The Economy

[Jester]

I spent my first 12 years under Brezhnev and not Stalin and in the Ukrainian schools, everyone spoke Russian and Russian was the language taught in and taught first, with Ukranian being taught as a 2nd language. My uncle who was born in Uzbekistan, was also taught in Russian, and Uzbekistan is so far away from Russia, that it might as well be Mars.

Where in Ukraine was this? There have always been areas of Ukraine, from long before the Soviets until present, where Russian was the cradle tongue of the majority of people. If I understand correctly, if Yanukovich, rather than Yushchenko, had won the 2004 election, Russian would probably be a joint official language there. But that tension has been simmering since the days of Bogdan Khmelnytsky.

As far as the other Eastern block countries, maybe they still maintained their language as the primary, but I bet given another 50 years, that would have been fazed out also.

Could be. It's tough to say what would have happened, given such a radical counterfactual. Rising nationalist tensions were one of the major problems facing the Soviets in the 1980s - could they really have not only kept a lid on it, but rolled it all back, in 50 years?

BTW, IMO what caused communist collapse in the 80s/90s is D-Day in '44.

That seems a little far back to draw the causation. Certainly things would be very different if the Allies had never landed in Europe, and the Soviets had rolled across the whole continent. I think it would have made the Soviets less stable rather than more, by diminishing the relative influence of Russia proper as a power base. Tensions with the US would have become extreme, and I think the US could have (would have?) beaten the USSR in a 1946-1950s war in Europe, with their industrial base and their nuclear bomb. Plus, the USSR was still relatively reliant on US aid to keep its war machine going, even by the end of the war. But that's all just guessing. My counterfactual crystal ball just tells me "Outcome murky, try again."

-Jester