Second Russian Civil War (c. 1985)?

[ChaoticGenius]

Due to my deficiencies in the internal politics of Soviet Russia as of 1985, this is an intellectual exercise for those who can answer, and a learning experience for myself.

Would a Second Russian Civil War be possible approximately in 1985 (1987 at the latest beginning)? Would a hardliner success be viable?

Assume the following things about the world ITTL:
- Reagan's SDI, or an alternate version, is active and is being used to monitor Soviet missile silos in event of war
- Submarines and late WWII bombers have become necessary alternatives of nuclear weapon transportation for the Soviets as a result of the above
- An alternate version of Able Archer is being practiced during the period between 1985 and 1987

Thank you, and the best of luck in theorizing and predicting!

 

[ComradeDoge]

You simply don't have enough context here. What are the sides? Do the rebels have popular support? Do they have support from civilian leadership? Who controls the oil fields?

Simply too vague to take a stab at guessing?

 

[Tibby the Cat]

You simply don't have enough context here. What are the sides? Do the rebels have popular support? Do they have support from civilian leadership? Who controls the oil fields?

Simply too vague to take a stab at guessing?

Click to shrink...

In a similar line, can we assume similar circumstances to the historical coup attempt?

 

[Madam Carstein]

Not really a chance.

The Soviet system, while deeply flawed and economically moribund by 1985, was actually not guaranteed to collapse in 1991. It could have limped along: not an effective or viable system, but one that sort of clings to life.

But it was also extraordinarily brittle and vulnerable, and the thing is, the Soviet system couldn't deal with shocks in this era. And the thing, once it gets a shock like that, the likely result is collapse rather than civil war. You can have civil war in individual former Soviet Republics: old Communist Party officials fighting against reformist elements or religious extremists (as was the case in Tajikistan) but an out and out civil war for control of the USSR or Russia is quite far-fetched.

The simple fact is at this time the Soviet system was deeply unwanted in many areas: the Baltic States were determined to regain independence, as were Georgia and Armenia. The Muslim SSRs: Azerbaijan and the Central Asian Republics all voted into the nineties to preserve the Soviet Union (albeit as a federal system with significant devolution of power away from the central government) but this wasn't enough to keep it together. There were simply too many parts of the USSR, including Ukraine, the agricultural and industrial breadbasket, that were more or less irreconcilable and would not remain in the Soviet Union under any circumstances. And the regions which wanted to leave simply were too numerous for the USSR to continue to exist even as a reduced state. The way that the situation was in the late period of the Soviet Union: once enough critical mass of opposition was generated, there just wasn't a way to preserve the Soviet Union, even when one factors in the continuing loyalty of many non-Russian SSRs.