User:Peterstrempel/Soviet-Brezhnev-draft

Draft abandoned 10 March 2011

The history of the Soviet Union (1964 1982), also known as the Brezhnev Era after Khrushchev successor Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982), began at the height of the Cold War, with high economic growth and prosperity, and ended with social, political, and economic stagnation, widespread corruption, and a return to Stalinist repression of dissidence.

The sometimes tense relationship between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the West under Khrushchev became more cordial, particularly though the deliberate policy of détente - restraint and compromise - practiced by the collective Soviet leadership, which aged into a gerontocracy during this period.

Politics

Collective leadership

Main article: Collective leadership

Alexei Kosygin, a member of the collective leadership, with Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States, at the 1967 Glassboro Summit Conference

Nikita Khrushchev was ‘relieved’ from all public duties on 14 October 1964 by the plenum of the central committee of the CPSU, with the Central Committee, and other arms of the CPSU having become wary of Khrushchev's political style. The overthrow came after months of worsening relations with the People's Republic of China, and followed immediately after West Germany cancelled an invitation to Khrushchev for important trade talks in Bonn, the West German capital, after a scandal broke about the suspected poisoning by the KGB of a West German embassy anti-espionage technician in the USSR.

Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin succeeded Khrushchev in his posts as First Secretary of the Central Committee and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, literally the Premier, respectively, becoming the leading members of the new collective leadership. Other members included Nikolai Podgorny, who assumed Chairmanship of the Presidiumof the Supreme Soviet in 1965 after replacing Anastas Mikoyan, chief ideologue Mikhail Suslov, and organisational Central Committee secretary Andrei Kirilenko, though it was initially referred to as the ‘Brezhnev Kosygin‘ leadership to reflect their prominence in the group, and their relatively equal footing. After Kosygin's economic reforms of 1965 he faced conservative criticism in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) hierarchy, his prestige within the Soviet leadership declined, and following the ouster of Podgorny as Chairman of the Presidium, his position was further weakened.

Brezhnev moved to oust Podgorny from the collective leadership in 1970 because technically Podgorny was senior to him in the diplomatic hierarchy, but Brezhnev could not muster the numbers, and Podgorny's conservatism gained him greater influence in the early 1970s against Brezhnev's more liberal stance on Yugoslavia and nuclear disarmament talks with the West. Nevertheless, Brezhnev consolidated his authority within the Party, and by 1977 he had enough support in the Politburo to take over Podgorny's position as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. This development also had the effect of reducing Kosygin's role in day-to-day management of government business, and in 1978, while Kosygin was on sick leave, Brezhnev appointed Nikolai Tikhonov as First Deputy Chairmanof the Council of Ministers, fuelling rumours Kosygin was about to retire for health reasons, and Kosygin's role in government administration was reduced greatly.

Towards the end of Brezhnev's life he was considered too old by some of his colleagues to carry out the functions of head of state, and the Supreme Soviet established a new position, First Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, akin to a vice presidential role, appointing 76 year-old Vasili Kuznetsov.

Defence policy

Dmitriy Ustinov, the Minister of Defense from 1976 until his death in 1984, was one the most influential figures in Soviet security policy-making along with Andrei Gromyko, Yuri Andropov and Brezhnev

Pursuing a policy of increasing military expenditure from 1965, the Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity with the United States of America (USA) in the early 1970s and then switched to a rapid expansion of its conventional forces based on the strategic doctrine that it could beat the West in a war only by a rapid conquest of Western Europe, relying on sheer numbers of men and materiel to win. Western responses to the military build-up led the Soviet leadership to believe that the military, and the military alone, 'bought the Soviet Union security and influence'.

At the 23rd Party Congress in 1966 Brezhnev told the delegates that the Soviet military had reached a level fully sufficient to defend itself, having reached nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) parity with the USA that year. In early 1977, Brezhnev told the world that the Soviet Union did not seek to become militarily superior to the USA. In the later years of Brezhnev's reign it became official defence policy to invest only enough to maintain national security through a policy of deterrence. In his last meeting with Soviet military leaders in October 1982, Brezhnev stressed the importance of not over-investing in the Soviet military. Despite some differences of opinion in the Soviet leadership, this policy was retained under the leadership of Brezhnev successors Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko and Mikhail Gorbachev.

According to some of his close advisers, Brezhnev had been concerned about growing military expenditure in the 1960s, bringing him into conflict with Minister of Defence, Marshal Andrei Grechko. In the early 1970s Brezhnev attended a five-hour meeting to try to convince the Soviet military establishment to reduce military spending. In the meeting Brezhnev asked why the Soviet Union should 'continue to exhaust' the economy if the country could not be promised a military parity with the West, a question left unanswered.

When Grechko died in 1976, Dmitriy Ustinov replaced him as defence minister. Ustinov blocked attempts by Brezhnev to reduce national military expenditure.

