ABSTRACT
The Soviet military-industrial complex was an almost completely isolated system with practically no connections to the world economy. There were only a few individual examples of cooperation and division of labor between the Warsaw Pact (WP) states. A specific motive for rationalizing the Soviet military industry through development of cooperative relations with the WP allies was completely lacking. The decision to do so is explainable partly by the general wish to create a self-sufficient military-industrial complex, and partly by a failure to take into account the problems of foreign military security costs reduction and the economic rationalization of military production. Both military-industrial complexes actually have powerful industrial, scientific and technological facilities that became superfluous after the end of the Cold War, and at the same time they need new financial resources and new markets. Military equipment costs grow considerably faster than the economic and financial capacity of the major armaments producing countries.
