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Old 04-08-2018, 05:13 PM   #21
smurf
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Default Re: Making the USSR Great Again!

In the post 73 oil crisis and dollar devaluation, Carter wins a second term.

His fiscal responsibility and need to cut carbon emissions of big guzzlers is seen as sensible. Reagan is seen as a buffoon.

There is no sabre rattling of the 1980s. There is no ramp up in military spending. SALT 1 was a success and Carter honours SALT 2. Despite the Russian invasion of Afghanistan the USA keeps out. Likewise Carter keeps the USA out of the Iran Iraq war and Nicaragua.

The SALT 3 treaty is success. 1985 sees a new president G Bush.

Iran and Iraq war still grinds to a stand still. UN troops pour in to stop the violence.

Without the military competition Russia manages to stabilise its economy. A concession is made to the reunification of Germany.

As time went on the unrest is seen 1992 after the global economy crashes. Liberalising concessions are made (similar to what had happened in China).

However, the economic problems are not going away. There is a Global down turn. By 2008 the crisis the Russian economy like many economies need yet more restructuring.

The empire is coping, it had to rebrand itself as the Russian Federated States in 2011. It has dropped any pretence of any thing socialist and has opened up it's borders to traded.
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Old 04-09-2018, 05:04 AM   #22
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Could the absence of Stalin (for whatever reason) allow a less confrontational end to WW2 and therefore reduce or eliminate the arms race between WarPac and NATO? This would presumably reduce the strain on the Soviet economy - it would still not flourish without some serious changes to reality but might avoid total collapse. A little more in the way of Bread and Circuses might be all that it takes to keep the evil empire alive for another century or so.
Also, this setup might work with a bigger (if no more effective) role for the UN.
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Old 04-09-2018, 05:54 AM   #23
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Could the absence of Stalin (for whatever reason) allow a less confrontational end to WW2 and therefore reduce or eliminate the arms race between WarPac and NATO? This would presumably reduce the strain on the Soviet economy - it would still not flourish without some serious changes to reality but might avoid total collapse. A little more in the way of Bread and Circuses might be all that it takes to keep the evil empire alive for another century or so.
Also, this setup might work with a bigger (if no more effective) role for the UN.
I think the problem here was even before WW2 there was western concern over the USSR /communism*.

Just as the end of the WW1 stressed societies and the threat of communism was seen as increased, I can't help but think the same would have happened in the aftermath WW2. (Well assuming the USSR is still around or even as close to successful as it was in RL)

I'm also not sure how the end of WW2 would have ended less confrontationally, unless the Soviet don't advance as far as they did in RL. I.e is the doesn't matter who's in charge of the USSR if the red army ends up where it did in RL it ain't withdrawing.

It kind of saw the territory it had gained or had control over not only as spoils of war, but also fair price for what it had gone through and frankly what Russia had been going for in terms of foreign policy / sphere of influence for centuries.

Stalin may have been somewhat characteristically blunt about it all, but I can't really see any alternatives to him significantly aquessing to the other allie's concerns over where they ended up.



*if anything Stalin was more on the one country communism end of the spectrum than one world communism / global revolution, I think? Happy to play the usual influence games.

Last edited by Tomsdad; 04-09-2018 at 07:16 AM.
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Old 04-09-2018, 07:06 AM   #24
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Alan Bullock characterized Stalin is unusually trusting of Roosevelt, and dismayed when Roosevelt died and a more skeptical Truman administration took over.

If Roosevelt had held on a bit longer, or if he had made greater preparations for a handover of power to Truman (including greater groundwork in paving over the differences between Truman and the Soviet leadership) then perhaps US-USSR relations immediately after the Nazi collapse might have been cooler rather than hostile.

As somebody else has already mentioned, Lavrentiy Beria - for all his personal failings as a moral individual - was pro-coexistence with the West, even advocating for a more generous solution to the German problem with a reunified Germany.

In terms of historical feasibility, however, I think the USSR's biggest problem was always its economic woes. Modern Russia had always been a nation with a leadership that had failed to fully realize its economic potential, and the Communists were no exception. Perhaps the Soviets make nice (and more importantly stay nice) with Mao's communists to the southeast, and they adopt a less imperialist attitude towards Eastern European gains, allowing them the diplomatic peace of mind to focus and learn from their internal economic missteps.
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Old 04-09-2018, 07:10 AM   #25
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Could the absence of Stalin (for whatever reason) allow a less confrontational end to WW2 and therefore reduce or eliminate the arms race between WarPac and NATO? This would presumably reduce the strain on the Soviet economy - it would still not flourish without some serious changes to reality but might avoid total collapse. A little more in the way of Bread and Circuses might be all that it takes to keep the evil empire alive for another century or so.
Also, this setup might work with a bigger (if no more effective) role for the UN.
NATO was in 1949, the response was the Warsaw Pact. AFAIK the Russian economy was doing ok up until the '73 Crisis.

After WW2 all countries, agreed at Yalta and Potsdam to be placed under the Russian sphere, within Russian occupation had to pay reparations. East Germany had to pay the most.
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Old 04-09-2018, 07:24 AM   #26
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I always remember an interview I saw with some ex CIA chap (who'd been in submarines prior to joining the CIA), to paraphrase:


"The US managed to militarily outspend the USSR 2:1 relatively painlessly by committing approx 10%* of it GDP per year. Russia however had to spend 40% of its GDP to maintain even that gap, and that wasn't sustainable and any other negative effect added in would be magnified"

(he then went on to talk about how the soviets were pretty good at military espionage which helped them compensate at times)


So yeah I think the points made about either avoiding a cold war competitive spend, or somehome growing the USSR's economy by a significant amount are right.


*I think this was more a general aprox figure rather than him claiming the US had spent 10% gdp every year 1947 - 1991
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Old 04-09-2018, 07:40 AM   #27
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In terms of historical feasibility, however, I think the USSR's biggest problem was always its economic woes.
The truth is the Soviet Union was pretty successful with its international policies - it didn't lose anything to the foreign supporters of the White Russians, delayed the Nazi invasion by a critical couple years, and after World War II kept control of eastern Europe, got itself recognized as superpower, won a fair share of influence in the developing world, avoided having anybody else invade it for 5 decades, which is a substantial achievement in Russian history, and without a big external military commitment too. It did pretty well on the technological front too. It's the internal economic problems that caused most of the trouble. I think even most of the issues it had with its citizenry stem from those - sure people don't usually *love* authoritarian government, but they tolerate it OK if it if it keeps the barbarians out and the economy running, especially if it seems fairly evenhanded about the repression.
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Old 04-09-2018, 09:31 AM   #28
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I think the problem here was even before WW2 there was western concern over the USSR /communism*.

Just as the end of the WW1 stressed societies and the threat of communism was seen as increased, I can't help but think the same would have happened in the aftermath WW2. (Well assuming the USSR is still around or even as close to successful as it was in RL)

I'm also not sure how the end of WW2 would have ended less confrontationally, unless the Soviet don't advance as far as they did in RL. I.e is the doesn't matter who's in charge of the USSR if the red army ends up where it did in RL it ain't withdrawing.

It kind of saw the territory it had gained or had control over not only as spoils of war, but also fair price for what it had gone through and frankly what Russia had been going for in terms of foreign policy / sphere of influence for centuries.
The problem being, as I understand it, that Stalin was also fond of very blatant force-politics in those areas of shared control and did so in ways that thoroughly alienated the Western Allies, making it clear that the USSR desired confrontation and would be happy to enslave the whole of Europe. This quite quickly set the tone for East/West relations - already somewhat soured by the Soviet "spoils of war" mentality clashing with the Allied "liberationist" one. From this came the arms race, the Cold War and the mess of proxy wars that characterised the rest of the twentieth century.
Perhaps a less confrontational (or even just more subtle) soviet dictator might have lead to a less aggressive confrontation - even a man less prone to murder his subordinates might have found himself better counselled - although it's likely that the whole Eastern Bloc wouldn't have become or stayed communist without the threat - and occasional application - of violence.

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Alan Bullock characterized Stalin is unusually trusting of Roosevelt, and dismayed when Roosevelt died and a more skeptical Truman administration took over.

If Roosevelt had held on a bit longer, or if he had made greater preparations for a handover of power to Truman (including greater groundwork in paving over the differences between Truman and the Soviet leadership) then perhaps US-USSR relations immediately after the Nazi collapse might have been cooler rather than hostile.
I was under the impression that Roosevelt was unduly trusting of Stalin and gave him enough leeway that he was able to take significant advantage of his allies in the settlement - Truman was more of a correction to previous naivety than a disruption to a consensus.
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Old 04-09-2018, 10:02 AM   #29
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The problem being, as I understand it, that Stalin was also fond of very blatant force-politics in those areas of shared control and did so in ways that thoroughly alienated the Western Allies, making it clear that the USSR desired confrontation and would be happy to enslave the whole of Europe. This quite quickly set the tone for East/West relations - already somewhat soured by the Soviet "spoils of war" mentality clashing with the Allied "liberationist" one. From this came the arms race, the Cold War and the mess of proxy wars that characterised the rest of the twentieth century.
Perhaps a less confrontational (or even just more subtle) soviet dictator might have lead to a less aggressive confrontation - even a man less prone to murder his subordinates might have found himself better counselled - although it's likely that the whole Eastern Bloc wouldn't have become or stayed communist without the threat - and occasional application - of violence.

I agree Stalin wasn't politically subtle, is just I'm not sure any likely replacement would have had much of a gentler touch in the aftermath of WW2. Maybe in the language used but I'm not sure in the end goals. Pretty much anyone there was there having gone through an apocalyptic knock down, drag out war, so is probably not thinking in terms of being polite and accommodating.

On top of that is any soviet leader is going to remember that the west et al had not only tried to get rid of them in the civil war, but also were quite happy to point Hitler at them (well until Hitler and Co got out of hand). Even fresh from their victory against the Germany, there was still pretty much the attitude in the soviet high ups that the other allies had been happy to sit back a bit and let the USSR bleed out while fighting the Nazis.

I.e they remember what the west's policy towards them had been post WW1 when they were weak, they weren't likely to give up on a position of strength (or projected strength) post WW2.

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I was under the impression that Roosevelt was unduly trusting of Stalin and gave him enough leeway that he was able to take significant advantage of his allies in the settlement - Truman was more of a correction to previous naivety than a disruption to a consensus.
Yep I think that been my impression as well (and that Stalin would gladly play Roosevelt off against Churchill)
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Old 04-09-2018, 12:09 PM   #30
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Alan Bullock characterized Stalin is unusually trusting of Roosevelt, and dismayed when Roosevelt died and a more skeptical Truman administration took over.

If Roosevelt had held on a bit longer, or if he had made greater preparations for a handover of power to Truman (including greater groundwork in paving over the differences between Truman and the Soviet leadership) then perhaps US-USSR relations immediately after the Nazi collapse might have been cooler rather than hostile.
The problem with that is that Roosevelt had lost trust in Stalin by the end. If anyone was trusting of the other, at first, it was FDR of Stalin, but before his death he sent a note to Stillwell, IIRC, observing that Stalin had already broken every pledge he'd made at Yalta.

It's actually very hard to see WWII ending in a way where the USSR and USA don't almost immediately become foes.
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