The purpose of this paper is to analyze arms exports in the Soviet Union and Russia in the transitional period. Needless to say, the Soviet Union was the largest arms exporter in the world. Its share in the world was 52 percent in 1979. The special feature of the Soviet arms exports was that it was done from the view of point of communist ideology and strategy rather than economy. That's why the middle and near east, China, North Korea were the most important countries in exporting arms.
At the end of the Gorbachev era, exporting arms to many of these countries was prohibited by UN resolutions or bilateral agreements. The Soviet Union lost many arms importers and naturally, the amount of arms exports was drastically decreased.
After the collapse of the USSR, intensive arguments arose about arms exports in the new Russia. Many disputants demanded to increase arms exports to finance conversion of military industry to civilian use and to reconstruct the economy. They thought that the western countries aimed at taking traditional Soviet (Russian) arms markets away.
In the latter half of 1992, Russia began to export arms actively.
This time economic profit is the main purpose. In many places they compete with western countries, particularly with the United States. There are some cases of friction between the US and Russia about arms exports. Since the arms market became small after the end of the cold war, this kind of incident will increase in the near future.
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