Here's an even more horrifying thought:

[PCIntern]

Was this the Master Plan that was conceived prior to Glasnost and pursued in order to lull the West into believing that the Red Menace was gone? Did the Russians have an equivalent of the fictional Kronsteen from Ian Fleming's From Russia With Love who planned all this?

This sequence of events would make a fantastic book: they used our novelists' fiction against us.

[Crunchy Frog]

1. It's the Koch brothers master plan.

Russian involvement is likely incidental and opportunistic.

[philosslayer]

2. So the Soviet Union dissolved their entire empire...

In a devious plot to lull us to sleep, and then spring this on us 25+ years later. Sounds plausible to me.

[PCIntern]

3. Just kidding of course

Ain't got no Sensayuma.

Then again... hoo nose????

[FarCenter]

4. Shock Revelation! Putin Secretly Planned Collapse Of Soviet Union To Make Russia Great Again

https://www.darkmoon.me/2015/shock-revelation-putin-secretly-planned-collapse-of-soviet-union-to-make-russia-great-again/

This conspiracy theory goes back before Putin to the early 1990s when it was claimed that the collapse of the USSR was only a ploy to weaken the West.

[Coventina]

5. No, this is just Putin making lemonade out of lemons. Whilst lining his own pockets, of course.