[Carry_Okie]

It was not Ronald Reagan who brought about the regime’s collapse, nor was it the dissidents, not for all their diligence cobbling together reams of samizdat. It was the economy.

It was Reagan, because it was he who killed the economy by deregulating American oil production, thereby dropping the price, and therefore killing Russian foreign exchange cash flow with which to supply its massive new navy.

[DB]

The arms race is what bankrupted the USSR in the short term and communism in the long term.

[BobL]

“It was Reagan, because it was he who killed the economy by deregulating American oil production, thereby dropping the price, and therefore killing Russian foreign exchange cash flow with which to supply its massive new navy. “

A number of other things too, of course. My favorite was when we figured out the Russians were stealing our software used to run natural gas pumping stations. Rather than stopping them, we simply added a bit of code and let them have it. A bit later the largest recorded non-nuclear explosion occurred west of the Urals. Needless to say, the Russians were done stealing code after that. CIA director William Casey gets credit for that little stunt.