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Soviet Civil War in 1991

Ricardolindo

Well-known member
Location
Portugal
Say Yeltsin is killed in the 1991 Soviet coup and, without a figure for the opposition to rally around, a civil war occurs. The hardliners behind the coup certainly couldn't win but what, exactly, would happen? Would Afghan Mujahideen enter Central Asia? Would the Transnistrian War start earlier?
 
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The hardliners behind the coup certainly couldn't win but what, exactly, would happen?
Think a mixture between a mixture between 1993 Constitutional Crisis and the Yugoslav War writ large. I would imagine the cities being under the control of the 'Goverment' (Gangsters with bigs guns probably) whilst everywhere else will be on fire basically.
Would Afghan Mujahideen enter Central Asia?
Probably not, the Afghan folks were busy fighting each other at this point in time.
 
Yeltsin getting shot on the tank isn't impossible but seems unlikely to me – the man was a secular saint in 1991, after all. @Callan and I have discussed the far more likely possibility of Gorbachev getting shot by a trigger-happy guard during his little Black Sea holiday.

With regards to a civil war, well, you might have folks like Albert Makashov (that is, literal neo-Stalinists) taking up arms to preserve the Union as it is and restore it to the way it once was, but I doubt many people are actually going to do that! Certainly the Soviet breakup will be a lot messier in Russia than historically, and the political wounds of whatever form of civil war results will be long, long lasting, but I don't think said civil war will be particularly conventional – not a lot of pitched battles, more urban militias and guerrilla warfare, and, honestly, a bit lower-key than you might think. I really doubt you have any nukes fired, honestly, unless, again, a Makashov gets his hands on one.
 
Yeltsin getting shot on the tank isn't impossible but seems unlikely to me – the man was a secular saint in 1991, after all. @Callan and I have discussed the far more likely possibility of Gorbachev getting shot by a trigger-happy guard during his little Black Sea holiday.

With regards to a civil war, well, you might have folks like Albert Makashov (that is, literal neo-Stalinists) taking up arms to preserve the Union as it is and restore it to the way it once was, but I doubt many people are actually going to do that! Certainly the Soviet breakup will be a lot messier in Russia than historically, and the political wounds of whatever form of civil war results will be long, long lasting, but I don't think said civil war will be particularly conventional – not a lot of pitched battles, more urban militias and guerrilla warfare, and, honestly, a bit lower-key than you might think. I really doubt you have any nukes fired, honestly, unless, again, a Makashov gets his hands on one.

I could see Syria being a model for how it'd look, with such a pitch. Seems more accurate than Yugoslavia.

I thin the chances of a nuke or two (dozen) going missing shoots up though. Particularly considering the near-complete disintegration of Russian nuclear security in OTL. I'm now imagining a big international effort to secure those weapons-even bigger than the OTL one.

As above, but complete with tactical deployment to secure nukes, I guess.
 
I could see a lot of civilians lining up to fight in the Red Army militias on the pro-Soviet side. I take as my source for this statement the March 1991 referendum asking the Soviet peoples if they wanted to preserve the U.S.S.R.
 
I could see a lot of civilians lining up to fight in the Red Army militias on the pro-Soviet side. I take as my source for this statement the March 1991 referendum asking the Soviet peoples if they wanted to preserve the U.S.S.R.

But there isn't going to be a pro-Soviet side. Many people who supported their preservation of the Union also opposed the coup.
 
What happens to the massive Soviet army the Western powers needed to pay to get home as their logistics train collapsed?


I'm not sure there would be a civil war as such so much as a more violent disintegration, who is fighting who and who is paying the guys with the guns?

When things fell apart they fell apart fast.
 
What effect would this have on the Nagorno-Karabakh War? It was already happening and the Soviet central government supported the Azeri SSR against the Armenian SSR.
 
What effect would this have on the Nagorno-Karabakh War? It was already happening and the Soviet central government supported the Azeri SSR against the Armenian SSR.
Would there actually be much difference? I mean, in our TL, the USSR collapsed just four months later.
 
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