Saudi Arabia Crashed the Oil Price in 1986 — And the Soviet Union Never Recovered

By November 1985 oil was near $32 a barrel. Six months later it was near $10, the steepest sustained price collapse the oil market had seen. That one unheard-of decision by a Saudi oil minister did more to end the Soviet Union than any speech at the Berlin Wall. In this video, we trace it from the start: the 1972 US-Soviet grain deal that locked Moscow into needing hard currency, the 1977 "Great Grain Robbery," Saudi Arabia's collapsing oil revenue through the early 1980s, Ahmed Zaki Yamani's September 1985 decision to abandon the swing producer role, the resulting price crash and the roughly $20 billion a year Soviet hard-currency loss it triggered, the debt spiral that followed, and how that financial trap shaped Moscow's choices in Poland and East Germany right up to 1991. We also look at how Russia today carries an eerily similar exposure. This isn't the Reagan-ended-communism version you grew up hearing. It's the financial mechanism underneath it that almost nobody connects. 🔔 Subscribe for more deep dives into the hidden forces shaping our world. 👍 Like this video if you found it thought-provoking. #ColdWar #SovietUnion #OilCrisis #Geopolitics #History #SaudiArabia