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As far as I know, relatively little attention has been devoted in the West to the study of various financial problems in the USSR. Among 1 the works I have seen are Gallik et aI. , The Soviet, 1968 -evidently the most important work on this theme; Powell, "Monetary," 1972, in which the statistics of monetary circulation in the USSR are examin ed; Laulan, Banking, 1973, in which some of the questions I examine are also addressed; and CIA, The Soviet, 1977, which is about an analysis of the budget. Moreover, many specialists have turned to the analysis of the expenditures of the budget in an attempt to determine the amount of financing of military expenditures-for example, Holzman, Financial, 1975. Due to the scarcity of data a large number of important problems have remained unstudied in all these works. One of these is the following. If we believe official Soviet statistics, the state budget of the USSR regularly comes out with an excess of revenues over expendi tures; each year a "budget profit" is formed. This in itself already seems quite strange. We all know that the Soviet economy, although it developed quite rapidly (especially in the past), has experienced constant and serious difficulties; we know that the plans are rarely fulfilled and that there were years of great crop failures.
During the Cold War, when the United States' intelligence efforts were focused on the Soviet Union, one of the primary tasks of the Central Intelligence Agency was to estimate Soviet defense spending. In Soviet Defense Spending: A History of CIA Estimates, 1950-1990, Noel E. Firth and James H. Noren, who spent much of their long CIA careers estimating and studying Soviet defense spending, provide a closer look at those estimates and consider how and why they were made. In the process, the authors chronicle the development of a significant intelligence analytic capability. Firth and Noren also explain what the CIA has learned since the collapse of the Soviet Union about the USSR's actual military spending during the Cold War.
For half a century the Soviet economy was inefficient but stable. In the late 1980s, to the surprise of nearly everyone, it suddenly collapsed. Why did this happen? And what role did Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's economic reforms play in the country's dissolution? In this groundbreaking study, Chris Miller shows that Gorbachev and his allies tried to learn from the great success story of transitions from socialism to capitalism, Deng Xiaoping's China. Why, then, were efforts to revitalize Soviet socialism so much less successful than in China? Making use of never-before-studied documents from the Soviet politburo and other archives, Miller argues that the difference between the Soviet Union and China--and the ultimate cause of the Soviet collapse--was not economics but politics. The Soviet government was divided by bitter conflict, and Gorbachev, the ostensible Soviet autocrat, was unable to outmaneuver the interest groups that were threatened by his economic reforms. Miller's analysis settles long-standing debates about the politics and economics of perestroika, transforming our understanding of the causes of the Soviet Union's rapid demise.
How much does the Soviet Union spend on defense, economic development, social welfare, and education? How does it finance the enormous scale of its expenditures under all these heads? What typical sequences are disclosed, and how do they mesh with other types of behavior in the Soviet economy? Can one even believe the official figures? If so, what do they tell us? If not, in which directions may they need to be corrected? Has the degree of secretiveness varied over time? (Evidence is adduced to show that it has.) What are the branch and territorial components of the budget, and how are they put together, under which pressures and within which timescale? What is the budget's legal status, and how is it affected by legislative procedures? In this in-depth investigation into the scope, structure, and meaning of the Soviet budget, Raymond Hutchings answers these questions. Based largely on an intensive analysis of quantitative series built up over a very long period, this book contributes to understanding the Soviet economy from an angle made possible by no other approach. Students of the Soviet economy, economists, and specialists in international affairs will find the book's data, conclusions, and methods of analysis extremely useful.
A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union—showing how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms led to its demise “A deeply informed account of how the Soviet Union fell apart.”—Rodric Braithwaite, Financial Times “[A] masterly analysis.”—Joshua Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal In 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong with five thousand nuclear-tipped missiles and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the twentieth century. Thirty years on, Vladislav Zubok offers a major reinterpretation of the final years of the USSR, refuting the notion that the breakup of the Soviet order was inevitable. Instead, Zubok reveals how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms, intended to modernize and democratize the Soviet Union, deprived the government of resources and empowered separatism. Collapse sheds new light on Russian democratic populism, the Baltic struggle for independence, the crisis of Soviet finances—and the fragility of authoritarian state power.
How much does the Soviet Union spend on defense, economic development, social welfare, and education? How does it finance the enormous scale of its expenditures under all these heads? What typical sequences are disclosed, and how do they mesh with other types of behavior in the Soviet economy? Can one even believe the official figures? If so, what do they tell us? If not, in which directions may they need to be corrected? Has the degree of secretiveness varied over time? (Evidence is adduced to show that it has.) What are the branch and territorial components of the budget, and how are they put together, under which pressures and within which timescale? What is the budget s legal status, and how is it affected by legislative procedures? In this in-depth investigation into the scope, structure, and meaning of the Soviet budget, Raymond Hutchings answers these questions. Based largely on an intensive analysis of quantitative series built up over a very long period, this book contributes to understanding the Soviet economy from an angle made possible by no other approach. Students of the Soviet economy, economists, and specialists in international affairs will find the book s data, conclusions, and methods of analysis extremely useful."
"My goal is to show the reader that the Soviet political and economic system was unstable by its very nature. It was just a question of when and how it would collapse...." —From the Introduction to Collapse of an Empire The Soviet Union was an empire in many senses of the word—a vast mix of far-flung regions and accidental citizens by way of conquest or annexation. Typical of such empires, it was built on shaky foundations. That instability made its demise inevitable, asserts Yegor Gaidar, former prime minister of Russia and architect of the "shock therapy" economic reforms of the 1990s. Yet a growing desire to return to the glory days of empire is pushing today's Russia backward into many of the same traps that made the Soviet Union untenable. In this important new book, Gaidar clearly illustrates why Russian nostalgia for empire is dangerous and ill-fated: "Dreams of returning to another era are illusory. Attempts to do so will lead to defeat." Gaidar uses world history, the Soviet experience, and economic analysis to demonstrate why swimming against this tide of history would be a huge mistake. The USSR sowed the seeds of its own economic destruction, and Gaidar worries that Russia is repeating some of those mistakes. Once again, for example, the nation is putting too many eggs into one basket, leaving the nation vulnerable to fluctuations in the energy market. The Soviets had used revenues from energy sales to prop up struggling sectors such as agriculture, which was so thoroughly ravaged by hyperindustrialization that the Soviet Union became a net importer of food. When oil prices dropped in the 1980s, that revenue stream diminished, and dependent sectors suffered heavily. Although strategies requiring austerity or sacrifice can be politically difficult, Russia needs to prepare for such downturns and restrain spending during prosperous times. Collapse of an Empire shows why it is imperative to fix the roof before it starts to rain, and why so
The transformation of the Soviet economy is bound to be extraordinarily complex and will take many years to complete. Three closely related areas require action at the outset of the process: macroeconomic stabilization, including fiscal, monetary, trade and payments, and incomes policies; price reform in an environment of increased domestic and external competition; and ownership reform, involving the rapid privatization of retail trade and small enterprises, along with the commercialization of large, state-owned enterprises. Many measures are needed to support policy actions in these three areas. A social safety net will be needed to protect the most vulnerable from the short-term adverse consequences of the reform process. Other measures include completion of the legal framework for a market economy, the creation of a market system for banking and finance, the demonopolization and restructuring of many enterprises, the reconstruction of the transport and communications infrastructure, the development of a system of labor relations, the process of privatization of state enterprises and collective farms, and the addressing of serious environmental problems. These and other issues, and the close relationships between them, are discussed in this study.