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Old 04-13-2018, 02:50 PM   #71
smurf
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Default Re: Making the USSR Great Again!

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Originally Posted by finn View Post
Since USSR collapsed under Gorbachev, the simplest answer would be to just replace Gorbachev with someone else. Someone more powerful and ruthless. Someone who would not dabble in Perestroika or Glasnost. Someone like Putin.

USSR does not need to survive because it was nicer, more efficient, less militant, etc. It can survive by being nastier.

Since China has continued as a nasty empire under one party rule with no sign of collapse, and Putin has been ruling Russia with an iron fist for quite some time, USSR surviving by simply being nastier should not break people's suspension of disbelief.
Ruling by the stick can only exist for so long. The British Empire ruled by stick and eventually lost it all.

For me it was not the fault of an individual but crisis in the economic system. Russian capitalism was capable of doing everything that US capitalism could do but at about 3 times the price. Hence there was a competitive problem.

The idea of 100% employment that was given up in the 'west' in 60s and 70s became a reality for Russian capital in the 80s. By the 1990s many factories were privatised and threw workers out of work to make them more profitable. The EU was quick to respond with buying up industries and asset stripping.

Therefore for the Russian economy to overcome this problem of profitability it would have to follow the Chinese method of modernisation. Also it has to keep a grip on its empire otherwise the house of cards will fall. And in its history the cracks in the monolith have been plenty and deep. Similar to the British imperialist past, it does not want to let go of Northern Ireland on the principle it could disintegrate the Commonwealth and the Union. It is willing to pay for this because Northern Ireland now takes money from the UK and is not profitable.

The East and West economies sit in relationship together. They compete, they quarrel, they seek new markets etc. If you are going to change one side for an Alternative History then there must be changes on the other side to justify this new History. The alternative histories in fiction require a huge suspension of belief but then they rely on the audience not caring for any historical accuracy.
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Old 04-13-2018, 09:19 PM   #72
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Default Re: Making the USSR Great Again!

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Originally Posted by finn View Post
Since USSR collapsed under Gorbachev, the simplest answer would be to just replace Gorbachev with someone else. Someone more powerful and ruthless. Someone who would not dabble in Perestroika or Glasnost. Someone like Putin.
The problem with that, from a historical standpoint, is that Gorby didn't dabble in glasnost for fun. The USSR was reaching the breaking point by that stage, glasnost and perestroika were initially intended to preserve Communist Party control, because what they were doing had quit working.

The problem is that an authoritarian, unpopular regime is rarely more vulnerable than at the moment it begins to 'loosen'.

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Since China has continued as a nasty empire under one party rule with no sign of collapse, and Putin has been ruling Russia with an iron fist for quite some time, USSR surviving by simply being nastier should not break people's suspension of disbelief.
China loosened considerably after Tiananmen, esp. on economic matters. Compared to Mao's time, modern China is a relaxed, easy-going place (though it's a long way from a Western liberal democracy). It looks as if it might be 'tightening' currently, but they certainly didn't stay the same from 1980 to 2018.

The USSR had an economy that had more or less quit functioning by 1989. It depended, to an enormous degree, on what amounted to a tributary empire, and that too was straining. Something was going to change around that time, if not glasnost, then something else.
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Old 04-13-2018, 09:41 PM   #73
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Making the USSR Great Again!

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Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2 View Post
The problem with that, from a historical standpoint, is that Gorby didn't dabble in glasnost for fun. .
Uh-huh. Gorbachev knew how bad the problems were. He may have been a little foggy on what the causes were though.

The fall of the USSR wasn't a thing to be fixed by making one or two decisions differently. There was a need to both detox the political culture and fix the economy.
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Old 04-15-2018, 11:29 AM   #74
J. Edward Tremlett
 
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Default Re: Making the USSR Great Again!

Back in White Nights and Red Gods in Pyramid, from about (gasp!) 10 years ago, I had a bit about the infamous Dr. Grammachikoff -- an interesting historical footnote of a man who claimed to have perfected a “death ray” that could shoot down aircraft, melt tanks and scuttle warships.

In real life, he was yet another person who claimed he had a death ray but couldn't produce results. However, had it worked, I'm sure it would have been a thing. I wrote that "after a successful test at the Moscow aerodrome, Stalin became enamored of the idea, and saw to the construction of ray-equipped defense towers all along the USSR’s borders."

The fine print wound up on the cutting room floor:

Dr. Grammachikoff, sometimes derided as “The Red Ray,” remains an historical enigma. No one has any idea where he came from, where he studied, or where he got his doctorate -- even his first name has been lost to the ages. It’s almost as if he appeared out of thin air for the proving tests of his “death ray” at the aerodrome, and then vanished in early 1952, days before the handover ceremony that would be the last time Hammerer and Thresher were seen.

One fact that has only come to light in recent years: the death ray weapons stopped working the day Grammachikoff vanished. Attempts to take them apart and repair them proved useless. And upon closer scrutiny top Soviet scientists discovered that the guns’ circuits were “meaningless”: not only could they have not produced the severe, armor-melting heat they were famous for, but they shouldn’t have done anything at all!

And yet, the weapons had worked perfectly up until that point, zapping any number of errant planes, tanks and ships over the years. And yet, previous investigations into Grammachikoff’s weapons revealed cutting-edge science that, while it was above the minds of most, seemed sound enough to warrant mass production. And yet, numerous Soviet superpowers had carried portable Death Rays into battle, and they’d proven to be amongst the more reliable weapons from the Project.

Stalin’s successors weren’t in the mood to solve the mystery. They just took down the towers, kept a few examples of the guns, themselves, for study, and tossed the rest onto the junk heap, where it apparently belonged all along.


So there's a historical precedent for the Soviets having death ray emplacements, as well as smaller models to carry into battle. That may well have turned the tide for them, at least for a time. As to whether their nonsensical "workings" stopped working after the death of their inventor, well... that's showbiz. Have fun.
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