Some background ideas...
 

Hi everyone,

Here are a few ideas for some of the things that the USSR could have done during the 1990s to save their dyinig economy. In my modified v1.0 Timeline i had mention some of the reforms that allowed the USSR and the Eastern Bloc to recover from their flagging economies.

So I was wanting to share some ideas that could have been part of those 'reforms' and see if anyoe else had ideas as well.

They leased 'space' on the heavy-lift capabilities of the Soviet Space Program. Thus making money by offering a cheaper alternative to NASA for putting satellites into orbit... Similar to what the PRC had been doing... Remember how the Clinton Administration gave the Red Chinese the technology to imporve their launch capacity that had the additional ability to allow their strategic missiles to become ICBMs?

Throughout the 1990s the Soviets and Eastern bloc could easily produce cheaper petroleum products for sale to the West. They could build extensive networks of pipelines and railways to get oil and other natural resources they pocess to sale to the West... Just like the PRC has been doing, they could allow Western corporations to invest in the Soviet system. Thus allowing these selected western companies to have access to highly trained and educated engineers and scientists whom would be able to produce all kinds of cheap goods.

Does anyone have more ideas? Using the real world PRC as a model we could easily create even more reasons why the West would have provided so much overt support to the PRC during the Sino-Soviet War.

In the real world, during the 1980s the USSR had allowed some western businesses to have access to their markets... With the continuation of the Soviet and communist control of the Easter Bloc, they could have easily started refroms that could have presented the same appearence of a strong economic success that we had seen during the aftermath of WW2 that had convinced many left-leaning intellectuals to point to the Soviet system and saying that the centralized planning was such a more superior way to go (and was the reason why the Marshall Plan was launched, to act as a counter to the growing Soviet influence in Central Europe).

Does any of this make sense? or is my meds causing me to have a really messed up and rambling post???