Country survey XVI the defence sector in the economy of a declining superpower: Soviet Union and Russia, 1965-2001

Christopher Davis ()

Defence and Peace Economics, 2002, vol. 13, issue 3, 145-177

Abstract: The Soviet Union was able to develop a large military-industrial complex and become the world's second superpower despite deficiencies in its centrally planned economy because defence was given high priority status and special planning, rationing and administrative mechanisms were used to attain national security objectives. However, in the period 1976-85 the effectiveness of priority protection diminished and defence institutions experienced more of the problems typical of the shortage economic system. The heavy defence burden also created growing difficulties for the civilian economy. The attempts by the Gorbachev government to reform the defence sector and improve defence-economic relationships during perestroika (1985-91) uniformly failed. For most of the transition period, the Russian military-industrial complex has been adversely affected by its low priority status, cuts in defence spending, instability of the hybrid politico-economic system, and negative growth of the economy. The armed forces and defence industry have been reduced in size and their outputs of military services and equipment have fallen to low levels. Nevertheless, the Russian armed forces still have over one million troops, significant stocks of sophisticated conventional weapons, and a large nuclear arsenal. The government of President Putin has raised the priority of the defence sector, increased real defence spending, and adopted ambitious plans to revive Russian military power. It is likely, though, that tight resource constraints will hamper efforts to reform the armed forces and to upgrade weapons. By 2010 Russia will be an important, but not dominant, military power in Eurasia.

Keywords: Soviet Union; Ussr; Russia; Defence Economics; Defence Sector; Military-industrial Complex; Defence Expenditure; Defence Budget; Defence Burden; Arms Race; Armed Forces; Logistics; Defence Industry; Military Rdt&E; Arms Trade; National Security; Conversion; Disarmament; Economic Systems; Defence Planning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10242690210978 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:defpea:v:13:y:2002:i:3:p:145-177

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GDPE20

DOI: 10.1080/10242690210978

Access Statistics for this article

Defence and Peace Economics is currently edited by Professor Keith Hartley

More articles in Defence and Peace Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().