Could the USSR be saved?

Theoretically, yes, China did not collapse, although there is a one-party state and socialism according to the constitution, similar to the DPRK and Cuba. The last two had a very weak economy when compared with the USSR in 1991. Consequently, the result depended on the course of power, in the USSR it turned out to be weak by the end of the 1980s, and the roots of this phenomenon go quite deeply. It can be noted that the ideological paths of the USSR and China diverged at the turn of the 1950s-1960s during the struggle against the “personality cult”.