Copy post — Tela Network

The collapse of the USSR: A possible explanation
StJohn Piano
17 May 2026
Post #135
http://tela.network/forum/135/

The state functionally went bankrupt, and was dissolved in what amounts to essentially a corporate-sovereign restructuring.

Starting in the 1970s and accelerating thereafter, the Soviet growth model - extensive capital accumulation poured into new urban factories, power plants, steel mills, and machine tools - had effectively run out of low-hanging investment opportunities, resulting in persistently diminishing marginal growth potential.

A total lack of ... creative destruction on one side, and ballooning imperial obligations on the other.

To paper over these holes, the Soviet Union financed its civilian consumption and military spending - along with the subsidies it paid to its puppets - through oil rents made possible by the global energy crisis of the 1970s. But when oil prices normalized again in the mid-1980s, the regime was forced onto international debt markets, where it was eventually strangled.

https://boydinstitute.org/p/debt-killed-the-soviet-empire