Did the Soviet Union ever have a realisitic chance of winning the Cold War

[derspiess]

If they had reformed along the lines of China, the Soviet Union could still be around and be a superpower.

I have a hard time imagining that being possible.  The USSR was a bit less homogeneous than China, and a breakup was pretty inevitable once the hardline communists fell out of power.

[Josquius]

The problem with this scenario is it requires something that was not true to be true: that Communism, at least the USSR version, would have to work as an economic and political system longterm.  That problem was just not going to be overcome.

It would be interesting to see them have a crack at it with the help of 90s computer technology however. Could really help the economic side at least. Though the 00s stuff would play havoc with the political/social side.

[Ideologue]

Did they? They still might.

[derspiess]

Disagree.  Communism worked well enough in the short term (not well, but well enough) that other considerations could overwhelm the long-term advantage of free market democracy.

True.  It's actually remarkable that it worked as well as it did, even though it was living on borrowed time since maybe around the 60s, if not before then.

[derspiess]

The problem with this scenario is it requires something that was not true to be true: that Communism, at least the USSR version, would have to work as an economic and political system longterm.  That problem was just not going to be overcome.

It would be interesting to see them have a crack at it with the help of 90s computer technology however. Could really help the economic side at least. Though the 00s stuff would play havoc with the political/social side.

The ComBloc imitation technology would have been entertaining, for sure. 

[CountDeMoney]

Did they? They still might.

But they're not the Soviet Union anymore.  If anything, they're Mob, Inc. now.

Who figured there would ever be a nation-state for the mob again, after the attempt in Cuba failed?  And a nuclear armed one, to boot?

[Zanza]

I guess they could not have won it outright as the USA was and is too strong and stable, but I don't think them losing it was not the only possible outcome. If they had reformed along the lines of China, the Soviet Union could still be around and be a superpower. They would inevitably have lost their grip on Eastern Europe though, so their power would decline, but they'd still be ahead of everybody but the USA and now China.

Is that possible?  It seemed the economic dogma was far more important to the Russians than it was to the Chinese.  Besides what happened in China was hardly easy, reforming along those lines required the nearly miraculous career of Deng.  There was no comparable Russian figure.

The argument that there was no comparable Russian figure is meaningless when discussing a hypothetical. A Sergey Dengov is certainly not impossible to imagine. It's not like the Soviet Union didn't have a history of all powerful paramount leaders that could steer the country in whatever way they wanted.
I don't think economic dogma was really important to many Russians. Once they see the success of economic reforms they would leave Marxism behind just as fast as the Chinese, Vietnamese and other Communist countries. Plenty of the current oligarchs started out as functionaries of the Communist Party and then swapped to hardcore capitalism when the way was clear.

[Zanza]

If they had reformed along the lines of China, the Soviet Union could still be around and be a superpower.

I have a hard time imagining that being possible.  The USSR was a bit less homogeneous than China, and a breakup was pretty inevitable once the hardline communists fell out of power.

It's not like China isn't suppressing its minorities or unruly groups of the Han Chinese.
And it's not like the Soviets (or even Russia) never cracked down on their minorities to keep them in line. In a hypothetical scenario, I can imagine them cracking down on Central Asian or Baltic secessionists. Let's say the didn't waste their strength in Afghanistan and instead focused on keeping domestic dissent suppressed.

[derspiess]

It's not like China isn't suppressing its minorities or unruly groups of the Han Chinese.
And it's not like the Soviets (or even Russia) never cracked down on their minorities to keep them in line. In a hypothetical scenario, I can imagine them cracking down on Central Asian or Baltic secessionists. Let's say the didn't waste their strength in Afghanistan and instead focused on keeping domestic dissent suppressed.

Not sure if I can imagine the Soviets having reformers with the stomach for such crackdowns. 

