Soviet Military and Civilian Resource Allocation 1951-1980

Abstract

The “guns versus butter” literature focuses mainly on the industrialized capitalist democracies and has reported little success in empirically substantiating the existence of durable trade-off relationships between military spending and particular civilian programs during peacetime. This article identifies structural features of Soviet-type politicoeconomic systems that make them more likely to display such durable trade-offs and then demonstrates the point by multiple regression time-series estimation of the effects of changing rates of growth in Soviet military spending on 13 major civilian programs during the period 1951-1980, controlling for demographic, economic growth, and leadership succession effects. Despite considerable noise in the Soviet military spending data, substantial and robust trade-off phenomena are demonstrated only for housing construction and the production of durable consumer goods, whereas ideologically favored programs for productive investment and social spending (except perhaps old-age pensions) appear to have been much less affected by marginal changes in military spending.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Becker, A. S. (1981) The Burden of Soviet Defense: A Political-Economic Essay (R-2752-AF). Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.

Breslauer, G. W. (1982) Khrushchev and Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics. London: Allen & Unwin.

Bunce, V. (1981) Do New Leaders Make a Difference? Executive Succession and Public Policy Under Capitalism and Socialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.

Clarke, R. A. and D.J.I. Matko (1983) Soviet Economic Facts, 1917-81. New York: St. Martin's.

Cockle, P. (1978) “Analyzing Soviet defense spending: the debate in perspective.” Survival 20, 5: 209-219.

Cohn, S. H. (1973) “Economic burden of defense expenditures,” pp. 147-162 in U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee, Soviet Economic Prospects for the Seventies. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

Domke, W. K. , R. C. Eichenberg , and C. M. Kelleher (1983) “The illusions of choice: defense and welfare in advanced industrial democracies, 1948-1978.” Amer. Pol. Sci. Rev. 77, 1: 19-35.

Eberstadt, N. (1981) “The health crisis in the USSR.” New York Review of Books (February 19): 23-31.

Hutchings, R. (1983) The Soviet Budget. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.

10.

Jec (1982) USSR: Measures of Economic Growth and Development, 1950-1980: Studies Prepared for the Use of the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

11.

Lee, W. T. (1977) The Estimation of Soviet Defense Expenditures 1955-1975: An Unconventional Approach. New York: Praeger.

12.

Lee, W. T. (1980) “Prepared statement on estimates of Soviet defense spending,” in Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, House of Representatives, September 3, 1980. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

13.

Narkhoz (various years) Narodnoye khozyaystvo SSSR v.... g. [The National Economy of the USSR in the year...] Moscow: Central Statistical Administration.

14.

Russett, B. (1982) “Defense expenditures and national well-being.” Amer. Pol. Sci. Rev. 76, 4: 767-777.

15.

Smith, W. S. (1973) “Housing in the Soviet Union—big plans, little action,” in U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee, Soviet Economic Prospects for the 1970s. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

16.

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute . (n.d.) SIPRI Yearbook: World Armaments and Disarmaments. Cambridge: MIT Press.

17.

U.S. Department of Commerce (1973) Estimates and Projections of the Population of the USSR by Age and Sex, 1950 to 2000. International Population Reports, Series P-91 No. 23. Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census.

18.

U.S. Department of Commerce (1979) Population Projections by Age and Sex for the Republics and Major Economic Regions of the USSR, 1970-2000. International Population Reports, Series P-91 No. 26. Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census.