WI: The Soviet Union survived as a rump state in Central Asia?

[raharris1973]

In OTl, Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to secede from the Union, doing so on 16 December 1991, four days after Russia did. In addition, a Gallup poll in 2013 showed that 61% of Kyrgyzstani respondents said the dissolution of the Soviet Union did more harm than good.

Interestingly, earlier in the 1980s, there had been some speculation that the majority Islamic population of Central Asia would be the spearhead of separatism from the Soviet Union, but it turned out not to be the case. The Central Asian 'stans' missed the union most, compared to more western nationalities like the Balts, Moldovans, Ukrainians, Caucasian Georgians and Armenians, and even briefly, Yeltsin's Russia's who told themselves they were subsidizing the others.

So what if the Soviet Union remained as a rump state in Central Asia? Obviously their superpower status is gone, and they are only a regional power at best. Might they adopt a more Turkic national identity? How would their relations with the newly independent Russia be?

I imagine Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan would be a prime candidate to lead the rump Central Asian Union, and he would have the most experience dealing with a diverse population, including the many ethnic Slavs in his state.

Might this rump Soviet Union do some hitching of itself to the Chinese economic model, and geopolitical partnership with China. There would be trade complementarities, energy for tech, heavy niche goods (Soviet aerospace and weapons) for light industrial goods), and China would be a partner not bugging them about human rights.

Could this rump Soviet Union have both the interest and means to keep up the aid program to the Afghan Najibullah regime going, which OTL survived until 1993 or 1994, or at least exercise enough influence to keep the Taliban out of power from 1996 on?

If China is finding a beautiful new partnership with the rump Soviet Union in Central Asia in the 1990s and beyond, how does China reconcile or at least balance or prevent trouble from the likely conflicting agendas of its new (Soviet) and old (Pakistani) partners in Afghanistan?

 

[Airedale260]

I enjoy alternate history scenarios as much as anyone, but honestly, this really ignores what the state of the Soviet Union really was in the 1970s and 1980s.

The reason that poll said "things were better under the USSR" is because of a couple of factors: 1) That things generally look better in the past, and 2) that economic reality wasn't a thing; it was all politics. But for that reason it was unsustainable. It took a lot of government spending to keep the whole house of cards going, and it ran out.

Furthermore, the USSR, despite its propaganda to the contrary, wasn't a collection of various ethnicities happily living in proximity to one another: It was the Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians being racist as fuck towards everyone else, ESPECIALLY the Central Asian republics.

As far as propping up Najibullah goes, that wasn't going to happen, either. The USSR's main incomes were from oil sales until the early to mid 1980s, and then foreign weapons sales after. Note that these factories and resources were notably not in the 'stans. Furthermore, there was a ton of discontent after the Afghanistan war, since a disproportionate number of the casualties were from (you guessed it) the Central Asian republics. Also note that the populations are largely Turkic and Muslim, whereas the biggest powerhouse was Russia (which was Slavic and Orthodox).

Honestly, the fact that they were the last government to technically leave the USSR just reflects the general chaos in late 1991 since it was over a matter of days to a couple of weeks.

The only thing Kazakhstan has going for it is Baikonur, but all of the actual rockets and stuff are built and designed in European Russia.

A new union also isn't going to happen because all of the different guys in charge are going into insist they should lead it (Egos in politicians. Shocking, I know).

Meanwhile, the China of 1991 is nothing like the China of 2021. This is still in the early phases when they are encouraging investment to build up their own manufacturing and industrial base. They aren't going to be directing resources towards a competitor. And Central Asia has the notable feature of being landlocked, so there's no easy way to do international trade without going through Russia (both because of the Soviet setup where everything was routed to Moscow as well as the fact that the only sea connection between the Caspian and the Black Seas is through the Volga-Don Canal). This is also why Russia is STILL the big player in the region 30 years later.

 

[WolfBear]

In OTl, Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to secede from the Union, doing so on 16 December 1991, four days after Russia did. In addition, a Gallup poll in 2013 showed that 61% of Kyrgyzstani respondents said the dissolution of the Soviet Union did more harm than good.

Interestingly, earlier in the 1980s, there had been some speculation that the majority Islamic population of Central Asia would be the spearhead of separatism from the Soviet Union, but it turned out not to be the case. The Central Asian 'stans' missed the union most, compared to more western nationalities like the Balts, Moldovans, Ukrainians, Caucasian Georgians and Armenians, and even briefly, Yeltsin's Russia's who told themselves they were subsidizing the others.

So what if the Soviet Union remained as a rump state in Central Asia? Obviously their superpower status is gone, and they are only a regional power at best. Might they adopt a more Turkic national identity? How would their relations with the newly independent Russia be?

I imagine Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan would be a prime candidate to lead the rump Central Asian Union, and he would have the most experience dealing with a diverse population, including the many ethnic Slavs in his state.

Might this rump Soviet Union do some hitching of itself to the Chinese economic model, and geopolitical partnership with China. There would be trade complementarities, energy for tech, heavy niche goods (Soviet aerospace and weapons) for light industrial goods), and China would be a partner not bugging them about human rights.

Could this rump Soviet Union have both the interest and means to keep up the aid program to the Afghan Najibullah regime going, which OTL survived until 1993 or 1994, or at least exercise enough influence to keep the Taliban out of power from 1996 on?

If China is finding a beautiful new partnership with the rump Soviet Union in Central Asia in the 1990s and beyond, how does China reconcile or at least balance or prevent trouble from the likely conflicting agendas of its new (Soviet) and old (Pakistani) partners in Afghanistan?

AFAIK, Central Asians primarily miss the Soviet Union due to the subsidies that Russia and, to a lesser extent, Belarus provided them. If Russia leaves the Soviet Union, then there will be no one to provide subsidies to them any longer and thus no incentive for them to keep a rump Soviet Union intact. Now, you *could* try having a Central Asian Union instead, but this would simply mean Kazakhstan and perhaps Turkmenistan subsidizing the other, much poorer Central Asian countries--and I don't know whether the necessary commitment to this would actually exist among the leadership of Kazakhstan and/or Turkmenistan. With the Eurasian Economic Union, you at least have Russia footing a huge part of the subsidy bill for southern Central Asia instead.