History of the Soviet Union (1964–1982)
Encyclopedia
The history of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982, referred to as the Brezhnev Era, covers the period of Leonid Brezhnev
's rule of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR). This period began with high economic growth and soaring prosperity, but ended with a much weaker Soviet Union facing social, political, and economic stagnation. The average annual income stagnated, because needed economic reforms were never fully carried out.
Nikita Khrushchev
was ousted as First Secretary
of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU), as well as Chairman
of the Council of Ministers, on 14 October 1964 due to his failed reforms and disregard for Party and Government institutions. Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin replaced him as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Anastas Mikoyan
, and later Nikolai Podgorny
, became Chairmen of the Presidium
of the Supreme Soviet. Together with Andrei Kirilenko
as organisational secretary, and Mikhail Suslov
as Chief Ideologue, they made up a reinvigorated collective leadership
, which contrasted in form with the autocracy
that characterised Khrushchev's rule.
The collective leadership first set out to stabilise the Soviet Union and calm Soviet society, a task which they were able to accomplish. In addition, they attempted to speed up economic growth, which had slowed considerably during Khrushchev's last years as ruler. In 1965 Kosygin initiated several reforms to decentralise the Soviet economy. After initial success in creating economic growth, hard-liners within the Party halted the reforms, fearing that they would weaken the Party's prestige and power. No other radical economic reforms were carried out during the Brezhnev era, and economic growth began to stagnate in the early-to-mid-1970s. By Brezhnev's death in 1982, Soviet economic growth had, according to several historians, nearly come to a standstill.
The stabilisation policy brought about after Khrushchev's removal established a ruling gerontocracy
, and political corruption
became a normal phenomenon. Brezhnev, however, never initiated any large-scale anti-corruption campaigns. Due to the large military buildup of the 1960s the Soviet Union was able to consolidate itself as a superpower
during Brezhnev's rule. The era ended with Brezhnev's death
on 10 November 1982.
, and his one-man domineering leadership style. The Presidium (Politburo), the Central Committee
and other important Party–Government bodies had grown tired of Khrushchev's repeated violations of established Party principles. The Soviet leadership also believed that his individualistic leadership style ran contrary to the ideal collective leadership
. Leonid Brezhnev
and Alexei Kosygin succeeded Khrushchev in his posts as First Secretary
and Premier
respectively, and Mikhail Suslov
, Andrei Kirilenko
, and Anastas Mikoyan
(replaced in 1965 by Nikolai Podgorny
), were also given prominence in the new leadership. Together they formed a functional collective leadership.
The collective leadership was, in its early stages, usually referred to as the "Brezhnev–Kosygin" leadership and the pair began their respective periods in office on a relatively equal footing. After Kosygin initiated the economic reform of 1965
, however, his prestige within the Soviet leadership withered and his subsequent loss of power strengthened Brezhnev's position within the Soviet hierarchy. Kosygin's influence was further weakened when Podgorny took his post as the second-most powerful figure in the Soviet Union.
Brezhnev conspired to oust Podgorny from the collective leadership as early as 1970. The reason was simple: Brezhnev was third, while Podgorny was first in the ranking of Soviet diplomatic protocol; Podgorny's removal would have made Brezhnev head of state, and his political power would have increased significantly. For much of the period, however, Brezhnev was unable to have Podgorny removed, because he could not count on enough votes in the Politburo, since the removal of Podgorny would have meant weakening of the power and the prestige of the collective leadership itself. Indeed, Podgorny continued to acquire greater power as the head of state throughout the early 1970s, due to Brezhnev's liberal stance on Yugoslavia
and his disarmament talks with some Western powers, policies which many Soviet officials saw as contrary to common communist principles.
This did not remain the case, however. Brezhnev strengthened his position considerably during the early-to-mid 1970s within the Party leadership and by a further weakening of the "Kosygin faction"; by 1977 he had enough support in the Politburo to oust Podgorny from office and active politics in general. Podgorny's eventual removal in 1977 had the effect of reducing Kosygin's role in day-to-day management of government activities by strengthening the powers of the government apparatus led by Brezhnev. After Podgorny's removal rumours started circulating Soviet society that Kosygin was about to retire due to his deteriorating health condition. Nikolai Tikhonov
, a First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers under Kosygin, succeeded the later as premier in 1980 (see Kosygin's resignation).
Podgorny's fall was not seen as the end of the collective leadership, and Suslov continued to write several ideological documents about it. In 1978, one year after Podgorny's retirement, Suslov made several references to the collective leadership in his ideological works. It was around this time that Kirilenko's power and prestige within the Soviet leadership started to wane. Indeed, towards the end of the period, Brezhnev was regarded as too old to simultaneously exercise all of the functions of head of state by his colleagues. With this in mind, the Supreme Soviet, on Brezhnev's orders, established the new post of First Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, a post akin to a "vice president
". The Supreme Soviet unanimously approved Vasili Kuznetsov, at the age of 76, to be First Deputy Chairman of the Presidium in late 1977. As Brezhnev's health worsened, the collective leadership took an even more important role in everyday decision-making. For this reason, Brezhnev's death
did not alter the balance of power
in any radical fashion, and Yuri Andropov
and Konstantin Chernenko
were obliged by protocol to rule the country in the same fashion as Brezhnev left it.
, a disenfranchised Soviet soldier
, attempted to assassinate Brezhnev on 22 January 1969 by firing shots at a motorcade
carrying Brezhnev through Moscow
. Though Brezhnev was unhurt, the shots killed a driver and lightly injured several celebrated cosmonauts of the Soviet space program
me who were also travelling in the motorcade. Brezhnev's attacker was captured, and interrogated personally by Andropov, then KGB chairman and future Soviet leader. Ilyin was not given the death penalty because his desire to kill Brezhnev was considered so absurd that he was sent to the Kazan
mental asylum instead for treatment.
's security from attacks. In the 1970s, the Soviet leadership concluded that a war with the capitalist countries might not necessarily become nuclear, and therefore they initiated a rapid expansion of the country's conventional forces. Due to the country's weaker infrastructure compared to the United States, the Soviet leadership believed that the only way to beat the First World was by a rapid military conquest of Western Europe, relying on sheer numbers alone. The Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity with the United States by the early 1970s, after which the country consolidated itself as a superpower
. The apparent success of the military build-up led the Soviet leadership to believe that the military, and the military alone, "bought the Soviet Union security and influence".
Brezhnev had, according to some of his closest advisers, been concerned for a very long time about the growing military expenditure in the 1960s. Advisers have recounted how Brezhnev came into conflict with several top-level military industrialists, the most notable being Marshal Andrei Grechko
, the Minister of Defence. In the early 1970s, according to Anatoly Aleksandrov-Agentov, one of Brezhnev's closest advisers, Brezhnev attended a five-hour meeting to try to convince the Soviet military establishment to reduce military spending. In the meeting an irritated 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; the question was left unanswered. When Grechko died in 1976 Dmitriy Ustinov
took his place as Defence Minister. Ustinov, although a close associate and friend of Brezhnev, hindered any attempt made by Brezhnev to reduce national military expenditure. In his later years, Brezhnev lacked the "will and energy" to reduce expenditure, due to his declining health. According to the Soviet diplomat Georgy Arbatov
, the military-industrial complex
functioned as Brezhnev's power base within the Soviet hierarchy even if he tried to scale-down investments.
