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The Soviet Military: Pressures For Change 1981-1991, William C. Dughi

History Theses & Dissertations

The US-Soviet arms race entered a new stage in the late 1970s and early 1980s which created a revolution in military-technological affairs including new weapons systems possessing revolutionary levels of sophistication. The rapid development and acquisition of these weapons systems by the United States created pressure on the Soviet Union to continue the economically debilitating arms race. By 1985, in the midst of this military-technical revolution, Mikhail S. Gorbachev began his reform of Soviet system, including Soviet military doctrine, creating pressure on the Soviet military. These two pressures on the Soviet military are the subject of this thesis. How were …