No Soviet collapse or Russia keeps most of the post-Soviet republics

[MarshalBraginsky]

What about Georgia? it was messy too.

Forgot about that too, and I'm sure Central Asia had an ethnic conflict as well. Probably involving either Uzbeks or Tajiks.

 

[Eivind]

Pretty much everyone was afraid of that, as Yugoslavia was tearing itself apart that very moment. Gorbachev threatened both to take Crimea and Eastern Ukraine and warned of another Yugoslavia happening if the union broke up. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed.

Had there been no Yugoslavia as an example of what not to do, things could've gotten bad fast.

Isn't that just what is happening now?

 

[Eivind]

Gregory Freeze gives an example of how Yeltsin encouraged centrifugal tendencies in order to increase his own power vis-à-vis Gorbachev:

Excerpt taken from his book Russia a history, page 470:" In his struggle with Gorbachev, Yeltsin himself had encouraged centrifugal tendencies by urging local authorities to withold taxes and act on their own - most vividly telling the leadership in Tatarstan in 1990 to "grab as much sovereignity as you can swallow".

Thus Yeltsin was willing to go very far, even to the point of weakening his own country, in order to increase his own power.