Petroleum is one of the defining resources of technology underpinning much of modern, mechanized human society. Its importance to modern states seems obvious. Many wars have been fought over the control of oil, and many more threaten us in the future. The Soviet Union, which boasted of being the country richest with energy sources, used its vast control of oil as a political and economic weapon during the Cold War. The precipitous decline of oil prices in the 1980s was a contributing factor in the demise of the USSR in 1991.
Felix Rehschuh's fine study of the development of the oil industry in the Soviet Union convincingly shows that the Soviet Union only belatedly arrived as an oil superpower. Once Soviet leaders fully grasped the importance of oil as an energy source and a political and economic weapon, they used it forcefully and strategically to extend their political influence. Rehschuh...