How CHEAP Oil Killed the World's Largest Superpower (Cold War)

Описание: In 1980, the Soviet Union was a nuclear superpower with the world's largest military, a space program that awed the planet, and oil revenues flooding its treasury. By 1991, it ceased to exist—dissolved without a single foreign soldier crossing its borders. The death certificate listed one cause: the price of oil dropped from thirty dollars to ten.

This is the story of how a single commodity built an empire's illusion of prosperity, and how a Saudi production decision six thousand miles away signed its death warrant.



The Soviet collapse remains one of history's most stunning economic implosions—a superpower that crumbled not from military defeat, but from catastrophic commodity dependency. When Arab oil embargoes sent crude prices soaring in the 1970s, Moscow found itself holding the planet's most valuable resource. Siberian oil exports generated over sixty percent of hard currency earnings, allowing the Kremlin to import Western grain, subsidize consumer prices, and paper over a fundamentally broken command economy.

Soviet economists warned explicitly that this dependency would "threaten the economic sovereignty of the state." Leadership ignored them. The money was too good.

Then came the twin shocks: a decade-long quagmire in Afghanistan draining five billion dollars annually, followed by Saudi Arabia's 1986 decision to flood global markets. Oil crashed seventy percent in months. The hard currency lifeline severed. Store shelves emptied. Republics declared sovereignty. Within five years, the red flag came down forever.

This documentary traces the precise sequence of decisions—from the ignored 1977 diversification memo to Gorbachev's doomed reform gamble—that transformed resource wealth into systemic fragility. The pattern did not die with the Soviet Union. It is repeating today.


WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
Commodity Dependency as National Vulnerability — How relying on a single export for hard currency creates an economy that appears prosperous but cannot survive price volatility.

The Ignored Warning — The classified 1977 Soviet memo that predicted exactly how oil dependency would threaten state sovereignty, and why leadership chose to bury it.

The Saudi Decision of 1986 — How a strategic choice to increase oil production triggered a seventy percent price collapse that delivered an economic heart attack to the Soviet system.

Reform Without Foundation — Why Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika, designed to save the system, instead accelerated its disintegration by releasing decades of suppressed tension.

The Modern Echo — How Venezuela, Russia, and other resource-dependent states are repeating the identical structural mistakes that killed the Soviet Union.

DISCLAIMER: This video is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice. Macroeconomic analysis involves probabilities, not certainties. Viewers should consult with a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.

ABOUT THE CHANNEL
THE UNTOLD ECONOMY explores the hidden mechanics of power, money, and crisis. We deconstruct the crashes, wars, and policy mistakes that shaped the modern world, strictly focusing on the period from the 1850s to today. This is not news; this is a forensic analysis of why systems fail.




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