At the 23rd Party Congress
in 1966, Brezhnev told the delegates that the Soviet military had reached a level fully sufficient to defend the country. The Soviet Union reached ICBM parity with the United States that year. In early 1977, Brezhnev told the world that the Soviet Union did not seek to became superior to the United States in nuclear weapons, nor to be militarily superior in any sense of the word. In the later years of Brezhnev's reign, it became official defence policy to only invest enough to maintain military deterrence, and by the 1980s, Soviet defence officials were told again that investment would not exceed the level to retain national security. In his last meeting with Soviet military leaders in October 1982, Brezhnev stressed the importance of not over-investing in the Soviet military sector. This policy was retained during the rules of Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko
and Mikhail Gorbachev
.
, Dmitry Polyansky
, Alexander Shelepin
, Petro Shelest
and Podgorny. Polyansky and Voronov lost their membership in the Politburo because they were considered to be members of the "Kosygin faction." In their place came Andrei Grechko
, the Minister of Defence, Andrei Gromyko
the Minister of Foreign Affairs and KGB
Chairman Andropov. The removal and replacement of members of the Soviet leadership halted in late 1970s.
Initially, in fact, Brezhnev portrayed himself as a moderate — not as radical as Kosygin but not as conservative as Shelepin. Brezhnev gave the Central Committee
formal permission to initiate Kosygin's 1965 economic reform
. According to historian Robert Service
, Brezhnev did modify some of Kosygin's reform proposals, many of which were unhelpful at best. 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 control of Soviet agriculture
, another hint that he opposed Kosygin's reform programme. Brezhnev believed, in contrast to Khrushchev, that rather than wholesale reorganisation, the key to increasing agricultural output was making the existing system work more efficiently.
In the late 1960s, Brezhnev talked of the need to "renew" the party cadres, but according to 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 Joseph Stalin
's purges and Khrushchev's reorganisation of Party-Government institutions. Members acted in optimism, and believed 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 the Prague Spring
in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
. The result was a period of overt stabilisation at the heart of government, a policy which also had the effect of reducing cultural freedom: several dissident samizdat
s were shut down.
, a form of rule in which the rulers are significantly older than most of the adult population.
The Brezhnev generation — the 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, thereby opening 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".
among the more prominent. Brezhnev was not driven by a wish to leave a mark on history, but rather to even further weaken Premier Alexei Kosygin's prestige. The formulation of the constitution kept with Brezhnev's political style and was neither anti-Stalinist nor neo-Stalinist, but stuck 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
. It described the Soviet Union, for example, as an "advanced industrial society
". In this sense, the resulting document can be seen as proof of the achievements, as well as the limits, of de-Stalinisation. It enhanced the status of the individual
in all matters of life, while at the same time solidifying the Party
's hold on power.
During the drafting process, a debate within the Soviet leadership took place between the two factions on whether 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. Constitutional thought prevailed to an extent, and the 1977 Soviet Constitution had a greater effect on conceptualising the Soviet system.
, and awarded himself the highest military decorations of the Soviet Union. The media extolled Brezhnev "as a dynamic leader and intellectual colossus". Brezhnev was awarded a Lenin Prize for Literature for Brezhnev's trilogy
, three auto-biographical novels. These awards were given to Brezhnev to bolster his position within the Party
and the Politburo. When Alexei Kosygin died on 18 December 1980, one day before Brezhnev's birthday, Pravda
and other media outlets postponed the reporting of his death until after Brezhnev's birthday celebration. In reality, however, Brezhnev's physical and intellectual capacities had started to decline in the 1970s from bad health.
Brezhnev approved the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan
(see also Soviet–Afghan relations) 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 Dmitriy Ustinov
(Minister of Defence), Andrei Gromyko
(Minister of Foreign Affairs), and Mikhail Suslov
(Central Committee Secretary), feared that Brezhnev's removal would spark a succession crisis, and so they helped to maintain 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, 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 January 1982, before Brezhnev, Andropov took Suslov's place in the Central Committee Secretariat. With Brezhnev's health worsening, 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
.
, often referred to as the "Kosygin reform", of economic management and planning was carried out between 1965 and 1971. Announced in September 1965, it contained three main measures: the recentralisation of the Soviet economy by re-establishing several central ministries
, a decentralising overhaul of the enterprise incentive system (including wider usage of capitalist-style material incentives for good performance), and thirdly, a major price reform. The reform was initiated by Alexei Kosygin's First Government
and implemented during the Eighth Five-Year Plan, 1968–1970.
Though these measures were established to counter many of the irrationalities of the Soviet economic system, the reform did not try to change the existing system radically; it instead tried to improve it gradually. Success was ultimately mixed, and Soviet analyses on why the reform failed to reach its full potential have never given any definitive answers. The key factors are agreed upon, however, with blame being put on the combination of the recentralisation of the economy with the decentralisation of enterprise autonomy, creating several administrative obstacles. Additionally, instead of creating a market which in turn would establish a pricing system, administrators were given the responsibility for overhauling the pricing system themselves. Because of this, the market-like system failed to materialise. To make matters worse, the reform was contradictory at best. In retrospect, however, the Eighth Five-Year Plan as a whole is considered to be one of the most successful periods for the Soviet economy, and the most successful for consumer production.
The marketisation of the economy, in which Kosygin supported, was considered to radical in the light of the Prague Spring
in the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia. Nikolai Ryzhkov
, the future Chairman of the Council of Ministers, referred in a 1987 speech to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union to the "sad experiences of the 1965 reform", and claimed that everything went from bad to worse following the reform's cancellation.
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. As a result, 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.
With the mounting economic problems, skilled workers were usually paid more than had been intended in the first place, while unskilled labourers tended to turn up late, and were neither conscientious nor, in a number of cases, entirely sober. 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 undisciplined personnel who put a great effort into not doing their jobs. This ultimately led to a "work-shy workforce" among Soviet workers and administrators.
to enhance the powers and functions of the regional planners by establishing associations. The reform was never fully implemented; indeed, members of the Soviet leadership complained that the reform had not even begun by the time of the 1979 reform. The 1979 Soviet economic reform
was initiated 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 to an even greater extent. 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). Despite this, the reform never came to fruition. The reform is seen by several Sovietologists as the last major pre-perestroika
reform initiative put forward by the Soviet government.
's removal from office, rumours started circulating within the top circles, and on the streets, that Kosygin would retire due to bad health. During one of Kosygin's spells on sick leave, Brezhnev appointed Nikolai Tikhonov
, a like-minded conservative, to the post of First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers; through this office Tikhonov was able to reduce Kosygin to a backup role. For example, at a Central Committee
plenum in June 1980, the Soviet economic development plan was outlined by Tikhonov, not Kosygin. Following Kosygin's resignation in 1980, Tikhonov, at the age of 75, was elected the new Chairman of the Council of Ministers. At the end of his life, Kosygin feared the complete failure of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan
(1981–1985), believing that the sitting leadership was reluctant to reform the stagnant Soviet economy.
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. Later, however, 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. Kosygin did, however, head the Soviet Glassboro Summit Conference
delegation in 1967 with Lyndon B. Johnson
, the then-current 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. Immediately following the summit at Glassboro, Kosygin headed the Soviet delegation to Cuba
, where he met an angry Fidel Castro
who accused the Soviet Union of "capitulationism".
Détente
, literally the easing of strained relations, or in Russian "unloading", characterised the early part of the era. It meant "ideological co-existence" in the context of Soviet foreign policy, but it did not, however, entail an end to competition between capitalist and communist societies. The Soviet leadership's policy did, however, help 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.
