What if Gorbachev Saved the Soviet Union

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#Gorbachev #sovietunion #coldwar
In honour of the death of Gorbachev, here is a scenario where his attempted reforms have the intended effects of somewhat revitalising the Soviet economy and political structure. He takes a more tactical approach than he did in our own timeline. In our timeline he started Glasnost and Perestrojka around the same time, meaning that while the economy was collapsing in a massive way and failing all around, Gorbachev gave the politicians, people and press the means to complain about the system and the party.

Instead in this timeline he would focus on the economic side of the Union for the first decade of his rule, while also definitively ending the Cold War. Gorbachev, in his attempts to save the Soviet Union, would try to repair relations with China, while boosting relations with Europe and America. The new Soviet economy wouldn't be fundamentally altered, still being a largely planned economy led by bureaucrats, but state owned companies would no longer be subsidised no matter what by the Soviet leadership. This would finally give motive for even the state owned companies to innovate somewhat. The weaker state owned companies simply collapsed, while the more efficient ones would expand and innovate.

Exports of oil and gas to Europe would be the fundamental of the Soviet economy, while the Soviet industry gets revitalised to take care of the domestic demand, while exporting the surplus to Europe as well, again giving the companies a profit motive beyond producing what the state demands of them.

By the end of the scenario the Soviets would still be fundamentally flawed in many ways, but they survived. They would be a mix between our timeline's Russia and China. They would be richer and freer and Russia, while being poorer and freer than China.

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