>From online data, you can guesstimate that, in the mid-1980s, the Soviet state must have spent roughly double the amount of money on the military that the US state did, as a percentage of gross product. Of course, the Soviet Union's land area was roughly eight times the size of the USA, so there was also considerably more area to defend.
To my knowledge, in the Soviet Union there wasn't the same "multiplier effect" of military spending as in the USA, and the opportunity cost was greater. If more Soviet workers worked in military industries, it did not automatically mean that they could buy more goods in the stores with their wages (unless they were privileged, and could access special shops not accessible to the general public). The extra military spending meant mainly that there were fewer resources available to spend on civilian production. J.
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