One such success of diplomacy came with Willy Brandt
's ascension to the West German chancellorship
in 1969, as West German–Soviet tension started to ease. Brandt's Ostpolitik
policy, along with Brezhnev's détente, contributed to the signing of the Moscow
and Warsaw Treaties
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, these developments contributed to greatly reducing the animosity the Soviet people felt towards Germany, and Germans in general.
Not all efforts were so successful, however. The 1975 Helsinki Final Act, 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 retained little interest 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. The Soviets were largely successful; some small differences were that state borders were "inviolable" rather than "immutable", meaning that borders could 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 about some of the concessions. 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.
Another blow to Soviet communism in the First World
came with the establishment of eurocommunism
. Eurocommunists espoused and supported the ideals of Soviet communism while 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. Originating with the Prague Spring
, this new thinking made the First World more sceptical of Soviet communism in general.
In particular, Soviet–First World relations deteriorated when the US President Jimmy Carter
, following the advice of his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
, denounced the 1979 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan
(see Soviet–Afghan relations) 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
. The détente policy collapsed.
In the aftermath of Khrushchev's removal and the Sino–Soviet split, Alexei Kosygin was the most optimistic member of the Soviet leadership for a future rapprochement with the People's Republic of China
(PRC), while Yuri Andropov
remained sceptical and Brezhnev did not even voice his opinion. In many ways, Kosygin even had problems understanding why the two countries were quarrelling with each other in the first place. 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 for 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". The early hints of rapprochement collapsed, however, when Zhou 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, so he decided to stop off in Beijing
on his way to Vietnamese Communist leaders in Hanoi
on 5 February 1965; there he met with Zhou. The two were able to solve smaller issues, agreeing to increase trade between the countries, as well as 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 Zhou’s moderate stance against the USSR, and believed he was open for serious talks about Sino–Soviet relations. After his 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 eventually agreed and the two met on 11 February. His meeting with Mao was in an entirely different tone to the previous meeting with Zhou. Mao criticised Kosygin, and the Soviet leadership, of revisionist behaviour. He also continued to criticise Khrushchev's earlier policies. This meeting was to become Mao's last meeting with any Soviet leader.
Relations did not improve, and in 1968 Lin Biao
, the Chinese Defence 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, and both Khrushchev and Brezhnev were derided as "betrayers of [Vladimir] Lenin
" by the Chinese. To counter the accusations made by the Chinese Central Government, Brezhnev condemned the PRC's "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 SSR in 1982, 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. The Soviet leadership after Brezhnev's death
actively pursued a more friendly foreign policy to the PRC, and the normalisation of relations which had begun under Brezhnev, continued under his successors.
did not change much with Khrushchev's replacement. The Brezhnev regime inherited a sceptical attitude towards reform programmes which became more radical in tone following the Prague Spring
in 1968. 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. Polish leader Władysław Gomułka, who was removed from all of his posts in 1970, was succeeded by Edward Gierek
who tried to revitalise the economy of the People's Republic of Poland
by borrowing money from the First World
. The Soviet leadership approved both countries' respective economic experiments, since it was trying to reduce its large Eastern Bloc subsidy programme in the form of cheap oil and gas exports.
Not all reforms were supported by the Soviet leadership, however. Alexander Dubček
's political and economic liberalisation in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
led to a Soviet-led invasion of the country
by Warsaw Pact
countries in August 1968. Not all in the Soviet leadership were as enthusiastic for a military intervention; Brezhnev remained wary of any sort of intervention and Kosygin reminded leaders of the consequences of the Soviet suppression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution. In the aftermath of the 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 doctrine was condemned by the Socialist Republic of Romania
, the People's Republic of Albania and Yugoslavia
. As a result, the worldwide communist movement became poly-centric, meaning that the Soviet Union lost its role as 'leader' of the world communist movement. In the aftermath of the invasion, Brezhnev reiterated this doctrine in a speech at the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party
(PUWP) on 13 November 1968:
On 25 August 1980 the Soviet Politburo established a commission chaired by Mikhail Suslov
to examine the political crisis in Poland
that was beginning to gain speed. The importance of the commission was demonstrated by its composition: Dmitriy Ustinov
(Minister of Defence), Andrei Gromyko
(Minister of Foreign Affairs), Yuri Andropov
(KGB Chairman) and Konstantin Chernenko
, the Head of the General Department of the Central Committee and Brezhnev's closest associate. After just three days, the commission proposed the possibility of a Soviet military intervention, among other concrete measures. Troops and tank divisions were moved to the Soviet–Polish border. Later, however, the Soviet leadership came to the conclusion that they should not intervene in Poland. Stanisław Kania, the 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, reassuring the Polish delegation, headed by Kania, that the USSR would intervene only if asked to.
As Archie Brown
notes in his book The Rise and Fall of Communism, "Poland was a special case". The Soviet Union had intervened in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
the previous year, and the increasingly hard-line policies of the Reagan Administration
along with 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 of Poland 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.
During the final years of Brezhnev's rule, and in the aftermath of his death
, the Soviet leadership was forced by domestic difficulties to allow the Eastern Bloc governments to introduce more nationalistic communist policies to head off similar unrest to the turmoil in Poland and hence preventing it spreading to other communist countries. In a similar vein, Yuri Andropov
, Brezhnev's successor, claimed in a report to the Politburo that maintaining good relations with the Eastern Bloc "took precedence in Soviet foreign policy".
, and even Leninism
. Several Soviet think-tanks were opposed to the Soviet leadership's policy towards Third World self-proclaimed socialist states, claiming that none of them had built a strong enough capitalist base of development as to be labelled as anykind of socialist. According to historian Archie Brown
these Soviet ideologists were correct, and, as a result no true socialist states were ever established in Africa, though the People's Republic of Mozambique
certainly came close.
After the Angolan War of Independence
of 1975, the Soviet Union's role in Third World
politics increased dramatically. Some of the regions were important for national security, while 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 Congress
men. Diplomatic and economic ties were established with several countries during the 1970s, and several countries, such as Peru
, 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), an Eastern Bloc trading organisation established in 1949. 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 also 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 the 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
.
In South-East Asia, Nikita Khrushchev
had initially supported North Vietnam
out of "fraternal solidarity", but as the war escalated he urged the North Vietnamese leadership to give up the quest of liberating South Vietnam
. He continued to reject offers to assist the North Vietnamese government, and instead told them to enter negotiations in the United Nations Security Council
. Brezhnev, after taking power, 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 the recent Pleiku airbase attack
by the Viet Cong. In post-war Vietnam
, Soviet aid became the cornerstone of socio-economic activity. For example, in the early 1980s, 20 to 30 percent of the rice eaten by the Vietnamese people was supplied by the Soviet Union. Since Vietnam never developed an arms industry during the Cold War
, it was the Soviet Union who assisted them with weapons and matériel
during the Sino–Vietnamese War.
The Soviet Union supported the Vietnamese in their 1978 invasion of Cambodia, an invasion considered by the First World
, most notably the United States, and the People's Republic of China to be under the direct command of the Soviet Union. The USSR also became the largest backer of the new puppet state in Cambodia, the People's Republic of Kampuchea
(PRK). In a 1979 summit Jimmy Carter
complained to Brezhnev about the presence of Vietnamese troops in Cambodia, to which Brezhnev replied that the citizens of the PRK were delighted to have overthrown of the Khmer Rouge
-led government; in this, as historian Archie Brown
notes, he was right.
