From the quoted article:

"The timeline of the collapse of the Soviet Union can be traced to September 13, 1985. On this date, Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the minister of oil of Saudi Arabia, declared that the monarchy had decided to alter its oil policy radically.

That doesn't quite fit the connotations I associate with "overwhelming macroeconomic forces at play". That was a specific policy decision ... which I don't believe you can isolate from things like the USSR's genocidal occupation of Afghanistan, and the Muslim world's many reactions to it.

As I understand it, we strongly encouraged the Saudis in this policy. Visibly, by things like selling them F-15 and E-3A AWACS planes in the early '80s before that policy change (very controversial arms deals back then).

As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, as part of Reagan's unique determination to end the Soviet Union, we the USA did everything we could to deny it hard currency, like obstruct and sabotage the export of natural gas to Western Europe.

And like good capitalists, after Reagan took office, resumed making a buck in the process by selling them grain ^_^.

ADDED: Why the bleep didn't Gorbachev et. al. allow a massive increase in household plots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_plot We always expected (see for example Red Storm Rising if I remember correctly) that when things got tight, the restrictions on them would be relaxed and the resulting productivity increase would tide them over. Or was that attempted but failed? Or is this "oil and grains" economic picture a bit too simple (as I've noted natural gas also played a role).

The argument would be that the Policy Decision was simply the reaction to larger forces at play - in much the same way high oil prices resulting in fracking in the US and the Oil Sands in Canada being developed, and taking away market share from Saudi Arabia (weakening their geopolitical position), one could say that it was a foregone conclusion that Oil prices were going to drop in the 80s after the 1973 oil crisis.

That's the thing - every time you see a huge increase in the cost of anything, economic forces kick in, and there is a response.

That's a long winded way of saying there were much, much bigger forces at play than Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani in 1985, and, his announcement can be seen as little more than the result of those forces.

Thanks for that. And another economic perspective as well:

http://mises.org/daily/6956/The-Economics-Behind-the-Fall-of...