For a few years, the published figure fell below the actual one by a wide margin. By 1932, when the USSR published a defense spending figure of 1.3 billion rubles (less than 4 percent of total government outlays) to the League of Nations, the actual figure was 4.3 billion (nearly 11 percent of government outlays).
In defense accounting, therefore, for several years there were two sets of books, one for consumption by the public along with the broad mass of less-privileged party members and government officials, and another for the Politburo alone that showed the true situation. This position changed in 1935. The ruling circles in Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo were now openly expansionist. Disarmament hopes had collapsed. Stalin decided there was nothing to lose from resuming truthful publication. The following year, as shown in the table, the Soviet government published a figure for defense outlays of 14.8 billion rubles (now 16 percent of the state budget and rising).
Having returned to the path of relative truthfulness on this matter, the government remained on it until the outbreak of the Soviet-German war in 1941. While the war continued, Soviet defense outlays were kept secret, but the wartime budgets were disclosed soon after the war ended.[378] With the return to peace, the published Soviet budget once more gave the actual picture, and this went on for a few years, at least—probably into the 1950s.
By the 1960s, however, the defense outlays disclosed to the public had departed once more from any sensible idea of the actual total. This time there was no early reconciliation, but a lasting separation.
As Table 7.2 shows, in 1950, the reported defense outlays of 8.3 billion rubles accounted for 20 percent of total Soviet government outlays. Over the following years, the ruble figures increased absolutely, standing at 17.1 billion rubles in 1980. But the size of the economy in rubles was now so much larger that the defense share of government outlays had fallen to less than 6 percent. That share continued to drift downward through the 1980s.
These figures made a puzzle. In 1980 the Soviet national income on the official basis (the net material product, which excluded outlays on final services) was 454 billion rubles—probably, more than 600 billion if adjusted to GDP.[379]
| table 7.2. Growing understatement: Soviet defense outlays, 1950-1989 (selected years), as published at the time | ||
|---|---|---|
| Billion rubles | Percent of state budget outlays | |
| 1950 | 8.3 | 20.0 |
| 1960 | 9.3 | 12.7 |
| 1970 | 17.9 | 11.5 |
| 1980 | 17.1 | 5.8 |
| 1985 | 19.1 | 4.9 |
| 1986 | 19.1 | 4.6 |
| 1987 | 20.2 | 4.7 |
| 1988 | 20.2 | 4.4 |
| 1989 | 20.2 | 4.2 |
| Notes: For comparison with the sums shown in Table 7.1, in 1961 the Soviet government took a zero off the currency so that one new ruble was worth ten old ones. All the figures in this table are given in new rubles. The figures in bold are those that are now acknowledged to have been understated.Sources: Figures published at the time are from TsSU, Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR. 1922-1972 gg., 481-82; Goskomstat, Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR za 70 let, 629, 631; Goskomstat, Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 1989 godu, 612. | ||
| table 7.3. Soviet numerical superiority: The military balance, 1980, according to the International Institute of Strategic Studies | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| USSR | USA | USA/USSR, ratio | |
| Armed forces, personnel (thousand) | 3,658 | 2,050 | 0.6 |
| Submarine-launched ballistic missiles | 1,003 | 656 | 0.7 |
| Intercontinental ballistic missiles | 1,398 | 1,054 | 0.8 |
| Intermediate and medium-range ballistic | |||
| missiles | 600 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Long and medium-range bombers | 850 | 430 | 0.5 |
| Tactical and air defense combat aircraft | 2,600 | 3,700 | 1.4 |
| Major combat surface ships | 289 | 173 | 0.6 |
| Ballistic missile submarines | 87 | 41 | 0.5 |
| Attack submarines | 257 | 81 | 0.3 |
| Naval combat aircraft | 775 | 1,200 | 1.5 |
| Medium tanks | 50,000 | 10,900 | 0.2 |
| Armored and infantry fighting vehicles | 62,000 | 22,000 | 0.4 |
| Notes: The ratios in the right-hand column are calculated from the figures shown. The figures do not show alliance strengths and are relevant only to a direct comparison of the two powers. Figures in bold are those that indicate American superiority. Source: IISS, Military Balance 1980, 5-13. | |||
Soviet defense spending as published, therefore, would come in at less than 3 percent of Soviet GDP. In the same year, the United States spent $134 billion on national defense, around 4.8 percent of its much larger GDP. Taken together, the figures suggested that the Soviet economy ought to be able to support a military establishment around one-quarter the size of America’s.[380]
Western observers also approached the problem from the other end: what was the actual size of the Soviet military establishment? This was a state secret, but it could be gauged from intelligence sources. As Table 7.3 shows, Western estimates around 1980 indicated that the Soviet military establishment of the time was numerically larger than that of the United States in most respects.
378
Plotnikov, Biudzhet sovetskogo gosudarstva; Voznesenskii, Voennaia ekono- mika SSSR; Bergson, “Russian Defense Expenditures.”
379
For Soviet net material product utilized for consumption and accumulation in 1980, see TsSU, Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 1985 g, 411. Soviet GDP at current prices in 1980 was not known with any precision at the time, but it was retrospectively reported as 619 billion rubles: see Goskomstat, Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 1990 g, 5-
380
The real GDP of the Soviet Union in 1980 was around 40 percent of that of the USA (see the Maddison Project Historical Statistics dataset, https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/. The real value of reported Soviet military outlays should therefore have been in the region of 3 percent (of Soviet GDP) divided by 4.8 percent (of US GDP), multiplied by 40 percent (the ratio of Soviet to US real GDP), which equals 25 percent of the United States.