, formed in the aftermath of the Saur Revolution
of 1978, pursued several socialist policies, the country was "never considered socialist by the Soviet Union", according to historian Archie Brown. Indeed, since the USSR had backed the previous regime under Mohammed Daoud Khan
, the revolution, which had surprised the Soviet leadership, created many difficulties for the Soviet Union. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
, the Afghan communist party, consisted of two opposing factions, the khalq
s and the parcham
s; the Soviet leadership supported the latter, which had also join Moscow in backing the previous Daoud regime. After engineering the coup, however it was the Khalq faction that took over the reins of power. Nur Muhammad Taraki
became both President
and Prime Minister of Afghanistan
, while Hafizullah Amin
became the Deputy Prime Minister of Afghanistan, and, from May 1979, Prime Minister. The new Khalq government ordered the execution of several high-standing and low-standing members of the Parcham faction. To make matters even worse, Taraki's and Hafizullah's relationship which each other soon turned sour as opposition against their government increased. On 20 March 1979 Taraki travelled to the Soviet Union and met with Premier Kosygin, Dmitriy Ustinov
(Defence Minister), Andrei Gromyko
(Foreign Minister) and Boris Ponomarev
(head of the International Department of the Central Committee
), to discuss the possibilities of a Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Kosygin opposed the idea, believing that the Afghan leadership had to prove it had the support of the people by combating opposition on its own, though he did agree to increase material aid to Afghanistan. When Taraki asked Kosygin about the possibilities of a military intervention led by the Eastern Bloc
Kosygin rebuked him once more, again telling him that the Afghan leadership had to survive on its own. However, in a closed meeting without Kosygin, the Politburo unanimously supported a Soviet intervention.
In late 1979 Taraki failed to assassinate Amin, who, in a revenge attack, successfully engineering Taraki's own assassination on 9 October. Later, in December, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan
at the behest of Khan. On 27 December a KGB unit killed Amin. Babrak Karmal
, the leader of the Parcham faction, was chosen by the Soviet leadership as Amin's successor in the aftermath of the Soviet intervention. Unfortunately for the Soviet leadership Karmal did not turn out to be the leader they expected, and he, just as his predecessors had arrested and killed several Parcham-members, arrested and killed several high-standing and low-standing Khalq members simply because they supported the wrong faction. With Soviet troops still in the country, however, he was forced to bow to Soviet pressure, and released all Khalq prisoners. To make matters even worse for Karmal several of the previously arrested Khalq-members were forced to join the new government. At the time of Brezhnev's death, the Soviet Union was still bogged down in Afghanistan.
Soviet dissidents
and human rights groups were routinely 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 in the Soviet dissident movement during the Brezhnev Era were Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
and Andrei Sakharov
. Despite their individual fame, both had problems organising an effective opposition to the Soviet regime in the country itself. Sakharov was forced into internal exile in 1979, and Solzhenitsyn was forced out of the country in 1974.
As a result, many dissidents became members of the Communist Party instead of protesting actively against the Soviet system throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These dissidents were defined by Archie Brown
as "gradualists" who wanted to change the way the system worked in a slow manner. The International Department of the Central Committee and the Socialist Countries Department of the Central Committee – departments considered by the First World media to be filled with conservative communists – were in fact the departments where Mikhail Gorbachev
, as Soviet leader, would draw most of his "new thinkers" from. These officials had been influenced by Western culture and ideals by their travelling and reading. Reformers were also in much greater numbers in the country's research institutes.
Dissident success was mixed. Jews wanting to emigrate from the Soviet Union in the 1970s
formed the most successful, and most organised, dissident movement. Their success can be attributed to the movement's support abroad, most notably from the Jewish community in the United States. In addition, 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 subsequently sought to improve diplomatic ties with the First World
by allowing the Jews to emigrate. The emigration flow was reduced dramatically as Soviet–American tension increased in the later half of the 1970s, though it was revived somewhat in 1979, peaking at 50,000. In the early 1980s, however, the Soviet leadership decided to block emigration completely.
In general, the dissident movement had spurts of activity, including during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, when several people demonstrated at Red Square in Moscow
. With safety in numbers, dissidents who were interested in democratic reform were able to show themselves, though the demonstration, and the short-lived organised dissident group, were eventually repressed by the Soviet Government. The movement was then renewed once again with the Soviet signing of the Helsinki Accords
. Several Helsinki Watch Groups
were established across the country, all of which were routinely repressed, and many closed down. Due to the strong position of the Soviet Government, many dissidents had problems reaching a "wide audience", and by the early 1980s, the Soviet dissident movement was in disarray: the country's most notable dissidents had been exiled, either internally or externally, sent to prison or deported to the Gulag
s.
Following Khrushchev's controversial claim that (pure) communism could be reached "within 20 years"
, the new Soviet leadership responded by fostering the concept of developed socialism. For them, developed socialism would be socialism "attaining developed conditions", the result of "perfecting" the socialist society which had been created. In short, it would be just another stage in the development of communism. Developed socialism evolved into the Brezhnev regime's ideological cornerstone, and helped it to explain the situation of the Soviet Union. However, the theory of developed socialism theory also held that the Soviet Union had reached a state in development where it was crisis-free, and this proved to be incorrect. As a result, Yuri Andropov
, Brezhnev's successor, initiated the de-Brezhnevisation of the Soviet Union during his short time in office, and introduced more realistic ideological theses. He did retain developed socialism as a part of the state ideology, however.
and jeans, which had been criticised as hallmarks of Western culture, were legalised. The Soviet Union even started to manufacture its own jeans in the 1970s. As time progressed, however, the youth were more eager to buy Western products. The Soviet black market flourished during the Brezhnev Era, and "fake Western jeans" became very popular. Western rock groups such as The Beatles
remained very popular throughout the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc
, even if Soviet official policy 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, as well as its undemocratic system.
.
When the USSR's economic growth stalled in the 1970s, government focus shifted onto improving the standard of living
and housing quality. 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. To regain support, instead of paying more attention to the stagnant economy, the Soviet leadership under Brezhnev extended social benefits to boost the standard of living. This did indeed lead to an increase, albeit a minor one, in public support for the regime.
During the Brezhnev era, there were material improvements for the Soviet citizen, but the Politburo of the CPSU
was given no credit for this; the material improvements in the 1970s, i.e. the cheap provision of consumer goods
, food, shelter, clothing, sanitation, health care and transport
, were taken for granted by the common Soviet citizen. The common citizen associated Brezhnev's rule more with its limitation than its actual progress: as a result, Brezhnev earnt neither affection nor respect. Most Soviet citizens had no power to change the existing system, so 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 increased the Soviet people
's standard of living. Refrigerators, owned by only 32 percent of the population in the early 1970s, had reached 86 percent of households by the late 1980s, and the ownership of colour televisions increased from 51 percent in the early 1970s to 74 percent in the 1980s. On the other hand, though 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, and living space remained rather small by First World
standards, with the common Soviet person living in 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, with rationing of staple food products returning to locales such as Sverdlovsk
.
These effects were not felt uniformly, however. For example, by the end of the Brezhnev era, blue-collar workers 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. A small minority benefitted even more substantially. 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 placements, though they did not prevent the degeneration of Soviet society. Urbanisation had led to unemployment in the Soviet agricultural 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, in addition to the others previously mentioned, the Soviet society Brezhnev passed on to his successors had become "static".