[Queequeg]

I guess they could not have won it outright as the USA was and is too strong and stable, but I don't think them losing it was not the only possible outcome. If they had reformed along the lines of China, the Soviet Union could still be around and be a superpower. They would inevitably have lost their grip on Eastern Europe though, so their power would decline, but they'd still be ahead of everybody but the USA and now China.

Is that possible?  It seemed the economic dogma was far more important to the Russians than it was to the Chinese.  Besides what happened in China was hardly easy, reforming along those lines required the nearly miraculous career of Deng.  There was no comparable Russian figure.

The argument that there was no comparable Russian figure is meaningless when discussing a hypothetical. A Sergey Dengov is certainly not impossible to imagine. It's not like the Soviet Union didn't have a history of all powerful paramount leaders that could steer the country in whatever way they wanted.
I don't think economic dogma was really important to many Russians. Once they see the success of economic reforms they would leave Marxism behind just as fast as the Chinese, Vietnamese and other Communist countries. Plenty of the current oligarchs started out as functionaries of the Communist Party and then swapped to hardcore capitalism when the way was clear.

1) Capitalism was in living memory in China in 1980. Not true of the USSR after 1960, and even then most of them died in the war or the revolution.
2) Deng drew on Hong Kong, South Korean, Japanese, American and later Taiwanese expertise in a way the USSR never could have because of the cold war.
3) Chinese abroad communities were of paramount importance. Once Russians left Russia they were gone for good.

[MadImmortalMan]

The could have first-strike nuked the world.

[dps]

Well, for the Soviets to have become the dominate superpower, I think that you'd have to go back and change things that happened before the Cold War even started.  If France and Britian had smacked Hitler down when he remilatarized the Rhineland, and Japan had been able to keep relatively low-ranking Army officers from starting wars in China, then there's no WWII, and the US doesn't re-arm.  There's no Manhatten Project, and maybe no nukes.  WWII speeded up decolonization, but it would have probably happened anyway by the mid-1970s at least.  If at that point, you have a Soviet Union with a huge military, and the US has a regular Army roughly the size of what we had in the mid-30s (what was it, about 35,000 men?) and the rest of Europe is fragmented and worn out from fighting and loosing colonial wars, then maybe they can overrun Europe and become dominate.

[Razgovory]

Terrorists torpedoed my thread!

[dps]

Terrorists torpedoed my thread!

Did they hijack the Inca torpedo boats?

[Razgovory]

I guess they could not have won it outright as the USA was and is too strong and stable, but I don't think them losing it was not the only possible outcome. If they had reformed along the lines of China, the Soviet Union could still be around and be a superpower. They would inevitably have lost their grip on Eastern Europe though, so their power would decline, but they'd still be ahead of everybody but the USA and now China.

Is that possible?  It seemed the economic dogma was far more important to the Russians than it was to the Chinese.  Besides what happened in China was hardly easy, reforming along those lines required the nearly miraculous career of Deng.  There was no comparable Russian figure.

The argument that there was no comparable Russian figure is meaningless when discussing a hypothetical. A Sergey Dengov is certainly not impossible to imagine. It's not like the Soviet Union didn't have a history of all powerful paramount leaders that could steer the country in whatever way they wanted.
I don't think economic dogma was really important to many Russians. Once they see the success of economic reforms they would leave Marxism behind just as fast as the Chinese, Vietnamese and other Communist countries. Plenty of the current oligarchs started out as functionaries of the Communist Party and then swapped to hardcore capitalism when the way was clear.

1) Capitalism was in living memory in China in 1980. Not true of the USSR after 1960, and even then most of them died in the war or the revolution.
2) Deng drew on Hong Kong, South Korean, Japanese, American and later Taiwanese expertise in a way the USSR never could have because of the cold war.
3) Chinese abroad communities were of paramount importance. Once Russians left Russia they were gone for good.

The Soviet Union late in life was not lacking in technical expertise, they already had that, besides they could draw on expertise in Western Europe.  The French will build stuff for anyone.