Soviet defense spending
The Spartan analogy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11221732 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alvin H Bernstein (Naval War College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1990 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 33-65 |
| Publication date | 1990-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Strategy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0149-5933 • E-ISSN: 1521-0448 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01495939008402799 |
| OpenAlex | W2033444613 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 20 |
This essay was prompted by the comparison between the Soviet Union and ancient Sparta recently made by economists and Sovietologists. Amid growing dissatisfaction with recent efforts to model the Soviet economy and its defense sector, Sparta is invoked as a model of a state in which politics takes precedence over economics, in a manner not dissimilar to the way in which Leninism prescribes that all a state's activity, including economics, be politicized. Sparta's structure sought, above all, to insulate the defense sector from the fate of the domestic economy. The aim of the paper is not so much to support or criticize the analogy as to provide the means for evaluating it. Aciordingly, it marshals and explicates both the ancient evidence and modern scholarship on those issues that any student of the contemporary Soviet economy must understand if he or she wishes to judge how far ancient Spartan society sheds light on the way communist Russia does business today. It may also prove useful in helping to think about some of the problems inherent in the current Soviet reform effort. As the essay describes the origins, development, and ultimate failure of Sparta's political economy, it analyzes that economy's strengths and vulnerabilities. An appendix explains to the nonspecialist how we know what we know about classical Sparta and assesses the reliability of the surviving evidence on that highly secretive city‐state. The author is currently Assistant Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Planning
Analogy · Communism · Economics · Economy · Epistemology · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Soviet union · State (computer science · Law · Philosophy · Russia and Soviet political economy
Xerxes invasion of Greece
A historical commentary on Polybius.
The Fifth-Century Athenian Empire
The origins of the Peloponnesian War
Economy and society in ancient Greece
The Spartan Tradition in European Thought
Imperialism in the Ancient World
The Greek Tyrants
Thucydides and Spartan Strategy in the Archidamian War
Ancient Slavery and the Ideal of Man
A Commentary on Herodotus
Some Problems of Greek History
Aristotle and Xenophon on Democracy and Oligarchy
Sparta and Lakonia
Literacy in Ancient Sparta
Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon
Sparta and Lakonia & Hellenistic and Roman Sparta
Demokratia, the Gods and the Free World
| Highly cited | No |
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