[LINK] "Will the Soviet Union Survive to 1984?"

[rfmcdonald]

John Reilly's The Long View linked to a substantially excerpted version of Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik's Will the Soviet Union Survive to 1984? (1, 2). As Wikipedia notes, Will the Soviet Union Survive to 1984?, predicted Soviet reform through the slow-motion collapse and discrediting of the current regime.

"If...one views the present "liberalization" as the growing decrepitude of the regime rather than its regeneration, then the logical result will be its death, which will be followed by anarchy."

Amalrik predicted that when the breakup of the Soviet empire came it would take one of two forms. Either power would pass to extremist elements and the country would "disintegrate into anarchy, violence, and intense national hatred," or the end would come peacefully and lead to a federation like the British Commonwealth or the European Common Market.

As Reilly notes, though Maoist China never managed to occupy the eastern Soviet Union after a long drawn-out Sino-Soviet war, Amalrik did get quite a few of the details right.