Would the Soviet Union still collapse if The Nationalist had won the Chinese Civil War
- Thread starter Maverick721
- Start date
Depends utterly on the evolution of Nationalist China, if it descends into chaos then its entirely possible that it spurs reformist in the USSR, though that still has the potential to blow up in the soviets faces. If its strictly non-aligned then the Soviets get a border then don't need to guard and a potential trading partner. If its Pro-US, then the USSR is going to have to seriously devote funding to a potential war with China.
The butterflies alone would make this hard to predict. This would mean we may get different leaders for the USSR as the timeline goes farther from 1949, thereby either butterflying Destalinization, the Detente, or glasnost/perestroika, or at least making this come earlier in different forms.
A Nationalist China would actually benefit the Soviets as they now would have capitalist(?) or free-market(?) country that borders them.
A Nationalist China would actually benefit the Soviets as they now would have capitalist(?) or free-market(?) country that borders them.
Yes it will collapse anyways, maybe as in OTL or earlier or later, Collapse of the Soviet Union was inevitable.
Does the existence of a KMT-led China raise the possibility of a coup attempt in the Soviet Union followed by a Soviet civil war in the 1980s?
Garetor
Gone Fishin'
There's no such thing as "inevitable" in AH
Especially not with a POD of nearly half a century previous.
China would be more like OTL India, non-aligned but trending towards the USSR, while China would be a US ally(as it would still resent Communism, so kiss bye-bye to North Korea and Vietnam), but not fully comitted to US ally status, so when relations would sour, Chang would definitely go to Moscow to offer trade relations(Stalin was kinda favorable to the KMT initially and it would not have the Mao incentive to challenge the USSR for control of global communism).
As to the OP, the USSR would still fall due to internal mismanagement, which had nothing to do with China, maybe even earlier by 5-10 years, as Communism would be less spread out without the Maoist off-shoot, and as such there would be less faith in the "Soviet-only Communism".
Their is a potential that China becomes a major trading partner for the Soviet Union instead, which will lead to a lot of interesting butterflies.
I would say it's unlikely for the Soviets to follow the same exact steps that lead to its OTL fall. The circumstances that lead to the collapse was long and convoluted and required a perfect storm of Economic and Political crises of the 1980s combined with blind and incompetent leaders unknowingly steering the sinking ship into a minefield while distracted with the rot and corruption that had creeped into the system after a decade of mismanagement during the Brezhnev era.
Oh and the Afghanistan war, the freaking Chernobyl disaster, the collapse of desperately needed Oil Prices 1986, the unaffordable Arms Race that President Reagan escalated, the Buran Space Shuttles (they were building 5 of them!), the painfully expensive Energia Moon Rocket supporting the Buran Shuttles and Boris Yelsin himself all collectively threw petrol bombs into the dumpster fire that was the USSR in the late 1980s...
There is even more disasters, such as a badly timed earthquakes in the Caucuses that left houndreds of thousands homeless and a West German by the name of Mathias Rust being able to singlehandedly ruin the reputation and prestige of the Soviet Military after he illegally landed his plane in Moscow and gave Gorbachev enough justification to get rid of the major Hardliners opposed to his Glasnost political reforms, which consequently helped to accelerate the rise of the Anti-establishment parties that were setting up themselves and gaining power in the local 1990 SSR elections as an alternative to the deeply unpopular Communist Party, especially after the Hardliners attempted the coup in August 1991... which annihilated what little power the Soviets had against the SSR's, this allowed Yeltsin the justification and power to effectively rip the heart and soul out of the USSR by pulling the Russian SSR out of the Union and leaving Gorbachev powerless to stop him, it was inevitable that the end was near in the aftermath. The rest as they say was history.
I could go on with how Gorbachev failed miserably at preventing the fall and how he made it far more worse with a poorly timed attempt at Political reform while everything was starting to crack and crumble around him, but I prefer going to bed instead.
If the Soviets are able to replicate those grim OTL conditions in an TL where the Nationalist Chinese won the civil war then I would agree that the USSR's days are numbered.
