Military Spending in the USSR: A Reconsideration

This essay discusses the reasons for some of the major problems in estimating the costs and burden of Soviet and Russian military efforts. It is argued that the traditional approaches to the topic, lacking strong systemic and institutional context, have supplied inadequate indicators. Moreover, most of the difficulties of reconsideration originate from the general distortion of statistical and informational institutions, peculiarities of the defence budgeting and procurement system, which make defence expenditures a weak indicator of Soviet defence efforts. The author seeks to identify alternative evaluations presented in some recently published books and discusses prospects for studying the Russian defence economy. Though most of the suggested methods have to be treated with caution, they may prove useful in conjunction with other indicators and aimed more at analysing trends than presenting precise figures.