Abraham Samuel Becker

Background

Abraham Samuel Becker was born on the 7th of February, 1927 in New York City, New York, United States.

Education

Abraham Becker studied at Harvard University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949. Also, he attended Columbia University, where he received a Master of Arts degree in 1952 and obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1959.

Career

Abraham Becker spent the mid-1950s as an economist for the Mid-European Studies Center of the Free Europe Committee in New York and the Corporation for Economic and Industrial Research in Washington. In 1957, he joined the RAND Corporation, a think tank based in Santa Monica, California, where he spent most of his career. There he served as a senior economist and founded the RAND-UCLA Center for the Study of Soviet International Behavior in 1983. Also, he was an associate program director of RAND's national security strategies program.

Furthermore, in 1974 and 1976 Abraham served as a United States representative to the United Nations, focusing on the issue of military budgets. Becker drew national attention in 1980 when he was quoted in the New York Times as predicting that the Soviet Union's expenditures on its military were overly burdensome and deprived the rest of that country's economy of precious natural resources.

During his career, Becker published numerous books on economics, many of which concerned the Soviet Union. Among these are Soviet National Income and Product in 1965: The Goals of the Seven-Year Plan (1963), Ruble Price Levels and Dollar-Ruble Ratios of Soviet Machinery in the 1960s (1973), The Burden of Soviet Defense: A Political-Economic Essay (1981), and Russia and Caspian Oil: Moscow Loses Control (1998).

Achievements

• Abraham Samuel Becker was a well-known author and outstanding economist, who advised the CIA on military spending in the former Soviet Union and was known for his thorough understanding of the complexities of the Soviet economy during the Cold War.
  
  Abraham was best known for his work suggesting that the Soviet Union's hefty military spending would lead to its eventual downfall.
  
  Citing CIA estimates, Becker said in 1980 that the Soviet Union was spending 12% to 14% of its gross national product on its military, an economic burden that would eventually prove crippling. Becker's remarks came several years before the rise to power in the mid-1980s of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader who would argue for a reduction in military spending as a key feature of a plan to modernize the ailing Soviet economy.

Works

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• book

  • Ruble Price Levels and Dollar-Ruble Ratios of Soviet Machinery in the 1960s 1973
  • The Burden of Soviet Defense: A Political-Economic Essay 1981
  • Military Expenditure Limitation for Arms Control: Problems and Prospects 1977
  • Managing U.S.-Soviet Relations in the 1990s 1989
  • Ogarkov's Complaint and Gorbachev's Dilemma 1987
  • Soviet Central Decision Making and Economic Growth: A Summing Up 1986
  • Sitting on Bayonets: The Soviet Defense Burden and the Slowdown of Soviet Defense Spending 1986
  • Economic Leverage on the Soviet Union in the 1980s 1984
  • Soviet National Income and Product in 1965: The Goals of the Seven-Year Plan 1963

Personality

Physical Characteristics: Abraham Becker died of leukemia.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Becker was a pioneer in developing the national capacity to understand the Soviet economy - how the Soviets decided to allocate resources and how much of that economy was being spent to maintain Soviet military forces." - James A. Thomson, the RAND Corporation's president and chief executive officer from 1989 to 2011

Connections

Abraham was married to Tamar. They had a daughter, Ornah Becker, and a son, Doron Becker.

Wife:

Tamar Becker

Son:

Doron Becker

Daughter:

Ornah Becker