. His popularity among citizens lessened 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 system
s 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 could possibly recover if the government was able to increase social discipline amongst workers. Brezhnev was seen as very vain and self-obsessed, but was praised for leading the Soviet Union into an unprecedented age of stability and domestic calm.
Following Andropov's death, political wrangling led to harsh criticism of Brezhnev and his family. Mikhail Gorbachev
, the last Soviet leader, drew support from hard-line communists and the Soviet population by criticising Brezhnev's rule, and referred to his rule as the "Era of Stagnation". Despite these attacks, in a poll taken in 2006, 61 percent of the people responded that they viewed the Brezhnev era as good for Russia.
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...
's rule of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
(USSR). This period began with high economic growth and soaring prosperity, but ended with a much weaker Soviet Union facing social, political, and economic stagnation. The average annual income stagnated, because needed economic reforms were never fully carried out.
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
was ousted as First Secretary
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the title given to the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. With some exceptions, the office was synonymous with leader of the Soviet Union...
of the Central Committee
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", earlier was also called as the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ...
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
(CPSU), as well as Chairman
Premier of the Soviet Union
The office of Premier of the Soviet Union was synonymous with head of government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics . Twelve individuals have been premier...
of the Council of Ministers, on 14 October 1964 due to his failed reforms and disregard for Party and Government institutions. Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin replaced him as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was an Armenian Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the rules of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev....
, and later Nikolai Podgorny
Nikolai Podgorny
Nikolai Viktorovich Podgorny was a Soviet Ukrainian statesman during the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, or leader of the Ukrainian SSR, from 1957 to 1963 and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1965 to 1977...
, became Chairmen of the Presidium
Presidium of the Supreme Soviet
The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was a Soviet governmental institution – a permanent body of the Supreme Soviets . This body was of the all-Union level , as well as in all Soviet republics and autonomous republics...
of the Supreme Soviet. Together with Andrei Kirilenko
Andrei Kirilenko (politician)
Andrei Pavlovich Kirilenko was a Soviet statesman from the start to the end of the Cold War. In 1906, Kirilenko was born in Alexeyevka, Belgorod Oblast, Russian Empire, to a Russian working class family. He graduated in the 1920s from a local vocational school, and again in the mid-to-late 1930s...
as organisational secretary, and Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965, and as unofficial Chief Ideologue of the Party until his death in 1982. Suslov was responsible for party democracy and the separation of power...
as Chief Ideologue, they made up a reinvigorated collective leadership
Collective leadership
Collective leadership or Collectivity of leadership , was considered an ideal form of governance in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics...
, which contrasted in form with the autocracy
Autocracy
An autocracy is a form of government in which one person is the supreme power within the state. It is derived from the Greek : and , and may be translated as "one who rules by himself". It is distinct from oligarchy and democracy...
that characterised Khrushchev's rule.
The collective leadership first set out to stabilise the Soviet Union and calm Soviet society, a task which they were able to accomplish. In addition, they attempted to speed up economic growth, which had slowed considerably during Khrushchev's last years as ruler. In 1965 Kosygin initiated several reforms to decentralise the Soviet economy. After initial success in creating economic growth, hard-liners within the Party halted the reforms, fearing that they would weaken the Party's prestige and power. No other radical economic reforms were carried out during the Brezhnev era, and economic growth began to stagnate in the early-to-mid-1970s. By Brezhnev's death in 1982, Soviet economic growth had, according to several historians, nearly come to a standstill.
The stabilisation policy brought about after Khrushchev's removal established a ruling gerontocracy
Gerontocracy
A gerontocracy is a form of oligarchical rule in which an entity is ruled by leaders who are significantly older than most of the adult population. Often the political structure is such that political power within the ruling class accumulates with age, so that the oldest hold the most power...
, and political corruption
Political corruption
Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...
became a normal phenomenon. Brezhnev, however, never initiated any large-scale anti-corruption campaigns. Due to the large military buildup of the 1960s the Soviet Union was able to consolidate itself as a superpower
Superpower
A superpower is a state with a dominant position in the international system which has the ability to influence events and its own interests and project power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests...
during Brezhnev's rule. The era ended with Brezhnev's death
Death and funeral of Leonid Brezhnev
On 10 November 1982, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, the third General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the fifth leader of the Soviet Union, died a 75 year-old man after suffering a heart attack following years of serious ailments. His death was officially acknowledged on 11...
on 10 November 1982.
Collectivity of leadership
After a prolonged power struggle, Khrushchev was finally ousted from his post as First Secretary in October 1964, charged with the failure of his reforms, his obsessive reorganisations of the Party and Government apparatus, his disregard for Party and Government institutionsCollective leadership
Collective leadership or Collectivity of leadership , was considered an ideal form of governance in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics...
, and his one-man domineering leadership style. The Presidium (Politburo), the Central Committee
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", earlier was also called as the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ...
and other important Party–Government bodies had grown tired of Khrushchev's repeated violations of established Party principles. The Soviet leadership also believed that his individualistic leadership style ran contrary to the ideal collective leadership
Collective leadership
Collective leadership or Collectivity of leadership , was considered an ideal form of governance in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics...
. Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...
and Alexei Kosygin succeeded Khrushchev in his posts as First Secretary
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the title given to the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. With some exceptions, the office was synonymous with leader of the Soviet Union...
and Premier
Premier of the Soviet Union
The office of Premier of the Soviet Union was synonymous with head of government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics . Twelve individuals have been premier...
respectively, and Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965, and as unofficial Chief Ideologue of the Party until his death in 1982. Suslov was responsible for party democracy and the separation of power...
, Andrei Kirilenko
Andrei Kirilenko (politician)
Andrei Pavlovich Kirilenko was a Soviet statesman from the start to the end of the Cold War. In 1906, Kirilenko was born in Alexeyevka, Belgorod Oblast, Russian Empire, to a Russian working class family. He graduated in the 1920s from a local vocational school, and again in the mid-to-late 1930s...
, and Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was an Armenian Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the rules of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev....
(replaced in 1965 by Nikolai Podgorny
Nikolai Podgorny
Nikolai Viktorovich Podgorny was a Soviet Ukrainian statesman during the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, or leader of the Ukrainian SSR, from 1957 to 1963 and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1965 to 1977...
), were also given prominence in the new leadership. Together they formed a functional collective leadership.
The collective leadership was, in its early stages, usually referred to as the "Brezhnev–Kosygin" leadership and the pair began their respective periods in office on a relatively equal footing. After Kosygin initiated the economic reform of 1965
1965 Soviet economic reform
The 1965 Soviet economic reform, widely referred to simply as the Kosygin reform or Liberman reform, was a reform of economic management and planning, carried out between 1965 and 1971...
, however, his prestige within the Soviet leadership withered and his subsequent loss of power strengthened Brezhnev's position within the Soviet hierarchy. Kosygin's influence was further weakened when Podgorny took his post as the second-most powerful figure in the Soviet Union.
Brezhnev conspired to oust Podgorny from the collective leadership as early as 1970. The reason was simple: Brezhnev was third, while Podgorny was first in the ranking of Soviet diplomatic protocol; Podgorny's removal would have made Brezhnev head of state, and his political power would have increased significantly. For much of the period, however, Brezhnev was unable to have Podgorny removed, because he could not count on enough votes in the Politburo, since the removal of Podgorny would have meant weakening of the power and the prestige of the collective leadership itself. Indeed, Podgorny continued to acquire greater power as the head of state throughout the early 1970s, due to Brezhnev's liberal stance on Yugoslavia
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
and his disarmament talks with some Western powers, policies which many Soviet officials saw as contrary to common communist principles.
This did not remain the case, however. Brezhnev strengthened his position considerably during the early-to-mid 1970s within the Party leadership and by a further weakening of the "Kosygin faction"; by 1977 he had enough support in the Politburo to oust Podgorny from office and active politics in general. Podgorny's eventual removal in 1977 had the effect of reducing Kosygin's role in day-to-day management of government activities by strengthening the powers of the government apparatus led by Brezhnev. After Podgorny's removal rumours started circulating Soviet society that Kosygin was about to retire due to his deteriorating health condition. Nikolai Tikhonov
Nikolai Tikhonov
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Tikhonov was a Soviet Russian-Ukrainian statesman during the Cold War. He served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1980 to 1985, and as a First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, literally First Vice Premier, from 1976 to 1980...
, a First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers under Kosygin, succeeded the later as premier in 1980 (see Kosygin's resignation).
Podgorny's fall was not seen as the end of the collective leadership, and Suslov continued to write several ideological documents about it. In 1978, one year after Podgorny's retirement, Suslov made several references to the collective leadership in his ideological works. It was around this time that Kirilenko's power and prestige within the Soviet leadership started to wane. Indeed, towards the end of the period, Brezhnev was regarded as too old to simultaneously exercise all of the functions of head of state by his colleagues. With this in mind, the Supreme Soviet, on Brezhnev's orders, established the new post of First Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, a post akin to a "vice president
Vice president
A vice president is an officer in government or business who is below a president in rank. The name comes from the Latin vice meaning 'in place of'. In some countries, the vice president is called the deputy president...
". The Supreme Soviet unanimously approved Vasili Kuznetsov, at the age of 76, to be First Deputy Chairman of the Presidium in late 1977. As Brezhnev's health worsened, the collective leadership took an even more important role in everyday decision-making. For this reason, Brezhnev's death
Death and funeral of Leonid Brezhnev
On 10 November 1982, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, the third General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the fifth leader of the Soviet Union, died a 75 year-old man after suffering a heart attack following years of serious ailments. His death was officially acknowledged on 11...
did not alter the balance of power
Separation of Power
Separation of Power is Vince Flynn's fourth novel, and the third to feature Mitch Rapp, an American agent that works for the CIA as an operative for a covert counterterrorism unit called the "Orion Team."-Plot summary:...
in any radical fashion, and Yuri Andropov
Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.-Early life:...
and Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko was a Soviet politician and the fifth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He led the Soviet Union from 13 February 1984 until his death thirteen months later, on 10 March 1985...
were obliged by protocol to rule the country in the same fashion as Brezhnev left it.
Assassination attempt
Viktor IlyinViktor Ilyin
An assassination attempt was made upon Leonid Brezhnev on 22 January 1969, when a deserter from the Soviet Army, Viktor Ilyin, fired shots at a motorcade carrying the Soviet leader through Moscow. Though Brezhnev was unhurt, the shots killed a driver and lightly injured several celebrated...
, a disenfranchised Soviet soldier
Soviet Army
The Soviet Army is the name given to the main part of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1992. Previously, it had been known as the Red Army. Informally, Армия referred to all the MOD armed forces, except, in some cases, the Soviet Navy.This article covers the Soviet Ground...
, attempted to assassinate Brezhnev on 22 January 1969 by firing shots at a motorcade
Motorcade
A motorcade is a procession of vehicles. The term motorcade was coined by Lyle Abbot , and is formed after cavalcade on the false notion that "-cade" was a suffix meaning "procession"...
carrying Brezhnev through Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. Though Brezhnev was unhurt, the shots killed a driver and lightly injured several celebrated cosmonauts of the Soviet space program
Soviet space program
The Soviet space program is the rocketry and space exploration programs conducted by the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from the 1930s until its dissolution in 1991...
me who were also travelling in the motorcade. Brezhnev's attacker was captured, and interrogated personally by Andropov, then KGB chairman and future Soviet leader. Ilyin was not given the death penalty because his desire to kill Brezhnev was considered so absurd that he was sent to the Kazan
Kazan
Kazan is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. With a population of 1,143,546 , it is the eighth most populous city in Russia. Kazan lies at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers in European Russia. In April 2009, the Russian Patent Office granted Kazan the...
mental asylum instead for treatment.
Defence policy
The Soviet Union launched a large military build-up in 1965 by expanding both nuclear and conventional arsenals. The Soviet leadership believed a strong military would be useful leverage in negotiating with foreign powers, and increase the Eastern BlocEastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
's security from attacks. In the 1970s, the Soviet leadership concluded that a war with the capitalist countries might not necessarily become nuclear, and therefore they initiated a rapid expansion of the country's conventional forces. Due to the country's weaker infrastructure compared to the United States, the Soviet leadership believed that the only way to beat the First World was by a rapid military conquest of Western Europe, relying on sheer numbers alone. The Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity with the United States by the early 1970s, after which the country consolidated itself as a superpower
Superpower
A superpower is a state with a dominant position in the international system which has the ability to influence events and its own interests and project power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests...
. The apparent success of the military build-up led the Soviet leadership to believe that the military, and the military alone, "bought the Soviet Union security and influence".
Brezhnev had, according to some of his closest advisers, been concerned for a very long time about the growing military expenditure in the 1960s. Advisers have recounted how Brezhnev came into conflict with several top-level military industrialists, the most notable being Marshal Andrei Grechko
Andrei Grechko
Andrei Antonovich Grechko was a Soviet general, Marshal of the Soviet Union and Minister of Defense.-Biography:Born in a small town near Rostov-on-Don, the son of Ukrainian peasants, he joined the Red Army in 1919, where he was a part of the legendary “Budyonny Cavalry”...
, the Minister of Defence. In the early 1970s, according to Anatoly Aleksandrov-Agentov, one of Brezhnev's closest advisers, Brezhnev attended a five-hour meeting to try to convince the Soviet military establishment to reduce military spending. In the meeting an irritated 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; the question was left unanswered. When Grechko died in 1976 Dmitriy Ustinov
Dmitriy Ustinov
Dmitriy Feodorovich Ustinov was Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union from 1976 until his death.-Early life:Dimitry Feodorovich Ustinov was born in a working-class family in Samara. During the civil war, when hunger became intolerable, his sick father went to Samarkand, leaving Dimitry as head...
took his place as Defence Minister. Ustinov, although a close associate and friend of Brezhnev, hindered any attempt made by Brezhnev to reduce national military expenditure. In his later years, Brezhnev lacked the "will and energy" to reduce expenditure, due to his declining health. According to the Soviet diplomat Georgy Arbatov
Georgy Arbatov
Georgy Arkadevich Arbatov was a Soviet and Russian political scientist who served as an adviser to five General Secretaries of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and was best known in the West during the Cold War era as a representative for the policies of the Soviet Union in the United...
, the military-industrial complex
Military-industrial complex
Military–industrial complex , or Military–industrial-congressional complex is a concept commonly used to refer to policy and monetary relationships between legislators, national armed forces, and the industrial sector that supports them...
functioned as Brezhnev's power base within the Soviet hierarchy even if he tried to scale-down investments.
