If the Soviet Union had continued to exist, today Russians would have become a national minority.
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of St. Petersburg State University Boris Mironov writes about this, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports in Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
“The rapid population growth in Muslim republics with depopulation in Christian ones was fraught not only with economic, but also with political complications. If the USSR had survived only 10 years later, in 1999, Russians would have remained in the minority and in the future this process would have gained momentum (see Table 7). A decrease in the number of Russians would inevitably lead to a decline in their role in all power structures and to an increase in the influence of the Muslim republics. The strengthening of the latter would occur against the background of the consolidation and activation of Islam throughout the world,” Mironov believes.
“A powerful wave of re-Islamization would inevitably engulf the Soviet Union if it had survived into the XNUMXst century, since it has currently covered the entire territory of the post-Soviet space. Islam has become an effective weapon in the hands of various political forces to achieve interests far from religion. As a result, the existence of the Soviet Union would have been seriously challenged, and it is difficult to say whether it would have been able to cope with it, and if it could, then at what cost,” the professor writes.
According to him, after this the fate of the Soviet Union would be at the mercy of national elites and depend on market circumstances.
“So the disintegration of the USSR is a disaster in the short term, but in the long term it is probably a good thing. This gives grounds to recognize the collapse of the Soviet Union as an optimistic tragedy,” Mironov concluded.