Let's assume Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika policy had succeeded and the USSR hadn't disintegrated. The Soviet Union would still be the Soviet Union. It might now be a country with a number of vibrant political parties, where different coalitions shared power in Moscow.
Its booming economy might have outstripped China's. German tourists wouldn't just go skiing in the Alps; they'd go to the Caucasus too and they wouldn't need a visa. And Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko would still be working on a collective farm somewhere near Minsk.
But you can forget all that because the huge country of 15 republics and 290 million people imploded 20 years ago. And Gorbachev remains today the person he was, in the eyes of his closest confidant Anatoly Chernyaev, on the day of his resignation on December 25, 1991, when he addressed his people from the Kremlin for the very last time to bemoan their country's demise.
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