At the 23rd Party Congress
23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union took place in Moscow, RSFSR between 29 March and 8 April 1966. It was the first Congress during Leonid Brezhnev's leadership of the Party and state...
in 1966, Brezhnev told the delegates that the Soviet military had reached a level fully sufficient to defend the country. The Soviet Union reached ICBM parity with the United States that year. In early 1977, Brezhnev told the world that the Soviet Union did not seek to became superior to the United States in nuclear weapons, nor to be militarily superior in any sense of the word. In the later years of Brezhnev's reign, it became official defence policy to only invest enough to maintain military deterrence, and by the 1980s, Soviet defence officials were told again that investment would not exceed the level to retain national security. In his last meeting with Soviet military leaders in October 1982, Brezhnev stressed the importance of not over-investing in the Soviet military sector. This policy was retained during the rules of Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko was a Soviet politician and the fifth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He led the Soviet Union from 13 February 1984 until his death thirteen months later, on 10 March 1985...
and Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
.
Stabilisation
Though Brezhnev's time in office would later be characterised as one of stability, early on, Brezhnev oversaw the replacement of half of the regional leaders and Politburo members. This was a typical move for a Soviet leader trying to strengthen his power base. Examples of Politburo members who lost their membership during the Brezhnev Era are Gennady VoronovGennady Voronov
Gennady Ivanovich Voronov was a Soviet-Russian statesman who was from 1962 to 1971 the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian SFSR, literally meaning Premier or Prime Minister....
, Dmitry Polyansky
Dmitry Polyansky
Note: There is also a Russian triathlete with the same name, transliterated also as Dmitry Polyanski.Dmitry Stepanovich Polyansky , – Moscow, 8 October 2001) was a Soviet-Russian statesman who was First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union from 1965 to 1973...
, Alexander Shelepin
Alexander Shelepin
Alexander Nikolayevich Shelepin was a Soviet state security officer and party statesman. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its Politburo and was the head of the KGB from 25 December 1958 to 13 November 1961.Shelepin was born in Voronezh...
, Petro Shelest
Petro Shelest
Petro Yukhymovych Shelest was the First Secretary of the Communist party in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic Petro Yukhymovych Shelest (February 14, 1908 - January 22, 1996) was the First Secretary of the Communist party in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic Petro Yukhymovych Shelest...
and Podgorny. Polyansky and Voronov lost their membership in the Politburo because they were considered to be members of the "Kosygin faction." In their place came Andrei Grechko
Andrei Grechko
Andrei Antonovich Grechko was a Soviet general, Marshal of the Soviet Union and Minister of Defense.-Biography:Born in a small town near Rostov-on-Don, the son of Ukrainian peasants, he joined the Red Army in 1919, where he was a part of the legendary “Budyonny Cavalry”...
, the Minister of Defence, Andrei Gromyko
Andrei Gromyko
Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet . Gromyko was responsible for many top decisions on Soviet foreign policy until he retired in 1987. In the West he was given the...
the Minister of Foreign Affairs and KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
Chairman Andropov. The removal and replacement of members of the Soviet leadership halted in late 1970s.
Initially, in fact, Brezhnev portrayed himself as a moderate — not as radical as Kosygin but not as conservative as Shelepin. Brezhnev gave the Central Committee
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", earlier was also called as the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ...
formal permission to initiate Kosygin's 1965 economic reform
1965 Soviet economic reform
The 1965 Soviet economic reform, widely referred to simply as the Kosygin reform or Liberman reform, was a reform of economic management and planning, carried out between 1965 and 1971...
. According to historian Robert Service
Robert Service (historian)
Robert John Service is a British historian, academic, and author who has written extensively on the history of Soviet Russia, particularly the era from the October Revolution to Stalin's death...
, Brezhnev did modify some of Kosygin's reform proposals, many of which were unhelpful at best. 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 control of Soviet agriculture
Agriculture of the Soviet Union
Agriculture in the Soviet Union was organized into a system of state and collective farms, known as sovkhozes and kolkhozes, respectively. Organized on a large scale and relatively highly mechanized, the Soviet Union was one of the world's leading producers of cereals, although bad harvests ...
, another hint that he opposed Kosygin's reform programme. Brezhnev believed, in contrast to Khrushchev, that rather than wholesale reorganisation, the key to increasing agricultural output was making the existing system work more efficiently.
In the late 1960s, Brezhnev talked of the need to "renew" the party cadres, but according to 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 Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's purges and Khrushchev's reorganisation of Party-Government institutions. Members acted in optimism, and believed 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 the Prague Spring
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was the official name of Czechoslovakia from 1960 until end of 1989 , a Soviet satellite state of the Eastern Bloc....
. The result was a period of overt stabilisation at the heart of government, a policy which also had the effect of reducing cultural freedom: several dissident samizdat
Samizdat
Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...
s were shut down.
Gerontocracy
After the reshuffling process of the Politburo ended in the mid-to-late 1970, the Soviet leadership evolved into a gerontocracyGerontocracy
A gerontocracy is a form of oligarchical rule in which an entity is ruled by leaders who are significantly older than most of the adult population. Often the political structure is such that political power within the ruling class accumulates with age, so that the oldest hold the most power...
, a form of rule in which the rulers are significantly older than most of the adult population.
The Brezhnev generation — the people who lived and worked during the Brezhnev Era — owed their rise to prominence to Joseph Stalin's Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
in the late 1930s. In the purge, Stalin ordered the execution or exile of nearly all Soviet bureaucrats over the age of 35, thereby opening 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
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
'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
Fyodor Kulakov
Fyodor Davydovich Kulakov was a Soviet-Russian statesman during the Cold War....
and Grigory Romanov
Grigory Romanov
Grigory Vasilyevich Romanov , was a Soviet politician and member of the Politburo and Secretariat of the CPSU. In 1985, he was considered Mikhail Gorbachev's main rival in the succession struggle after the death of Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985....
, 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
Death and funeral of Leonid Brezhnev
On 10 November 1982, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, the third General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the fifth leader of the Soviet Union, died a 75 year-old man after suffering a heart attack following years of serious ailments. His death was officially acknowledged on 11...
had evolved into "a gerontocracy increasingly lacking of physical and intellectual vigour".
New constitution
During the era, Brezhnev was also the Chairman of the Constitutional Commission of the Supreme Soviet, which worked for the creation of a new constitution. The Commission had 97 members, with Konstantin ChernenkoKonstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko was a Soviet politician and the fifth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He led the Soviet Union from 13 February 1984 until his death thirteen months later, on 10 March 1985...
among the more prominent. Brezhnev was not driven by a wish to leave a mark on history, but rather to even further weaken Premier Alexei Kosygin's prestige. The formulation of the constitution kept with Brezhnev's political style and was neither anti-Stalinist nor neo-Stalinist, but stuck to a middle path, following most of the same principles and ideas as the previous constitutions
Constitution of the Soviet Union
There were three versions of the constitution of the Soviet Union, modeled after the 1918 Constitution established by the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic , the immediate predecessor of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics....
. 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
1936 Soviet Constitution
The 1936 Soviet constitution, adopted on December 5, 1936, and also known as the "Stalin" constitution, redesigned the government of the Soviet Union.- Basic provisions :...
. It described the Soviet Union, for example, as an "advanced industrial society
Industrial society
In sociology, industrial society refers to a society driven by the use of technology to enable mass production, supporting a large population with a high capacity for division of labour. Such a structure developed in the west in the period of time following the Industrial Revolution, and replaced...
