Protecting borders and ensuring the safety of citizens is one of the main functions of the state. Military expenditures make up a certain part of the state budget of any country. Their value is formed on the basis of two main parameters. The first of them and the main one is the degree of external threat that the country feels. The second is determined by the capabilities of the national economy, in particular the gross domestic product (GDP). "Guns or oil?" - Such a question was repeatedly asked by leaders to their peoples, although they did not always want to hear an honest answer.
Militarization is an excessive increase in the share of military spending. It can be caused by a number of reasons, both external and domestic.
Leon Trotsky, polemicizing at the IX Congress of the RCP (B.) With Vl. Smirnov, on the issues of transferring the economy of the young Soviet republic to military tracks, insisted that peasant and industrial labor should be organized according to the same principles as the army service, justifying such an approach by a hostile environment. Moreover, the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council believed that militarization was only half measure, and was a supporter of the mobilization of the entire working population in the labor army.
The situation of the country in those years was similar to the situation in the besieged fortress. At the same time, the task was not of defense, but of the spread of Marxism to as large territories as possible with the prospect of involving all countries on the planet in the socialist union.
The priority development of heavy industry, which was the result of the course towards industrialization adopted in the 1920s, aimed at creating a production base that allows producing weapons in quantities never seen before. The overall energy intensity of the national economy has grown significantly, which required the construction of a fundamentally new energy complex. All these measures were not aimed at improving the welfare of the population, on the contrary, the people were required to tighten their belts more tightly.
This approach required the priority development of the military-industrial complex. Actually, militarization in the USSR was not limited to the fact that defense products were produced at individual enterprises. Almost all of the country's production capacities were involved in the process of preparing for war. For many decades, at each plant or factory, part of the production was taken by the military department, regardless of profile and departmental affiliation.
The radio engineering, clothing, food industry, tractor and machine-building industries worked primarily for defense. Consumer goods were produced on a residual basis. So the hidden militarization was carried out. This phenomenon oppressed the Soviet economy with heavy oppression , selecting the best specialists and truly enormous resources.
The militarization of space deserves special words. The world's first satellite was put into orbit by an intercontinental military missile designed to deliver nuclear charges to the target. Thus, the priority of the USSR in the development of near-Earth space is due to the achievements of the defense industry.
Most Soviet passenger liners were created on the constructive basis of strategic bombers or military transport aircraft.
The burden of military spending ultimately turned out to be unbearable even for a country as rich in natural and human resources as the USSR. Excessive militarization is one of the reasons why the socialist economy crashed.