Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

In 1996, the budget shortfall was 25,000 billion
rubles (R). The situation inside the military was so
bad that the average officer was due about R10,000 in
back pay. 14 The next year, the shortfall was R34,000
billion. 15 Because of budgets like the foregoing, there
was no money for procurement. What money there
was, had to be spent on maintenance and provisions
for the troops. As Alexei Arbatov put it, the budgets
from 1997 to 1999 allocated up to 70 percent for maintenance,
while cutting personnel by 30 percent. This
left almost nothing for research and development.
Funds allocated to them “were barely sufficient for
modernization of the minimal strategic forces.” 16 With
this background, it is not surprising that there were
serious differences between advocates of conventional
and strategic forces. In fact, the battle was bitter, made
worse by the personal dislike between the two main
actors: General Anatoly Kvashnin and Igor Marshal
Sergeyev.
THE BATTLE BETWEEN KVASHNIN AND
SERGEYEV
General Anatoly Kvashnin was an army officer, a
man who had worked his way up serving in a variety
of posts in the infantry (Ground Forces) to become
Chief of the General Staff. It should also be noted that
Kvashnin’s personality matched his infantry background.
He was open and blunt, and a person willing
to engage in bureaucratic fisticuffs even if that meant
being insubordinate vis-à-vis his boss.
Meanwhile, the defense minister, Igor Sergeyev,
was a career missile officer. Indeed, he spent his entire
career concerned about nuclear weapons. He was
a polished officer who eschewed the kind of bureau-
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