Given real-life Russia's tenuous grasp on democracy, regressing back into authoritarianism isn't that implausible.

Am I investigating too closely, or is this a "patience, all will be revealed" thing?

- Zatch

It's not likely to be all that important?

But the assumption is that the USSR managed to weather the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and evolve into a more streamlined form of communism/socialism with a market economy - essentially what Gorbachev tried, but failed, to accomplish with his reforms in the real world.

Thus, the USSR in the world of The Iron Age is authoritarian, but not entirely totalitarian, and has a fairly robust economy. They've ramped back some on that "inevitable international march of Communism" thing, too. In 2032 the Soviet Union is considered a fairly decent neighbor.

(This is largely how the world stood in Neon Exodus Evangelion, too, USSR-wise. I can't explain my odd fascination with the Soviet Union and what it might have become... it's just there and I have to play with it sometimes.)

Also, just for the record, Ben Stark's sixth favorite international city is Ulan Bator. They just don't make yakburgers like that anywhere else in the world.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/