https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/young-putin-the-kgb-and-the-soviet-union/id1537788786?i=1000553113993 + the rest of this series
What happens in a counterfactual where Yeltsin and Gorbachev get along?
Soviet Union + Russia from Putin’s perspective
- Gorbachev’s perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) don’t work. The economy is in shambles, Gorbachev is having them re-interpret Stalin, they would rather have food then be able to read books
- Gorbachev mostly refuses to use force
- (Maybe) to get revenge on Gorbachev, Yeltsin basically ends the Soviet Union
- Yeltsin takes the economy and wrecks it even more
- Ruble collapses, massive inflation, 2/3s of the population under the poverty line
- Yeltsin also heavily subverts the democratic principles he supposedly founded Russia on
Interesting: the Soviet Union wasn’t ended by popular demand. It was the desires of the leaders of the individual republics that ended it.