I would say it's unlikely for the Soviets to follow the same exact steps that lead to its OTL fall. The circumstances that lead to the collapse was long and convoluted and required a perfect storm of Economic and Political crises of the 1980s combined with blind and incompetent leaders unknowingly steering the sinking ship into a minefield while distracted with the rot and corruption that had creeped into the system after a decade of mismanagement during the Brezhnev era.
Oh and the Afghanistan war, the freaking Chernobyl disaster, the collapse of desperately needed Oil Prices 1986, the unaffordable Arms Race that President Reagan escalated, the Buran Space Shuttles (they were building 5 of them!), the painfully expensive Energia Moon Rocket supporting the Buran Shuttles and Boris Yelsin himself all collectively threw petrol bombs into the dumpster fire that was the USSR in the late 1980s...
There is even more disasters, such as a badly timed earthquakes in the Caucuses that left houndreds of thousands homeless and a West German by the name of Mathias Rust being able to singlehandedly ruin the reputation and prestige of the Soviet Military after he illegally landed his plane in Moscow and gave Gorbachev enough justification to get rid of the major Hardliners opposed to his Glasnost political reforms, which consequently helped to accelerate the rise of the Anti-establishment parties that were setting up themselves and gaining power in the local 1990 SSR elections as an alternative to the deeply unpopular Communist Party, especially after the Hardliners attempted the coup in August 1991... which annihilated what little power the Soviets had against the SSR's, this allowed Yeltsin the justification and power to effectively rip the heart and soul out of the USSR by pulling the Russian SSR out of the Union and leaving Gorbachev powerless to stop him, it was inevitable that the end was near in the aftermath. The rest as they say was history.
I could go on with how Gorbachev failed miserably at preventing the fall and how he made it far more worse with a poorly timed attempt at Political reform while everything was starting to crack and crumble around him, but I prefer going to bed instead.
If the Soviets are able to replicate those grim OTL conditions in an TL where the Nationalist Chinese won the civil war then I would agree that the USSR's days are numbered.
I read a timeline in which the ROC won the civil war but a U.S.-China split still occurs. It's from the Operation Valkyrie timeline called Watching From San Diego by @BigVic . The butterflies of Hitler's assassination would cause the KMT to win the civil war but Yang Xishan takes over and announces a split from the United States and Britain, citing "colonialism" and "imperialism" (Chapter here). Reminiscent of the GEACPS of Imperial Japan, this hostile ROC enters an alliance with a newly-independent India to form the Beijing Decolonization Pact, the third bloc in this alternate Cold War (Chapter here). Think of the Beijing Decolonization Pact as a more aggressive NAM of OTL.
The only reason why the ROC today is an ally of the United States is that it lost the mainland and retreated to Taiwan. Post-WWII America under Truman was terrified that Asia would soon fall to communism in a "domino effect" and hence the saw the need to fortify the First Island Chain to prevent communism from spreading.
In a TL where the Nationalists won, East Asia and the world would develop differently. China was already seen as a potential rival to the U.S., due to its population and economic potential. There were also fears of a Yellow Peril at this period.
Yes, teh Soviet Union still collapses.
The era 1922-1945 gave the Soviet Union a form of economic arterial sclerosis in the forms of wrecked industry and a massive demographic imbalance that they still have not recovered from : 4 out of 5 males born in 1922 were dead in 1945 from a combination of famines, brutalities and war, and the overall male-to-female ratio in 1945 was 3:5. That was going to give it a fatal heart attack eventually, regardless of what happens in China.
China not going Communist probly means it collapses sooner, as there will be more strain on the already weak Soviet economy, even if East Asia becomes an overall non-aligned bloc.
A KMT China also probably blunts the Japanese Economic Miracle (no Korean and Vietnam Wars to incentivize the US into investing in rebuilding Japanese industry as much as it did OTL)
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The era 1922-1945 gave the Soviet Union a form of economic arterial sclerosis in the forms of wrecked industry and a massive demographic imbalance that they still have not recovered from : 4 out of 5 males born in 1922 were dead in 1945 from a combination of famines, brutalities and war, and the overall male-to-female ratio in 1945 was 3:5. That was going to give it a fatal heart attack eventually, regardless of what happens in China.
