What do you do to stop the counterrevolutions?
I would probably tell Poland to either reenact martial law or face mobilization of Soviet troops that are already stationed in Poland to hunt down the so called “solidarity” terrorists ourselves. Meanwhile, I would tell Hungary to close the borders again under a similar threat. Obviously I would try to prevent another 1956 but those reactionaries involved in that decision must be removed from power.
Meanwhile, at home in the Soviet Union, I would put a stop to Glasnost but probably continue Perestroika by turning it towards the Chinese model.
By Gorbachev it might be too late already, I think the way to save the USSR would be never allowing kruschev to get there
The Brezhnev era was pretty okay imo. Andropov probably also would have been if he hadn’t died that quickly.
Do a Pizza-Hut commercial
Probably get assassinated by the CIA
Try to hold a new party congress and make Ligachov gensec, put future GKChP members in top positions of power, purge Yakovlev and Shevardnadze and make sure Yeltsin stays out of power. Rehabilitate Stalin and require all Politburo members to prove they understand Marxism.
By 1989 the Soviet Union is already facing existential levels of economic collapse, societal upheaval, and general unrest within other Warsaw Pact countries. It would have taken a miracle to recover the country, and that’s without the US bearing down on you.
The Soviets managed to overcome economic collapse, societal upheaval, and general unrest after the Russian Civil War. If it worked then, why not in 1989? You just need competent leadership and defeat counterrevolutionaries the same way the white movement was defeated.
Because the country still had a militant organizational structure fueled by communist fervor and Marxist dialectics. By 1989 no one cared about communism anymore and people’s knowledge of Marxism was scattered at best; all they wanted was for things to “get better”. People are going to blame the ones in power for their suffering, and there are no express “counterrevolutionaries” you can defeat and bring things back to normal, as the sentiment was ingrained in the collective mindset by 1989. You have to remember. That is the year the Berlin Wall went down, it was already the beginning of the end. Recovery would be a Herculean task.
The Soviet Union in 1924 had the benefit of decades of labour organization, grassroots education, collective identity, and struggle to build off of. 1989 Soviets did not have that. Or what they did have had been corrupted by liberalism for decades at that point.
Also how are you going to turn to the Chinese model? The Chinese model requires a market centered economy that dictates rapprochement with the West to fuel investment into the country. Do you think anyone in the West would ever consider investing in the Soviet Union? The Chinese model worked mainly because they weren’t the Soviet Union.
they have newer and more novel ways to turn screws nowadays that they didn’t have back then and they’ve also learn how to ensure that you can only learn of them the slowest ways possible so as to maximize their effectiveness through ignorance.
Bring the colonial question back in full force in all fields, namely studies into neocolonialism and the settler colonialist nature of the US, the inseparability of colonialism and capitalism, and most importantly bringing unrepresented groups like Kazakhs into the high soviets which were overwhelming Russian at the time. No toleration approach for Russian chauvinism. Going for a “reeducation by the peasants” approach for many of the detached and comfortable leadership. Teach less to the liberation movements springing up, and learn more from them.
Do opposite glasnost, strengthen the party’s rule and policing of the second economy + incentives to not participate in it (bolstering the first economy). Bringing back Stalin iconography and what he represents while still allowing for the critical re-evaluation of his past, but emphasizing his great fight against fascism and how it’s still left to be finished. Setting up functional systemic processes for weeding out corruption and heavy emphasis on revolutionary education for the masses, reexamining all curriculum. Don’t back out of Afghanistan. Beg on my hands and knees for forgiveness by the CPC and ways to cooperate. Nuke Israel.
It was probably too late to save the Warsaw pact and the USSR, but without Yeltsin coming to power and cracking down on the communist party, socialism would have a much better chance of recovering in Russia at least and would be in a much stronger position without going through neoliberal shock therapy. The DPRK could also be in better position today if they had a socialist Russia there to support them during the famine in the 90s.
Wake up.
Reuse whatever cheat code I used to topple Gorbachv to topple Wall Street
Have you guys not read Bordiga? I will finally push the communism button of course.
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Decree solarpunk utopia
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Mimosas with the gals
You’re getting downvotes but it is as realistic an answer as any of the others.
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Kill Boris Yeltsin. (Or send him to an Artic Prison.)
