1200 ship Voyenno-morskoy flot SSSR?

The Soviet Union and the United States had been involved in this international chess games for decades. The pattern of move and counter move was evident, Reagan and Gorbachev were no exception. Example: the Soviets would unveil a new missile. so the US would move more missiles or interceptors to western Europe. This type of behavior was typical of the state level of interaction at this stage. So it would be expected that the soviets would fashion some response to the massive military buildup by the United States and aggressive rhetoric that Reagan was using. Reagan’s rhetoric especially the ‘evil empire’ speech was seen as threatening by the Soviets. In response to the United States of America the soviet military, “Vladimir Slipchenko, then a member of the Soviet General Staff. said “The military, the armed forces . . . used this,” he added, “as a reason to begin a very intense preparation inside the military for a state of war.” Furthermore, “we started to run huge strategic exercises. . . . These were the first military exercises in which we really tested our mobilization. We didn’t just exercise the ground forces but also the strategic arms.”  The strategic arms of the soviet military included, the nuclear weapons component and air defense which were considered seperate from the Soviet Army.  The experience in the Soviet Union was at the least one of concern. Leaders and citizens if they could get the information heard the words of Reagan and were worried that World War Three was around the corner. Millions of soviet soliders participated in these mobilization excersise. Soviet military spending though remained constant. Gorbachev did not include more money in the budget to match the US. In fact toward the end of the 1980s the soviet military budget was shrinking.