ABSTRACT
If a fact is something that scarcely anyone disputes, then, as far as the USSR's defense expenditures are concerned, it is above all a fact among observers outside of the Soviet power bloc that the figure given in the Soviet state budget for "expenditures for defense" in no way reflects either the volume or the growth of what the USSR really spends on the equipment, operation, and maintenance of its armed forces. In Table 16.1 official Soviet data are compared with a variety of estimates. They are intended first of all to illustrate just how unreliable the Soviet figures are considered to be.
