If democratization had not taken place, would the USSR remained a whole rather than breaking apart?

During the past few days, we have been discussing the fall of the USSR. The USSR had many internal problems such as starvation, low quality products, and the shortages of supplies. In the past, the USSR had tightened the belts of its people and simply carried on through the hardship. The biggest difference between the USSR in the past, and the USSR in the 1987, was democratization. In previous time, the people of the USSR feared the party and would do everything that they obeyed due to the communists keeping the people under strict control. With Gorbachev as the current leader of the Soviet Union, many satellite countries declared freedom from communism and the USSR. These actions showed the people of the Soviet Union that liberation from communism was achievable. With these inspirational examples, the people of the Soviet Union amassed and together over-through communism. In the Russian part of the USSR, almost all the people were against the communist party. When the tanks of the August Coup came rolling in to put down the protests of the people, the tank operators would not attack the people, and instead just participated in the rebellion. Democratization had created a weakness in the communist dictatorship of the USSR which made it possible for the satellite countries to rebel, which in turn allowed Russia and other parts of the USSR to disassociate themselves from the USSR. I believe that if Gorbachev had not weakened the communist regime with democratization, the USSR, as a whole would have continued its reign. collapse