6 ms·

USSR spent most of it's GDP on military plus central planing is unworkable system especially with all the idiotic soviet KPI's on top of it.

• RugnirViking 4y ago
  Is that true? I would be interested to see the numbers on that. I would have expected their spending to be on a similar-ish level to the US at the time (which while high, probably never crossed the 50% mark)
  • qaq 4y ago
    It's more you have to realise that the way things were structured there was never an honest count. As an anecdotal example my father in-law was chief eng. at Kharkov factory that was producing Nuclear Missile guidance systems and other high end mil. parts. Factory had 10,000 employees yet officially it was producing electric razors and things like this were the norm.
    • RugnirViking 4y ago
      I can believe that. They certainly had a lot of corruption and behind-the-scenes lying to make things fit, especially towards the end. However it seems to me that there must have been at least some growth there underpinning things for some time, else they would have collapsed much easiler, right? They also seemed to have an outsized economic impact abroad compared to other places with similar population that started the 20th century in a similar economic place (india, china, south america).
      • actionfromafar 4y ago
        Soviet imported a lot - both food and technology. They bought IBM computers through Europe etc. Oil paid for a lot of that.