Yellow Plenty

I'm reading Krugman's The Return of Depression Economics and he has an interesting hypothesis about the collapse of the Soviet Empire. He believes it might have been partly caused by the Soviets being demoralized by the success of capitalist development in Asia. Specifically, Japan from 1953-1973 developed at warp speed going from a largely agricultural economy to an economic powerhouse cranking out steel, autos and consumer electronics. And now robots. I wonder how they managed their monetary policy.