That was in theory. In practice the clock was ticking. There was an external deadline: Gorbachev expected to visit London in April 1989 and wanted to know what to tell Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about Soviet military spending and force levels in Europe.[421] In the event, the foreign deadline did not bind. Gorbachev spoke in London about Soviet force levels but made no announcement about military spending. There was also an internal deadline. Under new constitutional arrangements, oversight of the military budget was to be delegated to a parliamentary committee of the USSR Supreme Soviet. For review of the 1990 budget, details would have to be laid before the committee in the autumn of 1989.[422]
A new figure began to appear in the documents, although not yet in public: 77.3 billion rubles for defense in 1989, falling to 71 billion rubles in the budget for the following year.[423] The preliminary budget account for 1989 included a figure of 20.2 billion, but this was now listed against military maintenance, construction, and pensions only. Munitions and equipment, RDTE, and “other” items accounted for the other 50 billion.
The Kataev papers place the new figures for 1989 in the context of US outlays on national defense in the same year, as shown in Table 7.6. On the new basis, Soviet defense outlays took up 8.4 percent of Soviet GDP, while the equivalent American burden was only 5.9 percent. As can be seen, the new numbers met Beliakov’s “expediency” criterion for disclosure: they suggested that the Soviet Union, with a military establishment roughly equal to that of the United States, but with fewer national resources to support them, bore a heavier military burden relative to its GDP.
To judge from the papers, there was still a residue of private defensiveness about going public. The points were made that the forecast figures
| table 7.6. Matching burdens: Defense outlays (in national currencies and percent) of the Soviet Union and the United States, 1989 | ||
|---|---|---|
| USSR | USA | |
| Defense outlays, billion rubles or dollars | 77.3 | 308.9 |
| Percent of state or federal budget outlays | 15.7 | 27.2 |
| Percent of gross domestic product | 8.4 | 5.9 |
| Source: Hoover/Kataev, 11/31 (“O raskhodakh na oboronu,” accompanying a memo dated 22 March 1989). The US figure for outlays on national defense reported retrospectively was 303,555 million dollars, making 26.5 percent of federal outlays and 5.5 percent of GDP. The White House, Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables, Table 3.1 (Outlays by Superfunction and Function: 1940-2025), https:// www.whitehouse.gov/omb/historical-tables/. | ||
would show defense outlays falling through 1990 and 1991, and that this would underline the Soviet commitment to peace. In case anyone in the Politburo was inclined to backslide, it was emphasized that not to disclose the figures would mean reneging on the public promises made in 1987.[424]
At all events, there was no going back. In a speech to the USSR Supreme Soviet on 30 May 1989, Gorbachev finally released new figures to the public: in 1989, Soviet defense outlays would be not 20.2 billion rubles but 77.3 billion.[425] The long wait was over.
Or was it? As soon as they were released, the new figures evoked intense curiosity. Although many times the sums previously acknowledged, 77.3 billion rubles was still far short of most Western estimates. CIA analysts concluded privately that the true figure for 1989 remained in the range 130 to 160 billion rubles.[426] Describing the 77.3-billion-ruble figure as “a best effort for the present,” they recorded the suspicion that the Soviet administration itself still did not know the full extent of continuing defense subsidies and was aware of its own ignorance.
Controversy was fueled by subsequent statements made by top Soviet leaders that put the Soviet military burden at 16,18, or even 20 percent of national income.[427] These statements were typically vague about whether GNP or the net material product (at least one-third smaller) was the intended denominator. But their claims were so far above the 8 to 9 percent of GNP implied by the ruble figures announced in 1989 that imprecise definitions did not much matter.
Hidden Soviet defense industry costs were the focus of a new investigation led by Dmitri Steinberg. In Moscow in the winter of 1990/91, he consulted with statistical officials and former defense industry managers with the aim of identifying budgetary items not counted under the Ministry of Defense allocation and other costs imposed on the civilian economy by military activities and military procurement. He concluded that an upper limit on Soviet defense outlays in 1989 was 133 billion rubles.[428] This figure was within the range of the CIA estimate for the same year, although at the lower end.
To summarize, Akhromeev correctly predicted what could go wrong. Gorbachev’s disclosure of Soviet defense costs in 1999 was an important step. But it did not build trust or allay suspicions that the Soviet leadership was still not being entirely frank. It created new puzzles and invited further enquiries. From our perspective, most important was the growing sense that what was being concealed by the Soviet leaders was not a truth that only they knew, but that no one knew the truth.
At the time this was admitted, more or less plainly, by Akhromeev. Speaking on Russian television in October 1989, he responded to an interviewer:
You are young and you want it all at once on a plate. Just think how we established this budget of 77.3 billion rubles. After all, we did not have it as such. Previously the armed forces were only interested in what they were given for upkeep, in accordance with a government decision. As far as research and development was concerned, this came under the ministries of defense industry sectors. Nor did we pay for series production deliveries. First, we had to bring this together.[429]
Here was an important difference from the situation in the early 1930s. Then, although the public was deceived about the factual total of defense outlays, a handful of people always knew the truth. How many people knew the truth in Brezhnev’s time? According to Yurii Mashukov, the answer was “a limited circle of persons (the leadership of USSR Gosplan and not even all Politburo members).”[430] According to a Russian military source the answer was four (the party general secretary, the prime minister, the defense minister, and the chief of the general staff).[431] According to Gorbachev, the answer was “two or three.”[432] But Akhromeev implied that the real answer was none. As some Western observers now concluded, maybe the decades of deception had caused even the Kremlin to lose sight of the true figure.[433]
421
Gorbachev’s briefing for the London visit can be found in Hoover/Kataev, 11/31 (“General’nomu sekretariu TsK KPSS” dated March 1989), and possibly also 12/13 (“K poezdke”).
422
Hoover/Kataev, 11/31 (“Spravka. Dlia aktivizatsii nashei vneshnei politiki,” no date but evidently March 1989).
423
Hoover/Kataev, 11/31 (“O raskhodakh na oboronu,” accompanied by a memo dated 22 March 1989).
425
The defense budget was broken down into six headings: personal and operating costs (20.2 billion), procurement (32.6 billion), RDTE (15.3billion), construction (4.6 billion), other items (production and delivery of nuclear weapons, 2.3 billion), and pensions (2.3 billion). Firth and Noren, Soviet Defense Spending, 186.
426
Central Intelligence Agency of the United States, Defense in the 1989 Soviet State Budget. Published studies are by Steinberg, “Soviet Defense Burden”; Cooper, “Military Expenditure of the USSR”; and Firth and Noren, Soviet Defense Spending, 185-188.
427
Noren, “Controversy over Western Measures,” 262. The statements were made by Defense Minister Yazov, Foreign Minister Shevardnadze, Politburo member Yegor Ligachev, and even Gorbachev himself.
430
Masliukov and Glubokov, “Planirovanie i finansirovanie voennoi promysh- lennosti,” 105