Where Did the Sputnik Come From? Western Study of the Soviet Economy and the National Interest

Post-collapse literature routinely describes the Soviet economy as a quot;war economyquot;. Yet such statements represent a revolution in the characterization of the subject. Western academic study of the Soviet economy was created in the late 1940s as a response to the perceived national security threat. However, over the four decades of its existence, the discipline largely neglected the military aspects of the Soviet economy. This paper, drawn from a larger study, documents the near-absence of the military sector from the published output of Sovietology