ABSTRACT
The Navrozov critique of the CIA is a critique of the West’s appointed Russia-watchers, in general; for if the CIA is too soft on the USSR to see it clearly, God help the rest of us. The ruble prices and costs of these items are not, apparently, known, and some marvelously devious methods are used to re-invent them. In brief, the main procedure is to get US defense contractors to provide US dollar costings for observed Soviet military devices. The two estimates are to a substantial extent independent of one another. The GNP estimate is broken down into broad end-use categories of investment, household consumption, public consumption and ‘other.’ ‘Other’ is a residual containing most defense spending, the net trade balance, changes in stocks, changes in strategic reserves, other unidentified expenditures and the statistical discrepancy between GNP estimated from output and GNP estimated from expenditure.
