HOW MUCH DOES RUSSIA SPEND ON ARMS?

A claim that half the Soviet national income goes on defence is made in an unofficial study by two Leningrad economists writing under a pseudonym.

Their report, in typescript form, has been circulated among dissident intellectuals in the past year. It calculates that defence spending must be four or five times greater than is officially admitted.

Western economists who have probed Soviet statistics have never put the level of arms spending anything like as high. The figure of 40 per cent was used by the well-known oppositionist, Andrel Sakharov, in a letter to Communist Party secretary Leonid Brezhnev last year.

The official figure for the defence budget has not varied for the past five years. It would make it about 7 per cent of the national income in 1969, the year to which SLOW PERUVIAN JUSTICE The Peruvian government is still trying to bring to trial a wealthy banking family accused of multi-million dollar frauds.

At the end of 1969 officials of the General Bank Superintendency were visited by Mariano Prado Heudebert, one of the richest men in Peru, who intormed them that his financial empire, the 'Banco Popular' , was about to go broke.

He also said that Nelson Rockefeller, through the Chase Manhattan, was ready to buy the bank. Rockefeller, it was subsequently claimed, was prepared to do this without filthe unofficial estimates relate.

Defence costs are always difficult to estimate because some expenses are kept secret or appear under headings such as research or industrial investment. This is particularly so in the case of the Soviet Union.

The anonymous Leningrad economists also claim that the dollar value of Soviet national income has been overestimated by more than 100 per cent.

They appear to represent a 61:1 am-1 uberal-democrauc wing 01 the opposition which is critical of excessive military expenditure. The report concludes:

'Gigantic military expenditures are not necessary for the defence of the country. Moreover, in the long run, they have a negative influence on military potential by slowing down economic growth. They are useful only for obtaining short-term political and strategic results, and they reflect a desire to play an even ing suit over a little of a $45m swindle.

For several years, the Peruvian authorities allege, Mariano Prado Heudebert and his son Mariano Prado Sosa, had granted astronomical sums in loans to 47 companies owned by them.

The operations had seemed legal at the time since the firms mostly in textiles and real estate, were in the name of figureheads- Anana or ngureneaus—in many casts, members of the bank's Board of Directors.

On June 12, 1970, the Banco Popular was placed government trusteeship. Mariano Prado Sosa imme liately fled to Spain, while his father went sick and retired to a private clinic. greater role in the arena!

While this report in all probability exaggerates the size of the Soviet Union's arms programme as a proportion of national income, it is certain that the bureaucracy deliberately conceals and plays down its real extent.

In recent years it has built up a powerful navy which it boasts of being equipped with nuclear submarines with long-range rockets and homing torpedoes and modern warships with rockets, quick-firing guns and the latest radio-electronic On March 19, 1972, al 1 examining magistrate rept irted that both Prados and 1l former directors of the bank guilty of fraud.

On April 28, 1972, the Prados and six minor executives were charged.

But Prado senior could not be placed on trial because he was 'sick' and Prado junior could not be placed on trial because the Spanish authorities refused to extradite him.

Now, some three and a half years atter the attair came out into the open, the peruvian military government has ruled that a court tribunal can question Prado senior in hospital.

The wheels of justice creak systems.

Building and equipping this fleet not only requires enormous industrial resources, but also is highly-trained and technically-efficient crews who could be making a contribution to production.

This is in addition to a large, well-equipped army with modern weapons and an air force with a heavy armoury of ballistic missiles as well as conventional planes.

All these armaments constitute a burden on the Soviet economy by diverting industrial capacity and scarce manment and the consumer goods sector.

The bureaucracy obviously takes great pride in the weapons which it has at its disposal. In fact, the only use to which the Red Army has been put in recent years was to crush the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and to invade Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Instead of being an instrument of revolution it has been used by the bureaucracy for counter-revolutionary ends against the workers of eastern Europe.

Because the bureaucracy can only see the defence of the Soviet Union in military and diplomatic terms, it is compelled by the pressure of imperialism to maintain a huge military establishment which aggravates all the problems of the Soviet economy.

The only way out which it can see is to make a deal with imperialism on the lines of 'peaceful co-existence' which will make possible mutual reduction of armaments agreement with the capitalist powers. For this the imperialists are demanding big concessions, including the opening up of natural resources to the big capitalist corporations.

In fact, despite its huge armaments, the bureaucracy exposes the first workers' state to tremendous dangers. It can only be safeguarded by the spread of revolution to the advanced capitalist countries and by the political revolution of the workers in the Soviet Union itself.