For this study, a group of Russian authors were commissioned to describe and assess the arms trade policies and practices of Russia under new domestic and international conditions. The contributors, drawn from the government, industry, and academic communities, offer a wide range of reports on the political, military, economic, and industrial implications of Russian arms transfers, as well as specific case studies of key bilateral arms transfer relationships.

The Enigma of Soviet Petroleum (1980) provides an analysis of the relevance of the Soviet planning system to oil production levels: why it is that planning has been the source of so many petroleum industry problems, and the nature of the measures that are being taken to overcome them. It looks at the demand for petroleum in the USSR, and the discovery of new Soviet oil fields to furnish this demand.

The transformation of the Soviet economy is bound to be extraordinarily complex and will take many years to complete. Three closely related areas require action at the outset of the process: macroeconomic stabilization, including fiscal, monetary, trade and payments, and incomes policies; price reform in an environment of increased domestic and external competition; and ownership reform, involving the rapid privatization of retail trade and small enterprises, along with the commercialization of large, state-owned enterprises. Many measures are needed to support policy actions in these three areas. A social safety net will be needed to protect the most vulnerable from the short-term adverse consequences of the reform process. Other measures include completion of the legal framework for a market economy, the creation of a market system for banking and finance, the demonopolization and restructuring of many enterprises, the reconstruction of the transport and communications infrastructure, the development of a system of labor relations, the process of privatization of state enterprises and collective farms, and the addressing of serious environmental problems. These and other issues, and the close relationships between them, are discussed in this study.