The Soviet Union is unsurpassed in the art of defense budgetry. The point of the game is not so much to lay out actual fiscal allocations as to demonstrate to outsiders the latest Kremlin international posture. Last week 1,500 delegates to the Supreme Soviet, Russia's rubber-stamp Parliament, met in the Great Kremlin Palace to approve the 1970 budget, and as usual, defense spending attracted the most attention. According to the official figures, the Soviet arms budget will rise only 1% to 17.8 billion rubles ($19.6 billion). The 1970 outlay will account for only...
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