Brezhnev approved the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan just as he had previously approved the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Soviet diplomat Georgy Arbatov noted that the military-industrial complex functioned as Brezhnev's power base within the Soviet hierarchy, and in Brezhnev’s later years he lacked the 'will and energy' to reduce defence expenditure, due to his declining health.

Stabilisation

Mikhail Gorbachev, as seen in 1985. Along with Grigory Romanov he was, in contrast to the norm, one of the young members elected to top positions during the Brezhnev Era

Committed to a policy of 'stability of cadres', Brezhnev nevertheless presided over the replacement of half of the regional leaders and Politburo members early in his leadership to consolidate his authority. Examples of Politburo members who lost their membership during the Brezhnev Era include Gennady Voronov, Dmitry Polyansky, Alexander Shelepin, Petro Shelest, and Nikolai Podgorny. Polyansky and Voronov, considered to be members of the Kosygin faction, lost their Politburo membership because of it. Promoted in their place were Andrei Grechko (defence minister), Andrei Gromyko (already foreign minister), and Yuri Andropov (KGB chief). The Brezhnev shake-up of Soviet leadership halted in late-1970s.

Initially Brezhnev portrayed himself as a moderate, not as radical as Kosygin but not as conservative as Shelepin. Early in his leadership Brezhnev spent considerable time seeking advice from provincial party secretaries. He gave the Central Committee formal permission to initiate Kosygin's 1965 economic reform.

In the late 1960s Brezhnev talked of the need to "renew" the party cadres, but according to historian Robert Service, his 'self-interest discouraged him from putting an end to the immobilism he detected. He did not want to risk alienating lower-level officialdom.' The Politburo saw the policy of stabilisation as the only way to avoid returning to Stalinist purges and Khrushchev's centralisation of authority. The CPSU was optimistic that a policy of stabilisation would prove to the world the 'superiority of communism'. The Soviet leadership was not entirely opposed to reform, even if the reform movement had been weakened in the aftermath of Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. The stabilisation policy also had the effect of reducing cultural freedom, and several dissident samizdats were banned.

Gerontocracy

The reshuffling process of the Politburo ended in the mid-to-late 1970s. In the period that followed, the Soviet leadership evolved into a gerontocracy (a form of rule in which the rulers are significantly older than most of the adult population) in the 1970s.

The Brezhnev generation — people who lived and worked during the Brezhnev Era — owed their rise to prominence to Joseph Stalin's Great Purge in the late 1930s. In the purge Stalin ordered the execution or exile of nearly all Soviet bureaucrats over the age of 35. Stalin's purge opened up posts and offices for a younger generation of Soviets. This generation would rule the country from the aftermath of Stalin's purge up to Mikhail Gorbachev's rise to power in 1985. The majority of these appointees were of either peasant or working class origin. Mikhail Suslov, Alexei Kosygin, and Brezhnev are prime examples of men appointed in the aftermath of Stalin's Great Purge.

The average age of the Politburo's members was 58 years in 1961, and 71 in 1981. A similar greying also took place in the Central Committee, the median age rising from 53 in 1961 to 62 in 1981, with the proportion of members older than 65 increasing from 3 percent in 1961 to 39 percent in 1981. The difference in the median age between Politburo and Central Committee members can be explained by the fact that the Central Committee was consistently enlarged during Brezhnev's leadership; this made it possible to appoint new and younger members to the Central Committee without retiring some of its oldest members. Of the 319-member Central Committee in 1981, 130 were younger than 30 when Stalin died in 1953.

Young politicians, such as Fyodor Kulakov and Grigory Romanov, were seen as potential successors to Brezhnev, but none of them came close. For example, Kulakov, one of the youngest members in the Politburo, was ranked seventh in the prestige order voted by the Supreme Soviet, far behind such notables as Kosygin, Podgorny, Suslov, and Kirilenko. As Edwin Bacon and Mark Sandle note in their book, Brezhnev Reconsidered, the Soviet leadership at Brezhnev's deathbed had evolved into "a gerontocracy increasingly lacking of physical and intellectual vigour".

New constitution

Main article: 1977 Soviet Constitution

A souvenir sheet commemorating the 1977 Soviet Constitution, Brezhnev is depicted in the middle

Brezhnev was the Chairman of the Constitutional Commission of the Council of Ministers, which worked for the creation of a new constitution. The Commission had 97 members, with Konstantin Chernenko among the more prominent. Brezhnev was not driven by a wish to leave a mark on history, but rather to weaken Premier Alexei Kosygin's prestige even further. The formulation of the constitution kept with Brezhnev's political style and was neither anti-Stalinist nor neo-Stalinist, but kept to a middle path, following most of the same principles and ideas as the previous constitutions. The most notable difference was that it codified the developmental changes which the Soviet Union had passed through since the formulation of the 1936 Constitution. The 1977 Soviet Constitution described the Soviet Union as an "advanced industrial society". It can be seen as proof of the achievements, as well as the limits, of de-Stalinisation. The constitution enhanced the status of the individual in all matters of life, while at the same time constitutionalising the Party's hold on power.

During the drafting process a debate within the Soviet leadership took place between the two factions on wether to call Soviet law "State law" or "Constitutional law." Those who supported the thesis of state law believed that the Constitution was of low importance, and that it could be changed whenever the socio-economic system changed. Those who supported Constitutional law believed that the Constitution should "conceptualise" and incorporate some of the Party's future ideological goals. They also wanted to include information on the status of the Soviet citizen which had changed drastically in the post-Stalin years. The Constitutional thought prevailed to an extent, and the 1977 Soviet Constitution had greater emphasis on conceptualising the Soviet system.

Later years

In his later years Brezhnev developed a cult of personality, and awarded the highest military decorations of the Soviet Union to himself. The media extolled Brezhnev "as a dynamic leader and intellectual colossus". Brezhnev was awarded a Lenin Prize for Literature for the Brezhnev's trilogy, three auto-biographical novels. These awards were given to Brezhnev to bolster his position within the Party and the Politburo. Brezhnev's physical and intellectual capacities started to decline in the 1970s from bad health. When Alexei Kosygin died on 18 December 1980, one day before Brezhnev's birthday, Pravda and other media's postponed the reporting of his death until after Brezhnev's birthday celebration.

A Soviet stamp from 1981 devoted to the 26th Party Congress

Brezhnev approved the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan just as he had previously approved the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. In both cases Brezhnev was not the one pushing hardest for a possible armed intervention. Several leading members of the Soviet leadership decided to retain Brezhnev as General Secretary so that their careers would not suffer by a possible leadership reshuffling by his successor. Other members, who disliked Brezhnev, among them Minister of Defense Dmitriy Ustinov, Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko, and Central Committee Secretary Mikhail Suslov, feared that Brezhnev's removal would spark a succession crisis, and therefore they helped to ensure the status quo.

Brezhnev stayed in office under pressure from some of his Politburo associates, though in practice the country was not governed by Brezhnev any more, but instead by a collective leadership led by Suslov, Ustinov, Gromyko, and Yuri Andropov. Konstantin Chernenko, due to his close relationship with Brezhnev, had also acquired influence. While the Politburo was pondering who would take Brezhnev's place, his health continued to worsen. The choice of a successor would have been influenced by Suslov, but since he died in 1982, before Brezhnev, Andropov took Suslov's place in the Central Committee Secretariat. With Brezhnev's health declining, Andropov showed his Politburo colleagues that he was not afraid of Brezhnev's reprisals any more, and launched a major anti-corruption campaign. On 10 November 1982 Brezhnev died. He was buried on 15 November 1982 at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

Economics

Early years

Further information: 1965 Soviet economic reform

The 1965 Soviet economic reform of economic management and planning was carried out between 1965 and 1971. It was characterized by the introduction of capitalist methods of management, the introduction of extensive use material incentives, and the decentralisation of the Soviet economic system. This increased the economic independence of enterprises, associations, and organizations. The reform was initiated by Alexei Kosygin's First Government. It was implemented during the Eighth Five-Year Plan (1968–1970). The Eighth Five-Year Plan is considered to be one of the most successful periods for the Soviet economy and the most successful for consumer production.

Brezhnev gave the Central Committee formal permission to initiate Kosygin's economic reform. Brezhnev modified some of Kosygin's reform proposals, many of which were unhelpful at best, according to historian Robert Service. In his early days Brezhnev asked for advice from provincial party secretaries, and spent hours each day on such conversations. During the March 1965 Central Committee plenum Brezhnev took over control of Soviet agriculture, another hint that he opposed Kosygin's reform program. Brezhnev believed, in contrast to Khrushchev, that rather than wholesale reorganisation, the key to increasing agricultural output was making the existing system to work more efficiently.

Era of Stagnation

Main article: Era of Stagnation

Period	GNP (according to the CIA)	GNP (according to Grigorii Khanin)	GNP (according to the USSR)
1960–1965	4.8	4.4	6.5
1965–1970	4.9	4.1	7.7
1970–1975	3.0	3.2	5.7
1975–1980	1.9	1.0	4.2
1980–1985	1.8	0.6	3.5

The Era of Stagnation, a term coined by Mikhail Gorbachev, is considered by several economists to be the worst financial crisis in the Soviet Union. It was triggered by over-centralisation and a conservative state bureaucracy. As the economy grew, the volume of decisions facing planners in Moscow became overwhelming. Labour productivity decreased nationwide. The cumbersome procedures of bureaucratic administration did not allow for the free communication and flexible response required at the enterprise level to deal with worker alienation, innovation, customers, and suppliers. The late Brezhnev Era also saw an increase in political corruption. Data falsification became common practice among bureaucrats to report satisfied targets and quotas to the Soviet Government, and this further aggravated the crisis in planning.

1973 reform

Main article: 1973 Soviet economic reform

Kosygin initiated the 1973 Soviet economic reform to enhance the powers and functions of the regional planners by establishing associations. The reform was never fully implemented; members of the Soviet leadership complained that the reform had not even been implemented by the time of the 1979 reform.

1979 reform

Main article: 1979 Soviet economic reform

Kosygin initiated the 1979 Soviet economic reform to improve the then-stagnating Soviet economy. The reform's goal was to increase the powers of the central ministries by centralising the Soviet economy even more. This reform was also never fully implemented, and when Kosygin died in 1980 it was practically abandoned by his successor, Nikolai Tikhonov. Tikhonov told the Soviet people at the 26th Party Congress that the reform was to be implemented, or at least parts of it, during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan (1981–1985). The reform never came to fruition, and the reform's implementation stagnated. The reform is seen by several Sovietologists as the last major pre-perestroika reform initiative put forward by the Soviet Government.

Five-Year Plans

Further information: Ninth Five-Year Plan (Soviet Union), Tenth Five-Year Plan (Soviet Union), and Eleventh Five-Year Plan (Soviet Union)

Foreign relations

Soviet – First World relations

Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin (in front) next to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson (behind) at the Glassboro Summit Conference

Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet Premier, tried to challenge Brezhnev on the rights of the General Secretary to represent the country abroad, a function Kosygin believed should fall into the hands of the Premier, as was common in non-communist countries. This was actually implemented for a short period. Kosygin, who had been the chief negotiator with the First World during the 1960s, was hardly to be seen outside the Second World after Brezhnev strengthened his position within the Politburo. However, Kosygin headed the Soviet Glassboro Summit Conference delegation in 1967 with Lyndon B. Johnson, the President of the United States. The summit was dominated by three issues; the Vietnam War, the Six-Day War and the Soviet–American arms race. Right after the summit at Glassboro Kosygin headed the Soviet delegation to Cuba, there he met an angry Fidel Castro who accused the Soviet Union of "capitulationism".

The Soviet leadership's policy of détente helped to ease the Soviet Union's strained relations with the United States. Several arms control and trade agreements were signed, and ratified, in this time period. When the Soviet Union intervened in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in a request by the communist government located there the détente policy collapsed.

Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Foreign Minister from 1957 to 1985, as seen in 1978 during a visit to the United States

Détente, literally the easing of strained relations, or in Russian, "unloading", meant "ideological co-existence" in Soviet foreign policy context. This did not however mean an end to competition between capitalist and communist societies. The Helsinki Final Act was a Soviet-led initiative, which was hailed as a success for Soviet diplomacy, "backfired", in the words of historian Archie Brown. The United States Government remained little interested through the whole process, and Richard Nixon once told a senior British official that the United States "had never wanted the conference". Other notables, such as Nixon's successor as President, Gerald Ford, and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger were also unenthusiastic. It was Western European negotiators who played a crucial role in creating the treaty.

The Soviet Union sought an official acceptance of the state borders drawn up in post-war Europe by the United States and Western Europe. In this the Soviets were largely successful; some small differences were that state borders were "inviolable" rather than "immutable"; meaning that borders can be changed only without military interference, or interference from another country. Both Brezhnev, Gromyko and the rest of the Soviet leadership were strongly committed to the creation of such a treaty, even if it meant concessions on such topics as human rights and transparency. Mikhail Suslov and Gromyko among others were worried of some of the concessions, and Yuri Andropov, the KGB Chairman, believed the greater transparency was weakening the prestige of the KGB, and strengthening the prestige of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Carter and Brezhnev sign the SALT II treaty on 18 June 1979 in Vienna.

Another blow to Soviet communism in the First World came with the establishment of the eurocommunist movement. Eurocommunists espoused and supported the ideals of Soviet communism but at the same time supporting rights of the individual. The largest obstacle was that it was the largest communist parties, those with highest electoral turnout, which became eurocommunists. It was the Prague Spring which initiated this new thinking, and made them more skeptical of Soviet communism in general.

Soviet–First World relations deteriorated when the United States President Jimmy Carter, following the advice of his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, denounced the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and described it as the "most serious danger to peace since 1945". The United States stopped all grain export to the Soviet Union and persuaded US athletes not to enter the 1980 Summer Olympics held in Moscow. The Soviet Union responded by boycotting the 1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles.

Sino–Soviet relations

Main article: Sino–Soviet relations

Alexei Kosygin was the most optimistic members of the Soviet leadership regarding the Soviet reapproachment with the PRC

In the aftermath of Khrushchev's ouster and the Sino–Soviet split, Alexei Kosygin was the most optimistic member of the Soviet leadership of a future rapproachment with the People's Republic of China (PRC), while Yuri Andropov remained skeptical and Brezhnev did not even voice his own opinion. In many ways Kosygin even had problems understanding why the two countries were quarreling with each other. The collective leadership; Anastas Mikoyan, Brezhnev and Kosygin were considered by the PRC to retain the revisionist attitudes of their predecessor, Nikita Khrushchev. At first, the new Soviet leadership blamed the Sino–Soviet split not on the PRC, but on policy errors made by Khrushchev. Both Brezhnev and Kosygin were enthusiastic of rapprochement with the PRC. When Kosygin met his counterpart, the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, in 1964, Kosygin found him to be in an "excellent mood". However, the early hints of rapprochement collapsed when Enlai accused Kosygin of Khrushchev-like behaviour after Rodion Malinovsky's anti-imperialistic speech against the First World.

When Kosygin told Brezhnev that it was time to reconcile with the PRC, Brezhnev replied: "If you think this is necessary, then you go by yourself". Kosygin was afraid that the PRC would turn down his proposal for a visit, therefore he decided to stop off in Beijing on his way to Hanoi on 5 February 1965. He met with Enlai, they were able to solve smaller issues, and both agreed to increase trade between the countries but also to celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the Sino–Soviet alliance. Kosygin was told that a reconciliation between the two countries might take years, and that rapprochement could occur only gradually. In his report to the Soviet leadership Kosygin noted Enlai's moderate stance against the USSR, and believed he was open for serious talks about Sino–Soviet relations. After another visit to Hanoi, Kosygin returned to Beijing on 10 February, this time to meet Mao Zedong personally. At first Mao refused to meet Kosygin, but he changed his opinion and Kosygin got to meet Mao on 11 February. His meeting with Mao was in an entirely different tone, and Mao criticised Kosygin, and the Soviet leadership, of revisionist behaviour and of Khrushchev's earlier policies. This meeting was to become Mao's last meeting with any Soviet leader. However, relations did not improve, and in 1968 Lin Biao, the Chinese Defense Minister, claimed that the Soviet Union was preparing itself for a war against the PRC. This tension escalated into small skirmishes alongside the Sino–Soviet border.

Both Khrushchev and Brezhnev were derided as "betrayers of [Vladimir] Lenin" by the Chinese. To counter accusations made by the Chinese Central Government, Brezhnev condemned China "frenzied anti-Sovietism", and asked Enlai to follow up on his word to normalise Sino–Soviet relations. In another speech, this time in Tashkent, Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, Brezhnev warned First World powers of using the Sino–Soviet split against the Soviet Union, saying it would spark "tension and mistrust". Brezhnev had offered a non-aggression pact to China, but its terms included a renunciation of China's territorial claims, and would have left China defenceless against threats from the USSR. The Soviet Union had by this time championed an Asian collective security treaty in which the USSR would defend any country against a possible attack from the PRC.

Soviet – Eastern Bloc relations

Wladyslaw Gomulka (right), the leader of Poland, in East Germany with Brezhnev.

The Soviet leadership's policy towards the Eastern Bloc did not change much with Khrushchev's ouster. However, reform programs were met with skepticism, even more so after the Prague Spring. János Kádár, the leader of the People's Republic of Hungary, initiated a couple of reforms similar to Alexei Kosygin's 1965 economic reform. The reform measures, named the New Economic Mechanism, were introduced in Hungary during Khrushchev's rule, and were protected by Kosygin in the post-Khrushchev Era. With the 1970 ouster of Władysław Gomułka in the People's Republic of Poland his successor, Edward Gierek, tried to revitalise the Polish economy by borrowing money from the First World. The Soviet leadership approved both the two countries respective economic experimentation, because the Soviet Union tried to reduce it's massive Eastern Bloc subsidy program in the form of cheap oil and gas exports.

Not all reforms were supported by the Soviet leadership, and Alexander Dubček's political and economic liberalisation in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic led to a Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion of the country. Not all in the Soviet leadership were as enthusiastic for a military intervention; Brezhnev remained wary of any sort of intervention throughout the discussion and Kosygin still remembered the consequences that arose with the Soviet suppression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution. In the aftermath of the Soviet-led invasion the Brezhnev Doctrine was introduced; it stated that the Soviet Union had the right to intervene in any socialist country on the road to communism which was deviating from the communist norm of development. The Brezhnev Doctrine was condemned by the Socialist Republic of Romania, the People's Republic of Albania and the Yugoslavia. As a result, the worldwide communist movement became polycentric, meaning that the Soviet Union lost its role as 'leader' of the world communist movement. In the aftermath of the invasion, Brezhnev reiterated it in a speech at the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP) on 13 November 1968:

When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries.

— Brezhnev, Speech to the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party in November 1968

With Willy Brandt's ascension to the West German chancellorship, West German – Soviet tension started to ease. Brandt's Ostpolitik, along with Brezhnev's détente, policy contributed to the signing of the Moscow and Warsaw Treaty in which West Germany recognised the state borders established following World War II, which included West German recognition of East Germany as an independent state. The foreign relations of the two countries continued to improve during Brezhnev's rule, and in the Soviet Union, where the memory of German brutality during World War II was still remembered, contributed to greatly reducing the animosity the Soviet people felt towards Germany, and Germans in general.

On 25 August 1980 the Soviet Politburo established a commission chaired by Mikhail Suslov to examine the political crisis in Poland. The importance of the commission was demonstrated by its composition: Minister of Defense Dmitriy Ustinov, Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko, KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, the Head of the General Department of the Central Committee and Brezhnev's closest associate. After just three days, this commission proposed the possibility of a Soviet military intervention, among other concrete measures. Troops and tank divisions were moved from their present location to the Soviet–Polish border. Later however the Soviet leadership came to the conclusion that they should not intervene in Poland.

Alexei Kosygin (right) shaking hands with Romanian communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu on 22 August 1974

Stanisław Kania, a First Secretary of the PUWP, mooted the Soviet proposal for introducing martial law in Poland. Erich Honecker, the First Secretary of the East German Socialist Unity Party, supported the decision of the Soviet leadership, and sent a letter to Brezhnev and called for a meeting of the Eastern Bloc leaders to discuss the situation in Poland. When the leaders met at the Kremlin later that year, Brezhnev had concluded that it would be better to leave the domestic matters of Poland alone for the time being, re-assuring the Polish delegation, headed by Kania, that the USSR would intervene only if asked to. However, as Archie Brown notes in his book The Rise & Fall of Communism, "Poland was a special case". The Soviet Union had intervened in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan the previous year, the increasingly hardline policies of the Reagan Administration and the vast organisational network of the opposition were among the major reasons why the Politburo Commission pushed for martial law instead of an intervention. When Wojciech Jaruzelski became Prime Minister in February 1980, the Soviet leadership but also Poles in general supported his appointment. As time went by however Jaruzelski tried, and failed, "to walk a tightrope" between the demands made by the USSR and the Poles. Martial law was initiated on 13 December 1981 by the Jaruzelski Government.

Soviet – Third World relations

Since 1975, after the Angolan War of Independence, the Soviet Union's role in Third World politics increased dramatically. Some of the regions were important for national security, other regions were important to the expansion of Soviet socialism to other countries. According to an anonymous Soviet writer the national liberation struggle was the cornerstone of Soviet ideology, and therefore became a cornerstone for Soviet diplomatic activity in the Third World.

Soviet influence in Latin America increased after Cuba became a communist state in 1961. By the late-1970s Soviet influence in Latin America had reached crisis proportions according to several United States Congressmen. Diplomatic and economic ties were established with several countries during the 1970s, and several countries, such as Peru for instance, bought external goods from the Soviet Union. Mexico, and several countries in the Caribbean, forged increasingly strong ties with the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). The Soviet Union also strengthened its ties with the communist parties of Latin America. Soviet ideologists saw the increasing Soviet presence as a part of the "mounting anti-imperialist struggle for democracy and social justice".

The Soviet Union played a key role in the secessionist struggle against the Portuguese Empire and the struggle for black majority rule in Southern Africa. Control of the Somali Democratic Republic was of great interest to both the Soviet Union and the United States due to the country's strategic location at the mouth of the Red Sea. After the Soviets broke foreign relations with Siad Barre's regime in Somalia, the Soviets turned to Derg Government in Ethiopia and supported them in their war against Somalia. Because the Soviets changed their allegiance, Barre expelled all Soviet advisers, tore up his friendship treaty with the Soviet Union, and switched allegiance to the West. The United States took the Soviet Union's place in the 1980s, in the aftermath of Somalia's loss in the Ogaden War.

Nikita Khrushchev had initially supported North Vietnam out of "fraternal solidarity", but as the war escalated he had urged the North Vietnamese leadership to give up the quest of liberating South Vietnam. He continued by rejecting an offer of assistance made by the North Vietnamese government, and instead told them to enter negotiations in the United Nations Security Council. Brezhnev, after Khrushchev's ouster, started once again to aid the communist resistance in Vietnam. In February 1965 Kosygin travelled to Hanoi with dozens of Soviet air force generals and economic experts. During the Soviet visit, President Lyndon B. Johnson had allowed US bombing raids on North Vietnamese soil in retaliation of a recent attack by the Viet Cong. In post-war Vietnam Soviet aid became the cornerstone of socio-economic activity. In the early 1980s 20 to 30 percent of the rice eaten by the Vietnamese people was supplied by the Soviet Union. Because Vietnam never developed an arms industry during the Cold War, it was the Soviet Union who assisted them with weapons ans matériel during the Sino–Vietnamese War.

Dissident movement

Main articles: Repression in the Soviet Union and Human rights in the Soviet Union

Soviet dissidents and human rights groups were routinly repressed by the KGB. The Soviet dissident movement grew considerably during the Brezhnev Era, due to the revitalisation of some old Stalinist policies. The two leading figures of the Soviet dissident movement during the Brezhnev Era were Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov. Despite their individual fame, both had problems organising an effecting opposition to the Soviet regime in the country itself. Sakharov was forced into interal exile in 1979, and Solzhenitsyn was forced out of the country in 1974.

The Jews in the 1970s were the most successful, and most organised, dissident movement in the Soviet Union. Their success can be blamed on the movement's support abroad, most notably the Jewish community in the United States, and that as a group they were not advocating a transformation of Soviet society. The Jewish dissident movement was simply interested in leaving the Soviet Union for Israel; the Soviet Government sought to improve diplomatic ties with the First World by allowing Jews to emigrate. The emigration flow was reduced dramatically as Soviet–American tension increased in the later half of the 1970s. Jewish emigration revived somewhat in 1979, peaking at 50,000 emigrators, but in the early 1980s the Soviet leadership decided to halt the emigration flow all together.

"Every time when we speak about Solzhenitsyn as the enemy of the Soviet regime, this just happens to coincide with some important [international] events and we postpone the decision."

— Andrei Kirilenko, a Politburo member.

The dissident movement had spurts of activity, and during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, several people demonstrated at the Red Square. Dissidents who were interested in democratic reform were able show themselves. This demonstration, and this short-lived organised dissident group, was repressed by the Soviet Government. The movement was renewed once again with the Soviet signing of the Helsinki Accords. Several Helsinki Watch Groups were established across the country, all of which were routinly repressed, but also closed down. Due to the strong position of the Soviet Government many dissidents had problems reaching a "wide audience". By the early 1980s the Soviet dissident movement was in disarray, and the country's most notable dissidents had either been exiled, either internally or externally, or been sent to prison or to the Gulags.

Many dissidents, and a number of radical reformers, became members of the Communist Party instead of protesting actively against the Soviet system instead. These dissidents were defined by Archie Brown, a historian, as "gradualists" who wanted to change the way the system work in a slowly manner. The International Department of the Central Committee, a department considered to be filled with conservative communists by the First World media, was the department were Mikhail Gorbachev, as Soviet leader, would draw most his "new thinkers" from. These officials had been influenced by Western cultures and ideals by their travelling and reading. The Socialist Countries Department of the Central Committee, while was also considered to have a largely conservative membership, was also filled with many "new thinkers" and reformers. Reformers were in much greater numbers in the country's research institutes.

Soviet society

Ideology and beliefs

Main article: State ideology of the Soviet Union

Soviet society under Brezhnev's rule had evolved into a modern society. As noted by Edwin Bacon and Mark Sandle in their book Brezhnev Reconsidered, "a social revolution" was taking place in the Soviet Union during his 18-year long reign. The increasingly modernised Soviet society was becoming more urban, and people were becoming more educated and professionalised. The Brezhnev Era saw, in contrast to previous periods, a continuous development without interruption. In previous years development had been halted by "terrors, cataclysms and conflicts". There was a fourfold growth in higher education between the 1950s and 1980s; this development was referred to as the "scientific-technological revolution". Women also came to make up half of the country's educated specialists.

Following Nikita Khrushchev outrageous claim that Communism could be reached "within 20 years", the new Soviet leadership responded by developing the concept of developed socialism. According to the Soviet leadership, developed socialism was socialism "attaining developed conditions", therefore, just another stage in the development of Communism. According to the Soviet Government the task was "perfecting" the socialist society which had been created. Developed socialism evolved into the Brezhnev regime's ideological cornerstone, and helped them to explain the situation of the Soviet Union. The developed socialism theory that the Soviet Union had reached a state in development were it was crisis-free, and could only progress further, proved wrong. Yuri Andropov, Brezhnev's successor, initiated the de-Brezhnevisation of the Soviet Union during his short reign, and introduced more realistic ideological theses, but retained developed socialism as a part of state ideology.

Culture

Main article: Culture of the Soviet Union

During the Brezhnev Era, pressure from below forced the Soviet leadership to alter some cultural policies, however, fundamental characteristics of the Communist system remained the same. Within the realm of popular culture the Soviet leadership was forced to alter it's policies on Western culture, and rock music and jeans, which had been criticised as hallmarks of Western culture was legalised. The Soviet Union started to manufacture its own jeans in the 1970s, however, as time showed the youth were more eager to buy Western jeans then Soviet ones. The Soviet black market flourished during the Brezhnev Era, and "fake Western jeans" became very popular. Western rock groups as The Beatles remained very popular throughout the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, even if Soviet officialdom remained weary of it. Soviet rock music evolved, and became a form of dissidence against the Soviet system. Vladimir Vysotsky, Alexander Galich and Bulat Okudzhava were the most renowned rock musicians, and their lyrics, and music in general, were critical of the country's Stalinist past, and the country's undemocratic system.

Standard of living

The offical explanation for Nikolai Podgorny's, the head of state from 1965 to 1977, ousting was his stance against détente and producing more consumer goods.

Before 1973, the GDP per head in US dollars increased. Over the eighteen years Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union, average income per head increased by half; however three-quarters of this growth came in the 1960s and early 1970s. There was one-quarter average income per head growth during the second half of Brezhnev's reign. In the first half of the Brezhnev period, income per head increased by 3.5 percent per annum; slightly less growth than what it had been the previous years. This can be explained by the reversion of most of Khrushchev's policies when Brezhnev came to power. The consumption per head rose by an estimate of 70% under Brezhnev, but with three-quarters of this growth happening before 1973 and only one-quarter in the second half of his reign. Most of the increase in consumer production in the early Brezhnev era can be attributed to the Kosygin reform.

When the USSR's economic growth stalled in the 1970s, the standard of living and housing quality improved significantly. Instead of paying more attention to the economy, the Soviet leadership under Brezhnev tried to improve the living standard in the Soviet Union by extending social benefits, which led to, albeit, only a minor increase in public support. The standard of living in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) had fallen behind that of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (GSSR) and the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (ESSR) under Brezhnev; this led many Russians to believe that the policies of the Soviet Government were hurting the Russian population. With the mounting economic problems, skilled workers were usually paid more than had been intended in the first place, while unskilled labourers were indulged in punctuality, conscientiousness and sobriety. The state usually moved workers from one job to another which ultimately became an ineradicable feature in Soviet industry; the Government had no effective counter-measure because of the country's lack of unemployment. Government industries such as factories, mines and offices were staffed by indisciplined personnel who put a great effort into not doing their jobs; this ultimately led to a "work-shy workforce" among Soviet workers and administrators.

During the Brezhnev era there were material improvements for the Soviet citizen, while the Politburo of the CPSU was given no credit for this. The material improvements in the 1970s, the cheap provision of consumer goods, food, shelter, clothing, sanitation, health care and transport was taken for granted by the common Soviet citizen. The common Soviet citizen associated Brezhnev's rule more with its limitation than its actual progress; this led to Brezhnev earning neither affection nor respect. Most Soviet citizens had no power to change the existing system, therefore, most of them tried to make the best of a bad situation; rates of alcoholism, mental illness, divorce and suicide rose inexorably during the Brezhnev era. While investments in consumer goods were below projections, the expansion in output led increased the Soviet people's standard of living. Refrigerators, owned by only 32 percent of the population in the early 1970s, had grown considerably to a total of 86 percent by the late 1980s, and the ownership of colour televisions increased from 51 percent in the early 1970s to 74 percent in the 1980s. The material improvements of blue-collar workers had risen disproportionately; they had higher wages than professional workers in the Soviet Union. For example, the wage of a secondary school teacher in the Soviet Union was only 150 rubles while a bus driver's wage was 230.

Iranian Emperor Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi and Empress Farah Pahlavi meeting with Brezhnev in Moscow, 1970.

While some areas improved during the Brezhnev era, the majority of civilian services deteriorated, with the physical environment for the common Soviet citizen falling apart rapidly. Diseases were on the rise because of the decaying healthcare system. The living space remained rather small by First World standards, with the common Soviet person living on 13.4 square metres. At the same time thousands of Moscow inhabitants were homeless, most of them living in shacks, doorways and parked trams. Nutrition ceased to improve in the late 1970s, while rationing of staple food products returned to Sverdlovsk for instance.

The state provided daily recreation and annual holidays for hard-working citizens. Soviet trade unions rewarded hard-working members and their families with beach vacations in Crimea and Georgia. Workers who fulfilled the monthly production quota set by the Soviet Government were honoured by placing their respective names on the factory's Roll of Honour; the state awarded badges for all manner of public services, and war veterans were allowed to go to the head of the shop queues. All members of the USSR Academy of Sciences were given a special badge and their own chauffeur-driven car. These awards, perks and privileges made it easier for some to find decent job occupations. There was a large enough minority of citizens during the Brezhnev era who benefited from these perks. These perks did however not stop the degeneration of Soviet society. Urbanization had led to unemployment in the Soviet agriculture sector, with most of the able workforce leaving villages for the local towns.

Social "rigidification" became a common feature in Soviet society. During the Stalin era in the 1930s and 1940s, a common labourer could expect promotion to a white-collar job if they studied and obeyed Soviet authorities. In Brezhnev's Soviet Union this was not the case. Holders of attractive offices clung to them as long as possible; mere incompetence was not seen as a good reason to dismiss anyone. In this way, too, the Soviet society Brezhnev passed on had become "static".

Historical assessments

Main article: Legacy of Leonid Brezhnev

Despite Brezhnev's failures in domestic reforms, his foreign affairs and defense policies turned the Soviet Union into a superpower. His popularity among the citizenry waned during his last years, and support for the ideals of communism and Marxism-Leninism waned, even if the majority of Soviet citizens remained wary of liberal democracy and multi-party systems in general. The political corruption which had grown considerably during Brezhnev's tenure had become a major problem to the Soviet Union's economic development by the 1980s. In response Andropov initiated a nationwide anti-corruption campaign. Andropov believed that the Soviet economy would possibly recover if the government was able to increase social discipline amongst workers. He was seen as very vain and self-obsessed but was praised for leading the Soviet Union into an unprecedented stability and domestic calm. Following his death, political wrangling led to harsh criticism of both him and his family. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, drew support from hardline communists and the Soviet population by criticising Brezhnev's rule, and referred to his rule as the "Era of Stagnation". However, in a poll taken in 2006, 61 percent of the people polled viewed the Brezhnev era as good for Russia.

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