Global Economic Shocks and the End of the Cold War, 1970-1990

The global economic upheavals of the 1970s were decisive in ending the Cold War. The West and the Soviet bloc, despite their ideological differences, confronted a common set of economic shocks such as the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system, the exhaustion of their respective economic growth paradigms, the rise of global financial markets, and price hikes in the commodities markets. The response to these shocks created a new international political economy that magnified U.S. power in unexpected ways and fractured the Soviet bloc.

Host or Publisher Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies