# Fiction that predicted the fall of the Soviet Union? (and those that didn't!)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [August 26, 2013, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209 "2013-08-26T15:34:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2013, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/1 "2013-08-26T15:34:39Z")
I’ve just finished reading a pretty entertaining technothriller novel, ‘Firebreak’ by Richard Herman JR, written in 1991 it ties up one of the subplots by having a hardliner winning a internal power-competition in the USSR and reversing Gorbachev’s reforms.
Its fairly common to read pre-1992 novels set in the future that assume the USSR will be around for a long time to come but which novels predicated the fall of the Soviet Union before it actually happened, and how did the scenario play out?
A long time ago I read a book by Donald James called, ‘The Fall of the Russian Empire’, released in 1982 I can’t recall much about it other than it had a central female Gorbachev like reformist figure.
If anyone has any interesting examples of novels showing the USSR still in existence after 1991 I’d be interested in those as well, its fairly common in science-fiction but I can’t recall any particular examples at the moment.
btw there was once a fairly entertaining game released in the early 90’s that had the player taking the role of General Secretary and trying to solve the many problems of that state in an attempt to maintain power, if you were too successfully and achieved a stable society the game ended in around the year 2023 with a devastating asteroid strike in Russia, game over! 😃
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### Author:  [@joebuck20](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joebuck20)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2013, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/2 "2013-08-26T17:20:49Z")
2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequel, 2010, both predicted that the USSR would still be around.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2013, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/3 "2013-08-26T17:30:35Z")
**Can the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?** by Andrei Amalrik basically answered “no.” It was nonfiction but the conclusion was surprising.
The best example of a book that didn’t was Norman Spinrad’s **Russian Spring** , which had the Soviet Union ascendant and the US doing poorly. Now, this probably isn’t the only book that postulated that, but it was published in late 1991 – _after_ the Soviet Union had fallen apart.
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### Author:  [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2013, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/4 "2013-08-26T19:00:39Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> The best example of a book that didn’t was Norman Spinrad’s **Russian Spring** , which had the Soviet Union ascendant and the US doing poorly. Now, this probably isn’t the only book that postulated that, but it was published in late 1991 – _after_ the Soviet Union had fallen apart.
Was it an alternate-reality type of book, or was the author serious and had the misfortune of having his book published at the perfect time to make him look like a moron?
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2013, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/5 "2013-08-26T19:02:16Z")
Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium books all assume a revitalized USSR that teams with the USA to maintain control of the planet.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2013, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/6 "2013-08-26T19:53:10Z")
> [@Diceman](#):
>
> Was it an alternate-reality type of book, or was the author serious and had the misfortune of having his book published at the perfect time to make him look like a moron?
It was not _intended_ as an alternate history. Spinrad probably started writing the book a year or two earlier; given the usual production lead time, it meant it was probably accepted toward the end of 1990. It’s actually a pretty good book done in by bad timing.
Asimov had something similar happen to him, publishing a story explaining why Mt. Everest would never be climbed about six months after it had been.
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### Author:  [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2013, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/7 "2013-08-26T20:35:15Z")
Spinrad should have know better. His non-fiction essay “Taming of the Bear” didn’t exactly predict the fall of the Soviet Union, but did spell out some reasons that the eighties were not going to be their decade. (Written, by the way before either Reagan or Gorbachev took power.)
I think that Spinrad’s novel, which now must be viewed as alternate history, had as a basis assumption the success of Gorbachev’s reforms, transitioning the Soviet Union, _intact_, into a free market, more democratic state.
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### Author:  [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2013, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/8 "2013-08-26T23:22:35Z")
“The Chinese Ultimatum” did but restored it in the end.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2013, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/9 "2013-08-27T02:24:11Z")
_Nexus_ was a SF comic book series written by Mike Baron back in the eighties. It was a space opera set 500 years in the future with a bunch of different planets having been settled by humans. And one of the significant political organizations was the Sov Empire, which was essentially the worlds colonized and run by the Soviet Union.
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### Author:  [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2013, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/10 "2013-08-27T12:52:33Z")
Thanks for the answers everyone!
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2013, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/11 "2013-08-27T13:05:12Z")
There was a book in the 1980’s (can’t remember title or author) in which the USSR fell because they did agricultural espionage on American crops and stole the genetic engineering of them so that they wouldn’t have to buy wheat from Americans. However…
The Americans knew what they were up to, and the formula they stole made any woman who ate it infertile. Time passed, and the USSR government was forced to resign so that the Americans would give its population the cure.
Personally, I thought that was a dirty trick.
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### Author:  [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2013, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/12 "2013-08-27T13:08:58Z")
In the afterward to his novel _[Earth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_(Brin_novel))_, David Brin remarks on this. In the book - which was largely written before 1990 - he has an more open USSR still intact and cooperating with the USA and other western countries to combatting ecological and economic issues.
However, the book was published in 1990 (and took the Hugo and Nebula in 1991). Brin remarks in the afterward that he was put in the odd position that the people who read early drafts would say that his depiction of the USSR and opening and cooperating with the west was too optimistic while people who read the finished product would criticize him for still having the Soviet Union as a going concern.
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### Author:  [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2013, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/13 "2013-08-27T13:59:04Z")
The [Third World War](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_World_War:_The_Untold_Story), published in 1982, featured a coup that overthrew the Soviet Union’s Politburo.
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### Author:  [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2013, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/14 "2013-08-27T16:07:13Z")
Jack Chalker’s _Well of Souls_ series essentially replicated the Cold War tensions (communist states vs. capitalist democracies), but had the Com worlds ascendant (IIRC, due to a drug or spore or something that made people work for the collective (or something… it’s been a while since I’ve read them.))
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### Author:  [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2013, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/15 "2013-08-27T16:14:13Z")
Cyril Kornbluth’s 1951 [The Marching Morons](http://www.scribd.com/doc/23657356/The-Marching-Morons) mentions, almost as an aside, a (presumably) western “partition” of Russia that couldn’t have happened any later than 1988. The details of how this happened aren’t revealed—but some of what happened _afterwards_ figure in one character’s backstory quite centrally.
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### Author:  [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2013, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/16 "2013-08-27T17:52:01Z")
Tom Clancy’s _Red Storm Rising_ has the Soviets losing a war with NATO and at the very end of the book a military coup throws out the communists.
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### Author:  [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2013, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/17 "2013-08-27T18:39:39Z")
I do think that _Red Storm Rising_ took place in the 80s, right? When there was a Soviet Union to go to war against NATO?
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2013, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/18 "2013-08-27T22:18:24Z")
Robert Heinlein’s fiction generally assumed that the Soviets would be gone or reformed, and that “Australasia” would be ascendant although suffering terribly from overpopulation.
Heinlein’s belief in the ultimate destruction of the Soviet Union probably stems from his extensive touring of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and what he saw as major contradictions between the claims about the strength of the Soviet economy by its leadership and what he saw with his own eyes as being a failing, unworkable system.
His views on that ebbed and flowed over his career - in 1950 he predicted that Communism would vanish from the world by the year 2000. In 1960, after visiting the Soviet Union he felt that the system was crumbling and that birthrates were so low the population was not even replacing itself. But by the late 1970’s he was more pessimistic and felt that the Soviets were a growing threat. He should have stuck to his earlier predictions.
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### Author:  [@Arkcon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arkcon)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2013, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/19 "2013-08-27T23:06:00Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#):
>
> Personally, I thought that was a dirty trick.
Ouch. Something close may have actually happened. [At the Abyss - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_pipeline_sabotage)
There’s a series by Jerry Pournelle that postulated the US and USSR co-operating to dominate the world
> **[CoDominium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoDominium)**
>
> CoDominium is a series of future history novels written by American writer Jerry Pournelle, along with several co-authors, primarily Larry Niven.
> The CoDominium (CD) is a political alliance and union between the United States and the Soviet Union in Pournelle's fictional history. Formed to maintain planetary stability, the CD becomes a de facto planetary government and later an interstellar empire, though it halts scientific and political evolution. The U.S. during the CD era is a welfare state...
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-that-predicted-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-and-those-that-didnt/667209/20 "2013-08-28T00:35:42Z")
I’ve also heard stories that the CIA intentionally misled the Soviet space program. A number of different substances are possible for fueling a rocket. One of them is theoretically very powerful but is extremely unstable.
Then Soviet spies were able to steal some classified American reports that told them our scientists had been able to solve the stability problems and would be using the fuel. So the Soviets ordered their scientists to work on the same fuel and duplicate what the Americans had been able to do.
It was a hoax. The CIA arranged to have some fake reports claiming the fuel problems had been solved but this wasn’t true. And then they left these reports somewhere where the Soviets would be able to steal them. The CIA managed to trick the Soviet space program into going down a dead end.
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