Soviets OK 8% Defense Budget Cut

Lawmakers on Friday cut Soviet military spending by 8%, to 97 billion rubles, or $155 billion, a step one general called a sign of Moscow’s “fundamentally new approach” to defense.

The cut was part of the Kremlin’s effort to reduce the government budget deficit and to ease the strain on its economy, in addition to taking advantage of warmer East-West ties.

The defense budget, approved during a closed session of the Supreme Soviet Legislature, represents 35% of all Soviet government spending this year. By comparison, in the United States, a little more than one-quarter of annual government spending has gone to defense since 1985.

Soviet military budget figures were secret before President Mikhail S. Gorbachev introduced his policy of openness, or glasnost , in 1985. Some Western experts still question the figures, saying costs such as military housing, research and manufacturing are counted in the budgets of non-defense ministries.

Col. Gen. Grigory Krivosheyev of the General Staff office said the new defense budget represents a sharp departure from the past. The text of the budget “says that the Soviet military doctrine’s purpose is not to prepare for war, but to prevent it,” Krivosheyev said. “This is a fundamentally new approach.”