ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on what, with increasing perspective, may come to be seen as the principal legacies of the strange and murderous system that prevailed for so many decades in the so-called Soviet bloc. It considers the subject under five headings – although there will inevitably be a degree of overlap involved: the ideological legacy, the military legacy, the legacy of the one-party police-state system, the imperial legacy and the economic legacy. The military legacy of the Soviet experiment is of a very different character and hence likely to influence the evolution of Russia and of the international system as a whole to a degree that would be difficult to overestimate. The fact that the Soviets consistently spent at least 20 per cent of their gross domestic product on arms between 1941 and 1989 means that Russia is, and will remain for the foreseeable future, a military superpower.
