What if Gorbachev didn't come to power?

[goysu]

Possibly, but you could also argue that Yeltsin could have come earlier than 1991.

[Reviewer]

While I enjoy the wonderful tangent about Chernobyl, the KGB, etc. :roll:, let's get back to the question. What if Gorbachev didn't come to power?

My question is who would have come to power? My opinion is that anyone following the old fogies of Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko would still have to solve the problems of not being able to sustain a centralized military-industrial economy--which, BTW, was crumbling in the 1970's if you think about it--and the war in Afghanistan. Who would have been capable of long-term leadership if it wasn't a young man like Gorbachev?

Gorbatchev` s "reforms" and "perestroika" destroyed the CCCPs economy..

http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.ph ... l+sabotage

Link to a page with a link.

[David Thompson]

An off-topic and political post from Von Schadewald was removed by this moderator - DT.

[paspartoo]

By the time Gorbachev rose to power the Soviet Union was already a joke in economic terms. Their standard of living was orders of magnitude lower than even countries like Greece.

People from Greece who visited the SU were appalled by the poverty and the story about women being very ‘friendly’ just so they could receive a pair of jeans was true. I know this from the father of a good friend of mine. What was left for the SU? Only the military but that too became obsolete thanks to the introduction of new and improved weapon systems by the Western countries in the 1970’s-80’s.

The communist economic system has failed in every country it has been tried. There’s was no need for spies to bring it down…

[Baltasar]

Apparently, Gorbatchov was helped by a pilot at the time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust