Soviet chemical propellant research and development

In the second half of the 1980s, the Soviet Union had a strong and continuing research effort devoted to understanding the behavior of chemical propellants suitable to support development of advanced propellants for practical applications. Recent Soviet work concentrated on solid propellants, though liquid propellants powered the largest and most advanced deployed Soviet rockets. This assessment summarizes the Soviet state of the art in chemical propellants in the late 1980s and projects the trends of that period into the next decade. It is based on a broad and deep review of Soviet literature published in 1985--1991 and is presented in an unclassified report. Speculation about or prediction of the effects of recent political and social events on chemical propellant research and development in the old Soviet Union is outside the scope of this assessment, though the effects are likely to be profound.