Le stime economiche della CIA e l’imprevedibile fine dell’URSS

In this article we will analyse the debate that took place around the assessments that the CIA gave of the economic situation in the Soviet Union, an evidently decisive key to understanding the overall health of the main political-military opponent of the United States. The article will be including the discussions that flared up in the American political establishment starting in 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the initial disorientation due to the loss of the historical adversary of the Cold War. Moreover, the positions taken by the Sovietologists in these discussions will be evaluated, as well as the role-played in these debates by the analysis developed in the 1980s by Soviet economists. We will be finally considering the official response given the CIA, actually rather late, since it arrived only in 2001. This was essentially aimed at confirming the correctness of its analyses and reiterating that its duties did not include that of predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union.