Military History of The Soviet Union - Military-industrial Complex and The Economy

Military-industrial Complex and The Economy

With the notable exceptions of Khrushchev and possibly Gorbachev, Soviet leaders since the late 1920s have emphasized military production over investment in the civilian economy. The high priority given to military production has traditionally enabled military-industrial enterprises to commandeer the best managers, labor, and materials from civilian plants. As a result, the Soviet Union has produced some of the world's most advanced armaments. In the late 1980s, however, Gorbachev transferred some leading defense industry officials to the civilian sector of the economy in an effort to make it as efficient as its military counterpart.

The integration of the party, government, and military in the Soviet Union was most evident in the area of defense-related industrial production. Gosplan, the state planning committee, had an important role in directing necessary supplies and resources to military industries. The Defense Council made decisions on the development and production of major weapons systems. The Defense Industry Department of the Central Committee supervised all military industries as the executive agent of the Defense Council. Within the government, the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers headed the Military Industrial Commission, which coordinated the activities of many industrial ministries, state committees, research and development organizations, and factories and enterprises that designed and produced arms and equipment for the armed forces.

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union devoted a quarter of its gross economic output to the defense sector (at the time most Western analysts believed that this figure was 15%). At the time, the military-industrial complex employed at least one of every five adults in the Soviet Union. In some regions of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, at least half of the workforce was employed in defense plants. (The comparable U.S. figures were roughly one-sixteenth of gross national product and about one of every sixteen in the workforce.) In 1989, one-fourth of the entire Soviet population was engaged in military activities, whether active duty, military production, or civilian military training.