continuing even after that. Compare that to the fact that the Red army was expanding at a rate of a net of 30 000 officers between 1937 and 1938, the biggest purge years and by close to 100 000 a year thereafter to the start of the war.

The since of the red army increased from about 930 000 in 1935 to about 7.1 million by April 1940.

And it should be remembered that USA also kicked a lot of their senior military leadership and many lower ranking ones before joining the second world war and is seen to have benefited from it by most historians.

What clearly was detrimental was of course the reintroduction of the political commissars that did not have military training and could counter orders.

So in the long reply to a small part because I am a bit nitpicky, I would change that part to something like "The new ruler may not be a nice guy, but he refrains from reintroducing the political commissars"

[weby]

Originally Posted by Minuteman37

Pitch me ideas for how the USSR could of avoided it's collapse and continued to exist in the present.

In the late 1970s, early 1980 they went the modern China route. Allow free markets, but continue keeping screws tight specially on minorities.

They could then still be the bad guys with expansionist policies, total oppression of the minorities, a secret police quick to arrest any dissidents and so on, but with expanded production and innovation from the private economy.

[adm]

My suggestion. Have Germany's advance in 1941 be a bit more successful and have them take Moscow. Comrade Stalin holds to his word and stays in Moscow, dying during the fighting and becomes a martyr.

Unfortunately for the Germans, they still lack the resources to fight whats left the UK and U.S.A., and given the behavior of the 1940's Germans, Russia does not stand down, remaining a major combatant. As Russia recovers and surges back into Europe they still gain most of their Iron Curtain, and they start Chinese style economic reforms post war. This gives us an economically strong and competitive USSR that is similar to what we know, with fewer of our USSR's weaknesses.

[acrosome]

There was a decent thread about avoiding a Soviet collapse on AlternateHistory.com:

https://www.alternatehistory.com/for...of-ww2.433630/

Most of them revolve around a less "evil" entity, though. My thoughts are there.

[malloyd]

I think the central problem of the Soviet Union wasn't Evil (it's certainly no worse than a lot of states we pretended were on the side of good in the Cold War) but Paranoia. Both about its neighbors and rivals (which frankly isn't historically unfounded) and probably more debilitatingly about internal dissent. I suspect that last is bound up in it's philosophical focus on "revolution" slaughtering the existing leadership as the means of social change - western politicians can see losing a political or ideological fight as a temporary setback, Soviet politicians view it as a death sentence.

Probably the simplest Soviet mythology approach to rescuing communism would be for the central government to stop feeling it had to micromanage everything and actually let some of the state wither away. Just letting the now worker owned factories and collectivized villages run themselves and implement the equalization of socialism by taxing some of the surplus (you can even tax 100% of the income of anybody over a certain threshold if you are really worried about a new class of evil capitalists) and redistributing the cash rather than trying to run the entire economy centrally might be all you need to do to save the system.

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by acrosome

There was a decent thread about avoiding a Soviet collapse on AlternateHistory.com
...
Most of them revolve around a less "evil" entity, though. My thoughts are there.

Must admit, I first went there before posting in this thread. Were some interesting ideas discussed. I liked the "bypass Brezhnev" concept...