COMMUNIST AMERICA ALTERNATE HISTORY FREE

Lauded in its stirring anthem as the вЂIndestructible Union of Free RepublicsвЂ™, the USSR entered the 1980s as a superpower. Tauris, 2020) and former BBC Moscow correspondent. James Rodgers, Author of Assignment Moscow: Reporting on Russia from Lenin to Putin (I.B. вЂAimed at fixing the faults in Soviet society, GorbachevвЂ™s policies emphasised themвЂ™ No one has suggested a convincing alternative scenario. Foreigners dismiss him as an inadequate bungler. Russians call Gorbachev a traitor for failing to prevent the collapse by force. It was the fatal moment, identified by the 19th-century French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, when a decaying regime tries to reform вЂ“ and disintegrates. He was defeated by a conservative establishment, an intractable economy and an unsustainable imperial burden. He curbed the KGB, freed the press and introduced a kind of democracy. But Gorbachev believed that change was inescapable. In 1985, after three decrepit leaders died in succession, they picked Mikhail Gorbachev to run the country: young, experienced, competent and вЂ“ they wrongly thought вЂ“ orthodox. And the question is whether we can have an economic revolution without a political revolutionвЂ™. But in 1983 the Soviet Chief of Staff admitted that вЂWe will never be able to catch up with in modern arms until we have an economic revolution. Soviet scientists were the equal of any in the world, but their country was too poor to afford both guns and butter and their skills were directed towards matching the American military machine, rather than improving the peopleвЂ™s welfare. In Eastern Europe, inside the Soviet Union itself, the subject peoples were increasingly restless for freedom. But after StalinвЂ™s death in 1953 the ideology started looking threadbare, even at home. The Soviet UnionвЂ™s seductive ideology had already given it influence across the world. Victory in war took the Soviet armies to the centre of Europe, where they stayed. Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet dissident scientist, foresaw it decades before it happened.

Some think it could have lasted for many years, others that the collapse was unforeseeable. They are not going to agree quickly on why the Soviet Union collapsed when it did. People still argue about the fall of the Roman Empire. Rodric Braithwaite, British Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1988-91) and author of Armageddon and Paranoia: the Nuclear Confrontation (Profile, 2017). вЂNo one has suggested a convincing alternative scenarioвЂ™

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