China not going Communist probly means it collapses sooner, as there will be more strain on the already weak Soviet economy, even if East Asia becomes an overall non-aligned bloc.
A KMT China also probably blunts the Japanese Economic Miracle (no Korean and Vietnam Wars to incentivize the US into investing in rebuilding Japanese industry as much as it did OTL)
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Soviet age pyramid was quite normal for the 1-50/60 yo cohorts by the 80s
soviet demographic prospects weren’t the brightest but still were ok by European standards, fertility drop of tbe 90s was kinda inevitable because of both generational ripple effect and Pro-natalist policies in the 80s making families have their 2nd/3rd kid earlier than expected, but it would stabilise and climb back a bit much more than irl without a civilisational and welfare state collapse. Slavic population of tbe USSR still had a bit of growth to do and would probably only Naturally decline by the 2010s, slightly better than the European average I’d say.
by this point central Asian demographics would catch up and provide all of the growth, soviet already expected 1/3 of the red army conscripts would be from Central Asia by 2000. Soviet population as a whole would keep growing, how they decide to develop and bring opportunities to central Asian is another matter. Probably a good amount of promoted migrations to Russia/Ukraine, not that different from irl Uzbek and Tajik migrants to Moscow, but on a larger scale. Funilly enough given soviet atheism among its ancestraly Christian population, USSR may well become the largest Muslim plurality countries in the world for a short bit in tbe 2020s.
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It depends, honestly - after all, there's a reason why the original 1947 ROC Constitution basically copied a good portion of the Soviet political system, right down to the 國民大會/National Assembly as the ROC's equivalent of the Supreme Soviet (before Carsun Chang and other Chinese liberals rewrote portions of it to make it less dictatorial and authoritarian). A GMD that remains in power after the Civil War would probably be closer to the USSR and/or Mexico (in the bad old days of PRI rule) in terms of its politics. Even if Mao and the CPC are defeated, the Soviet Union has long had a pretty close relationship with the GMD anyway that it could resort to its old tactics and prop up the GMD as a proxy for the CPSU (all the more so considering the rocky relations between the CPC and the Soviet Union anyway, so Mao's defeat wouldn't be such a big loss).
Now, considering how Nationalist China copied a good portion of its formal structure from the Soviet Union (hence the dangguo system), that would also mean - should it retain and even expand on its claims to the Mainland - that it would also inherit a good portion of the weaknesses of the Soviet system. (Or maybe not - there is the PRC after all, but the ROC was a bit different considering the GMD's ties to the Green Gang and other Triad groups and Jiang's misrule.) So, if the Soviet Union is tottering to the point of collapse, there's no reason why the ROC wouldn't also experience similar issues. At this point, the ROC would be little more than a de facto Soviet satellite with good PR and a ruling party that theoretically is too bourgeois for Soviet tastes (despite whatever Washington would believe). Ultimately, for the most part, we all know how those satellites went, and the ROC would be no different here - even if it retained the ROC name. Furthermore, as the GMD found out IOTL, there's only so much that relying on Triads to shore up support, where the police state couldn't, can get the regime before it's forced to accept the inevitable. Even if the GMD found the magic formula to remain in power long after the Soviet Union collapsed, that doesn't necessarily mean it's good for the regime's survival.
OTOH, GMD rule was pretty unpopular in China to begin with post-1945, so everything depends on whether the GMD can either maintain its rule, with or without Jiang, or is replaced by something else. If the GMD gets overthrown despite winning the Civil War, for example, then all bets are off and we don't know what would happen next. Likewise, if the GMD comes into power without Jiang at the helm, then things would be turbulent for quite a bit before there's some sort of equilibrium (considering the sheer number of factions within the GMD, many of which descend from coopted warlords from the Northern Expedition in order to present a façade of national unity). In that case, we don't know what the USSR-ROC relationship will be like.
