[Tailgunner Joe]

Ronald Reagan's Secret Anti-Soviet War - As president of the United States, Ronald Reagan initiated a sweeping and unprecedented program of covert actions and economic-warfare initiatives that acted to greatly weaken the Soviet economy, its support for "wars of liberation," and its hold on its power in Eastern Europe....one of the most important NSC findings was NSDD 32, which authorized covert U.S. support of the Polish free union, Solidarity, and other anti-Soviet institutions in Poland to weaken and neutralize Soviet influence in that country. Another finding, NSDD-66, authorized the United States to wage economic and resource war on a "strategic triad" of resources deemed critical to the survival of the Soviet economy, including technology, trade and credits, according to former senior Reagan administration officials. This especially targeted Soviet imports of advanced Western technology and also Russia's oil industry, upon whose earnings Moscow depended for the bulk of its hard currency...

[instantgratification]

Oh, so Reagan caused the collapse of the world oil market. HAHAHA.

Solidarnosc would not have come off the ground had Pope John Paul II not endorsed it by telling Poles they had nothing to fear. It was after John Paul’s visit that millions joined Solidarnosc.

Cash had no impact on Solidarnosc’s success. Poland was an impetus because, unlike other parts of the USSR, once Solidarnosc was formed, workers united with the intelligentsia. That had never happened anywhere else in the Soviet bloc. Ever. Soviet dissidents were largely failed communists. Only a couple (Bukovsky, for one) were not trying to be “better communists”. They held the working class in contempt. And that is why such a movement was never formed in the USSR. The first person in the USSR to “speak” normally to the working man was Yeltsin.

As for the rest, nobody knew what was “vital” to the Soviet economy. This is a nice theory, but you know what? All those analytics in the CIA and military intelligence were taken completely by surprise by the collapse of the USSR.

What, exactly, does that tell you about American intelligence operations? I can’t blame them - totalitarian states are virtually impossible to infiltrate.