? KINGSTON, Jamaica – The former USSR was a politically aligned collection of previously independent states that did little more than serve the egotistic, power-hungry needs of leaders such as Josef Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, while countering the superpower status of the United States (US).
During the Cold War, the two superpowers attempted to divide the world into one camp or another. This spilled over into sports, as the US led a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, to which the USSR retaliated four years later in Los Angeles.
The capitalist system of the US generated greater national surpluses than the socialist system of the USSR, such that spending on defence by the US was about 30 per cent of total expenditure, while that of the USSR exceeded 70 per cent. When former US President Ronald Reagan upped the ante with his proposed Star Wars programme, intended to defend against Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and therefore tip the nuclear balance its way, the USSR could not respond, as its treasury was virtually depleted by the Cold War efforts.
