Secret Incomes of the Soviet State Budget
Secret Incomes of the Soviet State Budget

Author: Igor Birman

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2013-12-01

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 9401194270

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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.

Soviet Defense Spending
Soviet Defense Spending

Author: Noel E. Firth

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780890968055

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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.

The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy
The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy

Author: Chris Miller

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2016-10-13

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1469630184

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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.

Collapse of an Empire
Collapse of an Empire

Author: Yegor Gaidar

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0815731159

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"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

Hammer and Rifle
Hammer and Rifle

Author: David R. Stone

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13:

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Analysis of the central role of militarization in the devel opment of state, society and economy in the U.S.S.R. between the end of the "New Economic Plan" in 1926 and the conclusion of the first "Five-Year Plan" in 1933.

The Coming Soviet Crash
The Coming Soviet Crash

Author: Judy Shelton

Publisher:

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13:

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In this provocative and thoughtful analysis, Judy Shelton demonstrates that the Soviet financial crisis is severe, and the West's sending money to the Soviet Union for credit results in enhanced Soviet military capability, not consumer goods.

The Soviet Budget
The Soviet Budget

Author: Raymond Hutchings

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1983-06-18

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1349058580

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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."

The Soviet Mind
The Soviet Mind

Author: Isaiah Berlin

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9780815709046

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Isaiah Berlins response to the Soviet Union was central to his identity, both personally and intellectually. Never before collected, Berlins writings about the USSR include his accounts of his famous meetings with Russian writers shortly after the Second World War; the celebrated 1945 Foreign Office memorandum on the state of the arts under Stalin; his account of Stalins manipulative artificial dialectic; portraits of Osip Mandelshtam and Boris Pasternak; his survey of Soviet Russian culture written after a visit in 1956; a postscript stimulated by the events of 1989; and more.

Restructuring the Soviet Economy
Restructuring the Soviet Economy

Author: David A. Dyker

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-01-31

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1134917465

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Restructuring the Soviet Economy examines the Soviet leadership's most urgent question - how to revitalize the soviet economy. David Dyker argues that the current impasse can can only be understood in the context of the failure of 60 years of central planning. He analyses both the problems besetting the centrally planned system and those that have paralysed perestroika and assesses whether the most ambitious attempt ever to reform the Soviet economy will succeed.