ABSTRACT
The USSR was one of the world’s most militarised states, with five million men under arms in 1988 and another four million employed in defence industries and with some 15-20 per cent of Soviet GDP devoted to the upkeep of this vast ‘state within a state’.2 The well-known saying that ‘The USSR did not have a military-industrial complex, it was one’, reflected a frightening truth. Not only were economic resources diverted towards supporting the country’s enormous military establishment, but the system of conscription and patriotic education made the military the cornerstone of national identity.3 Perestroika represented the repudiation of the logic of Cold War, and by rejecting a security-dominated foreign policy suggested that domestic politics and the economy would also be demilitarised. The disintegration of the USSR was soon followed by the division of the Soviet armed forces as the newly independent republics created their own military systems. Russia was burdened with the legacy of Soviet imperial power, a bloated defence sector and, perhaps most significantly, a military establishment accustomed to getting its own way. Russia tried to forge a new military establishment, able to deal with contemporary security challenges and responsive to the changed demands of society. Could a new model of civil-military relations be forged in post-communist Russia, and with it a demilitarised sense of national purpose?
