Peak Oil and the Fall of the Soviet Union

After over 70 years in power, the mighty Soviet Empire unexpectedly vanished overnight and almost the entire communist tradition there dissolved. Was the cause of this cataclysmic collapse really the result of communist inefficiency and U.S. president Ronald Reagan’s Cold War military build up? Or was there an oil crisis that shocked the Soviet system? Or if Marxist-Leninist communism was so inefficient, then why did it last for over 70 years, through World War II and early Cold War tensions that were arguably also strong enough to have toppled it?

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