# Save the USSR! (Time-Travel Hypothetical)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/save-the-ussr-time-travel-hypothetical/765374
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [September 8, 2016, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/save-the-ussr-time-travel-hypothetical/765374 "2016-09-08T22:49:30Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@yellowjacketcoder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yellowjacketcoder)
#### Post date: [September 18, 2016, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/save-the-ussr-time-travel-hypothetical/765374/21 "2016-09-18T03:11:59Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#):
>
> Wait, Trotsky? Why Trotsky? Bukharin seems like the logical choice, given the way history unfolded.
Without Stalin to hitch his boat to, Bukharin doesn’t go anywhere. If Stalin does an about-face to support Trotsky, I bet Bukharin just falls in line. Supporting Bukharin just means we’ll get Stalin-lite.
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### Author:  [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)
#### Post date: [September 18, 2016, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/save-the-ussr-time-travel-hypothetical/765374/22 "2016-09-18T17:10:19Z")
> [@yellowjacketcoder](#):
>
> Without Stalin to hitch his boat to, Bukharin doesn’t go anywhere. If Stalin does an about-face to support Trotsky, I bet Bukharin just falls in line. Supporting Bukharin just means we’ll get Stalin-lite.
I thought the premise here was we kill Stalin, though.
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### Author:  [@yellowjacketcoder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yellowjacketcoder)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2016, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/save-the-ussr-time-travel-hypothetical/765374/23 "2016-09-19T12:30:06Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#):
>
> I thought the premise here was we kill Stalin, though.
Why would you think that? It is pretty explicitly NOT what the OP was about.
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### Author:  [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2016, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/save-the-ussr-time-travel-hypothetical/765374/24 "2016-09-19T18:28:00Z")
Easy. The USA is a locked system of free enterprise capitalism, with two parties committed to the same dogma… If one party shows signs of corruption, replace them with the other.
This could have been placed in the USSR, but the Communist party was too greedy. What if the USSR had had a multi-party system from early on, but both/all parties strongly encouraged if not compelled to be socialist? If one party became too corrupt, the voters would have replaced them with the other party, as they do in the USA, with no real change in the course of navigation…
In the early 90s, my European friends explained the collapse of communism in exactly these terms. Socialism was not bad economics, it was bad politics in its prevailing form, and that’s why it failed.
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### Author:  [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2016, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/save-the-ussr-time-travel-hypothetical/765374/25 "2016-09-21T13:58:10Z")
Go back to 1937 and let Stalin know that he really, really, really needs to get ready for war before 1941, but to play stupid. Let them figure a way to trap and defeat the Germans (including such things as counter invading Romania and capturing their oil).
Have Stalin give an initial heads up to Roosevelt from January, 1941 about Japanese planning and expected reactions to possible US moves. Keep feeding more detailed information so that Japan is screwed and the US doesn’t get attacked.
No US entry into the war, no atomic bomb and the industrial might doesn’t take off as much.
Then the Soviets can defeat Hitler by themselves and extend the Warsaw Pact all the way to the Atlantic.
Memorize enough information to give them a head start on developing the bomb themselves, which they can at their leisure so it doesn’t cost as much.
Have Stalin pursue a course of friendship with the US or at least avoid belligerence so as to not develop into a cold war.
With all of Europe, except those few island, under their thumb, the bomb, _all_ of the German scientists, and no hostilities between them and us, they should be able to stick around for a long time.
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### Author:  [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2016, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/save-the-ussr-time-travel-hypothetical/765374/26 "2016-09-21T15:27:24Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#):
>
> Then the Soviets can defeat Hitler by themselves and extend the Warsaw Pact all the way to the Atlantic.
The consequences of the fall of the USSR would have to be pretty darn dire to make up for extending the Warsaw Pact across all of Europe.
> [@](#):
>
> Have Stalin pursue a course of friendship with the US or at least avoid belligerence so as to not develop into a cold war.
I think a cold war is going to be hard to avoid after the Russkis conquer France and the rest of Europe.
> [@](#):
>
> With all of Europe, except those few island, under their thumb, the bomb, _all_ of the German scientists, and no hostilities between them and us, they should be able to stick around for a long time.
The USSR did have the bomb after 1948, and I doubt that the US would have any more problems developing one after that than the USSR did. So basically, the USSR would be in the same position as they were after WWII, only bigger. And with more historically independent countries under their control. And with no Marshall Plan to rebuild the economies in their sphere. And a UK across the Channel from them.
And even with advance knowledge, the USSR is not going to have an easy time of it defeating Germany. The US supplied them with a non-trivial amount of their war materiel.
In this scenario, does Japan still attack the US? If so, we simply gear up for war on the same pace and scale. And I suspect we would still be assisting France and Great Britain no matter what the USSR does.
Regards,
Shodan
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### Author:  [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2016, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/save-the-ussr-time-travel-hypothetical/765374/27 "2016-09-21T17:08:27Z")
Hmmm… to save the Soviet Union …
I would go back and encourage East German Communists to start shooting up the protest marches that had started up, and ice the Polish protesters as well, especially that guy who would end up Pope.
Basically you want to restart the Cold War, but in a way doesn’t have the Western Bloc directly in conflict with the Eastern Bloc.
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2016, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/save-the-ussr-time-travel-hypothetical/765374/28 "2016-09-22T07:17:35Z")
Well, the Ukraine girls really knock me out, they leave the West behind. And Moscow girls make me sing and shout that Georgia’s always on my mind.
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### Author:  [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2016, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/save-the-ussr-time-travel-hypothetical/765374/29 "2016-09-22T14:54:01Z")
I don’t think you could do something like this in any 24 hour period, to be honest, but if you could and life works as a novel, I would:
1. Make impassioned speech about not going into Afghanistan.
2. Prevent the May 1990 elections.
3. Prevent the 1991 coup against Gorbachev
The last two are holding actions and likely would have failed, but given 24 hours to prevent the collapse of 70 years of bad decisions is a tall order.
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### Author:  [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2016, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/save-the-ussr-time-travel-hypothetical/765374/30 "2016-09-24T16:07:02Z")
No 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The Soviet economy was slowing down at the time; and there was a lot of call for reform (of the type that China actually undertook a few years later). The oil embargo after 1973 caused the price of oil to skyrocket and brought in enough hard cash; enough for the harliners to squash the reformists.
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### Author:  [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2016, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/save-the-ussr-time-travel-hypothetical/765374/31 "2016-09-24T20:11:22Z")
Some really interesting ideas in here, thanks everyone.
> [@jtur88](#):
>
> Easy. The USA is a locked system of free enterprise capitalism, with two parties committed to the same dogma… If one party shows signs of corruption, replace them with the other.
>
> This could have been placed in the USSR, but the Communist party was too greedy. What if the USSR had had a multi-party system from early on, but both/all parties strongly encouraged if not compelled to be socialist? If one party became too corrupt, the voters would have replaced them with the other party, as they do in the USA, with no real change in the course of navigation…
>
> In the early 90s, my European friends explained the collapse of communism in exactly these terms. Socialism was not bad economics, it was bad politics in its prevailing form, and that’s why it failed.
I think this is a particularly good one.
> [@Isosleepy](#):
>
> Tell Khrushchev to just fake his side of the arms race, and spend that money smarter. There won’t be a nuclear war until mid 2016 at least - that’s a lot of money for crop improvement.
I thought Krushchev pretty much _was_ faking it, at least in terms of nuclear weapons, didn’t he boast that they were producing them like sausages but intelligence showed that they actually had a very limited number. I think he did try to cut back on military spending but was overruled by the other powers that be.
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#):
>
> It’s probably true that central planning (at least, barring advances in computing power and data science which weren’t available to the Soviets) is going to suffer inherent deficiencies for the foreseeable future because of the calculation problem, but it doesn’t follow that you need to abandon planning entirely. Hungary was clearly a communist state but one that made a limited use of prices and the market, and shifting to something like the Hungarian model- especially right after WWII, when much of Soviet industry had already been destroyed and there was a convenient opportunity to rebuild from scratch- might have solved most of their problems.
>
> For that matter, most Russians nowadays think they had it better under communism, so simply warning the Soviets about what the end of communism would bring, might convince people to stay with the status quo, as problematic as it was.
Perhaps tell Khruschev or Brezhnev to focus a lot of resources and effort on computer technology so they would be better able to operate a planned economy?
Just telling Gorbachev what the outcome of his reforms would be might make him take a different path, as you suggest.
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#):
>
> Hmmm… to save the Soviet Union …
>
> I would go back and encourage East German Communists to start shooting up the protest marches that had started up, and ice the Polish protesters as well, especially that guy who would end up Pope.
>
> Basically you want to restart the Cold War, but in a way doesn’t have the Western Bloc directly in conflict with the Eastern Bloc.
I think you probably could maintain it a lot longer if the late Cold War Eastern leadership was as ruthless as earlier leaders who didn’t hesitate to use force in East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia etc or for that matter the Chinese leadership of the same era who crushed dissent in Tianamen Square. Once they loosened their grip it all flew apart.
> [@AK84](#):
>
> No 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The Soviet economy was slowing down at the time; and there was a lot of call for reform (of the type that China actually undertook a few years later). The oil embargo after 1973 caused the price of oil to skyrocket and brought in enough hard cash; enough for the harliners to squash the reformists.
Who would you speak to in order to prevent the Arab-Israeli War though?
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### Author:  [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)
#### Post date: [September 25, 2016, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/save-the-ussr-time-travel-hypothetical/765374/32 "2016-09-25T00:47:23Z")
> [@Disposable Hero](#):
>
> (yes, we can all agree Communism is a bad thing, but lets just assume that what is being prevented is significently worse, its just a silly hypothetical so please don’t get bent out of shape)
How much worse? Stalin and Hitler merge into one composite being and the Comminazis rise to power with their powerful army of dinosaur riders? No way can you stop that by saving the Soviet Union, if anything, you’d be better off just dropping Xenomorphs on them and hope the Predators show up in time to save the rest of us.
Hey, silly hypotheticals call for silly solutions.
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### Author:  [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)
#### Post date: [September 25, 2016, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/save-the-ussr-time-travel-hypothetical/765374/33 "2016-09-25T12:11:19Z")
> [@TBG](#):
>
> How much worse? Stalin and Hitler merge into one composite being and the Comminazis rise to power with their powerful army of dinosaur riders? No way can you stop that by saving the Soviet Union, if anything, you’d be better off just dropping Xenomorphs on them and hope the Predators show up in time to save the rest of us.
>
> Hey, silly hypotheticals call for silly solutions.
And yet somehow almost everyone else managed to play nicely.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [September 25, 2016, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/save-the-ussr-time-travel-hypothetical/765374/34 "2016-09-25T12:24:25Z")
This is a tough one. If I can only go back to one day in time, then I can really only address one of the many factors which led to the Soviet Union’s fall. I’m not sure that there’s any one factor that would be enough to forestall the collapse until 2020. The best I can come up with in the long term is to get rid of Stalin, but the only time that would be realistically possible would be before he came to power, and in the short term, for WWII, a strong militaristic leader was exactly what was needed. I can’t be sure that pre-emptively eliminating Stalin would not have resulted in the Nazis overrunning the place.
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