ABSTRACT
Around 1974, after a decade of rapid Soviet military expansion, the Brezhnev leadership adjusted its spending priorities. The causes of this adjustment included a more positive appraisal of the Soviet security situation and possibly the need to deal with internal economic problems that were beginning to worsen. By comparison with the preceding ten years, the regime's new resource allocation formula entailed slower growth of both military spending and economic investment and a continuation of the relatively high growth rate of popular consumption. Since about 1980, however, the declining performance of the domestic economy and the sharp deterioration of superpower relations have undermined this formula for resource allocation. A number of Western analysts have suggested that Gorbachev's emphasis on strengthening the economy's high-technology sectors has won widespread military support because it offers a ready-made prescription for matching the United States in a long-term competition in ballistic missile defense and other sophisticated weapons systems.