Now, considering how Nationalist China copied a good portion of its formal structure from the Soviet Union (hence the dangguo system), that would also mean - should it retain and even expand on its claims to the Mainland - that it would also inherit a good portion of the weaknesses of the Soviet system. (Or maybe not - there is the PRC after all, but the ROC was a bit different considering the GMD's ties to the Green Gang and other Triad groups and Jiang's misrule.) So, if the Soviet Union is tottering to the point of collapse, there's no reason why the ROC wouldn't also experience similar issues. At this point, the ROC would be little more than a de facto Soviet satellite with good PR and a ruling party that theoretically is too bourgeois for Soviet tastes (despite whatever Washington would believe). Ultimately, for the most part, we all know how those satellites went, and the ROC would be no different here - even if it retained the ROC name. Furthermore, as the GMD found out IOTL, there's only so much that relying on Triads to shore up support, where the police state couldn't, can get the regime before it's forced to accept the inevitable. Even if the GMD found the magic formula to remain in power long after the Soviet Union collapsed, that doesn't necessarily mean it's good for the regime's survival.
OTOH, GMD rule was pretty unpopular in China to begin with post-1945, so everything depends on whether the GMD can either maintain its rule, with or without Jiang, or is replaced by something else. If the GMD gets overthrown despite winning the Civil War, for example, then all bets are off and we don't know what would happen next. Likewise, if the GMD comes into power without Jiang at the helm, then things would be turbulent for quite a bit before there's some sort of equilibrium (considering the sheer number of factions within the GMD, many of which descend from coopted warlords from the Northern Expedition in order to present a façade of national unity). In that case, we don't know what the USSR-ROC relationship will be like.
Things will depend on when the POD is, such as if the communists are not purged by the KMT. I believe the KMT had the backing of the Soviets both during and after this time. If they are all a part of the same tent the Soviets might act a little differently with China, though the KMT are going to want to Soviets to renounce claims to Port Arthur and railroads that the Bolsheviks said they were giving up, but never did. Not sure if those were still relevant by WWII. Should we all assume the KMT will by the the PRC and give up claims to a lot of land the Soviets and others have in mountainous areas? Mongolia and Tuva might be a sore point, but the Chinese might simply keep showing them as Chinese in their school maps and not bother going after them. Then again... Yah, I suppose they would have to, if they want the Soviets to leave Manchuria or Xingiang.
Huh?
I thought the Soviets, British, and America supported the KMT with arms. Even in the second phase of the civil war, America continued to support the KMT until 1949, when Truman decided they were a waste of time and a lost cause due to rampant corruption among the officials and the military officers.
Either way, having the Soviets support the KMT and the Americans leaning towards the CCP qualifies as a Top 10 Anime Plot Twist. Just like the Biafran War.
American sympathy to the CCP and the potential for support has definitely been a long discussed subject, as has been the other end of that relationship https://www.jstor.org/stable/2949955
And considering Soviet-KMT relations (and Stalin and Chiang's relations) during the 30s, it's not really THAT surprising of an AH alignement, but it's also not easy at all and not the most natural one, it makes for a good AH Challenge.
Art Vandelay
Banned
Maybe. Having a US ally on the border 20-30 years ahead of OTL would add more strain to the Soviet system, forcing reform earlier which may result in collapse. Even OTL the Soviet collapse wasn't a sure thing when Gorbachev took over, perestroika without glasnost would have had a good chance of working. The day of reckoning for USSR would come earlier due to added strain, but it's far from clear whether the result would be reform or collapse.
ahmedali
Banned
No matter that Vietnam will be united under Western rule and Korea as well
Frankly, nationalist China, I see it developing as a huge South Vietnam rather than India
Because with Chiang being so authoritarian, a nationalist China would be the site of the world's largest communist rebellion along the lines of the Vietcong.
And I doubt that they will get the path of Taiwan, but often the path of South Vietnam
This may end with the downfall of the nationalists
And the transformation of the Republic of China into the People's Republic of China, but instead of 1949, this will be around 1964 or 1970
But the Soviet Union thought it would collapse like OTL
Frankly, nationalist China, I see it developing as a huge South Vietnam rather than India
Because with Chiang being so authoritarian, a nationalist China would be the site of the world's largest communist rebellion along the lines of the Vietcong.
And I doubt that they will get the path of Taiwan, but often the path of South Vietnam
This may end with the downfall of the nationalists
And the transformation of the Republic of China into the People's Republic of China, but instead of 1949, this will be around 1964 or 1970
But the Soviet Union thought it would collapse like OTL