Page "History of Russia (1992–present)" Paragraph 13

The first major problem facing Russia was the legacy of the Soviet Union's enormous commitment to the Cold War.

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union devoted a quarter of its gross economic output to the defense sector ( at the time most Western analysts believed that this figure was 15 percent ).

At the time, the military-industrial complex employed at least one of every five adults in the Soviet Union.

In some regions of Russia, at least half of the workforce was employed in defense plants.

( The comparable U. S. figures were roughly one-sixteenth of gross national product and about one of every sixteen in the workforce.

) The end of the Cold War and the cutback in military spending hit such plants very hard, and it was often impossible for them to quickly retool equipment, retrain workers, and find new markets to adjust to the new post – Cold War and post-Soviet era.

In the process of conversion an enormous body of experience, qualified specialists and know-how has been lost, as the plants were sometimes switching from, for example, producing hi-tech military equipment to making kitchen utensils.