01-15-2017, 11:12 AM
(01-14-2017, 09:56 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: In fact I woulr prefer that there were a Soviet Union with a Gorbachev-like leader than a post-Soviet world with someone with an admiration of the tsars for their opulence and the Brezhnev-era enforcers for their brutality.
As history proved, you can't get a Soviet Union with a Gorbachev like leader. The structure of the Soviet Union was dependent on repression from the top, and a leader who didn't use it would soon be out of power, one way or another. At best, it disintegrates, as it did; at worst, a coup restores Stalinism.