What if? Entry #1: What if the Soviet Union never fell?

When Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet Premier in the mid 1980's, his intentions were NOT to break up the Soviet Union, only to modernize it and make the nation compatible with the outside world, out from under their own 'red curtain'. Perestroika and Glasnost were designed to give a capitalist injection into the tired Soviet machine. However, the Soviet peoples capitalized on such reforms and used that as a springboard to propel them to freedom, which started to occur around the beginning of the 1990's.

The Soviet Union would have fallen whether or not Gorbachev was at the helm. It was only a matter of time, especially when Russia was slippling further and further into a self-imposed 'dark age' of sorts. Boris Yeltsin would probably have been the man in charge for this hypothetical fall. The first democratically elected President of Russia would have had to deal with many of the political and social issues that he did in reality, but if anything, his harsh tactics for regaining political stablility would have only reinforced the image of the old-guard Soviet leaders. Firing upon your own Parliament with tanks does not exactly promote the best idea of democracy, but much more like Prague Spring.

To condemn Yeltsin, as Gorbachev was to be within his own country, would be just as an injustice as to any other leader who took control during a major power shift. His tactics would have probably made him, in some strange twisted way, more respected than if he let the USSR just break apart like Gorbachev did. Some leaders realize that major changes are necessary for a country to prosper, but others are bound to a die-hard philosophy (ahem..Ghadafi) that they would rather see their empire fall than to let go of their immense power.

The fall could be partially attributed to the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, where rebels heavily armed and skilled in mountain warfare, defeated the once mighty Red Army (with the help of US Stinger Missiles I might add) despite supposedly being overmatched. Once the smaller parts of the USSR realized how crippled the Soviet Army was after a long unproductive war, it was a much easier decision than before to flex their muscle and break away.