Answer:
Increasing amounts of defense spending.
Explanation:
One of the main reasons why the Soviet Union was in a bad economic situation in the late 1980s was because of the increasing amounts of money that it was spending on defense. A large part of the reason for this was the fact that the United States was also spending a large amount of money on defense, and the Soviet Union felt the need to keep up with it, as part of the legacy of the Cold War.