". In this sense, the resulting document can be seen as proof of the achievements, as well as the limits, of de-Stalinisation. It enhanced the status of the individual
Individual
An individual is a person or any specific object or thing in a collection. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires. Being self expressive...
in all matters of life, while at the same time solidifying the Party
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
's hold on power.
During the drafting process, a debate within the Soviet leadership took place between the two factions on whether to call Soviet law
Soviet law
The Law of the Soviet Union—also known as Socialist Law—was the law developed in the Soviet Union following the October Revolution of 1917...
"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
Soviet people
Soviet people or Soviet nation was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union. Initially used as a nonspecific reference to the Soviet population, it was eventually declared to be a "new historical, social and international unity of people".-Nationality politics in early Soviet...
, which had changed drastically in the post-Stalin years. Constitutional thought prevailed to an extent, and the 1977 Soviet Constitution had a greater effect on conceptualising the Soviet system.
Later years
In his later years, Brezhnev developed his own cult of personalityCult of personality
A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are usually associated with dictatorships...
, and awarded himself the highest military decorations of the Soviet Union. The media extolled Brezhnev "as a dynamic leader and intellectual colossus". Brezhnev was awarded a Lenin Prize for Literature for Brezhnev's trilogy
Brezhnev's trilogy
The Brezhnev's trilogy was a series of three memoirs published under name of Leonid Brezhnev:* The Small Land * Rebirth * Virgin Lands...
, three auto-biographical novels. These awards were given to Brezhnev to bolster his position within the Party
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
and the Politburo. When Alexei Kosygin died on 18 December 1980, one day before Brezhnev's birthday, Pravda
Pravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
and other media outlets postponed the reporting of his death until after Brezhnev's birthday celebration. In reality, however, Brezhnev's physical and intellectual capacities had started to decline in the 1970s from bad health.
Brezhnev approved the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan
Soviet war in Afghanistan
The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist-Leninist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against the Afghan Mujahideen and foreign "Arab–Afghan" volunteers...
(see also Soviet–Afghan relations) just as he had previously approved the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
On the night of 20–21 August 1968, the Soviet Union and her main satellite states in the Warsaw Pact – Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic , Hungary and Poland – invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in order to halt Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring political liberalization...
. 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 Dmitriy Ustinov
Dmitriy Ustinov
Dmitriy Feodorovich Ustinov was Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union from 1976 until his death.-Early life:Dimitry Feodorovich Ustinov was born in a working-class family in Samara. During the civil war, when hunger became intolerable, his sick father went to Samarkand, leaving Dimitry as head...
(Minister of Defence), Andrei Gromyko
Andrei Gromyko
Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet . Gromyko was responsible for many top decisions on Soviet foreign policy until he retired in 1987. In the West he was given the...
(Minister of Foreign Affairs), and Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965, and as unofficial Chief Ideologue of the Party until his death in 1982. Suslov was responsible for party democracy and the separation of power...
(Central Committee Secretary), feared that Brezhnev's removal would spark a succession crisis, and so they helped to maintain the status quo
Status quo
Statu quo, a commonly used form of the original Latin "statu quo" – literally "the state in which" – is a Latin term meaning the current or existing state of affairs. To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are...
.
Brezhnev stayed in office under pressure from some of his Politburo associates, though in practice the country was not governed by Brezhnev, but instead by a collective leadership led by Suslov, Ustinov, Gromyko, and Yuri Andropov
Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.-Early life:...
. Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko was a Soviet politician and the fifth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He led the Soviet Union from 13 February 1984 until his death thirteen months later, on 10 March 1985...
, 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 January 1982, before Brezhnev, Andropov took Suslov's place in the Central Committee Secretariat. With Brezhnev's health worsening, 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
Death and funeral of Leonid Brezhnev
On 10 November 1982, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, the third General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the fifth leader of the Soviet Union, died a 75 year-old man after suffering a heart attack following years of serious ailments. His death was officially acknowledged on 11...
. He was buried on 15 November 1982 at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis
Kremlin Wall Necropolis
Burials in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow began in November 1917, when 240 pro-Bolshevik victims of the October Revolution were buried in mass graves on Red Square. It is centered on both sides of Lenin's Mausoleum, initially built in wood in 1924 and rebuilt in granite in 1929–1930...
.
Economics
1965 reform
The 1965 Soviet economic reform1965 Soviet economic reform
The 1965 Soviet economic reform, widely referred to simply as the Kosygin reform or Liberman reform, was a reform of economic management and planning, carried out between 1965 and 1971...
, often referred to as the "Kosygin reform", of economic management and planning was carried out between 1965 and 1971. Announced in September 1965, it contained three main measures: the recentralisation of the Soviet economy by re-establishing several central ministries
Ministries of the Soviet Union
-Ministries:- Other agencies under the Cabinet of Ministers :-See also:* Council of People's Commissars, head of government from 1917-1946* Council of Ministers, head of government from 1946-1991* Cabinet of Ministers, head of government in 1991...
, a decentralising overhaul of the enterprise incentive system (including wider usage of capitalist-style material incentives for good performance), and thirdly, a major price reform. The reform was initiated by Alexei Kosygin's First Government
Kosygin's first government
The former government of Nikita Khrushchev was dissolved following his removal from the post of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Alexei Kosygin was elected Premier by the Politburo and the Central Committee following the removal of Khrushchev. His first government would last for two years,...
and implemented during the Eighth Five-Year Plan, 1968–1970.
Though these measures were established to counter many of the irrationalities of the Soviet economic system, the reform did not try to change the existing system radically; it instead tried to improve it gradually. Success was ultimately mixed, and Soviet analyses on why the reform failed to reach its full potential have never given any definitive answers. The key factors are agreed upon, however, with blame being put on the combination of the recentralisation of the economy with the decentralisation of enterprise autonomy, creating several administrative obstacles. Additionally, instead of creating a market which in turn would establish a pricing system, administrators were given the responsibility for overhauling the pricing system themselves. Because of this, the market-like system failed to materialise. To make matters worse, the reform was contradictory at best. In retrospect, however, the Eighth Five-Year Plan as a whole is considered to be one of the most successful periods for the Soviet economy, and the most successful for consumer production.
The marketisation of the economy, in which Kosygin supported, was considered to radical in the light of the Prague Spring
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
in the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia. Nikolai Ryzhkov
Nikolai Ryzhkov
Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov was a Soviet official who became a Russian politician following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He served as the last Chairman of the Council of Ministers or Premier of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991...
, the future Chairman of the Council of Ministers, referred in a 1987 speech to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union to the "sad experiences of the 1965 reform", and claimed that everything went from bad to worse following the reform's cancellation.
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
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
, is considered by several economists to be the worst financial crisis
Financial crisis
The term financial crisis is applied broadly to a variety of situations in which some financial institutions or assets suddenly lose a large part of their value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and many recessions coincided with these...
in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. It was triggered by over-centralisation and a conservative state bureaucracy. As the economy grew, the volume of decisions facing planners
Gosplan
Gosplan or State Planning Committee was the committee responsible for economic planning in the Soviet Union. The word "Gosplan" is an abbreviation for Gosudarstvenniy Komitet po Planirovaniyu...
in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
became overwhelming. As a result, 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
Political corruption
Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...
. 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.
With the mounting economic problems, skilled workers were usually paid more than had been intended in the first place, while unskilled labourers tended to turn up late, and were neither conscientious nor, in a number of cases, entirely sober. 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
Unemployment
Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...
. Government industries such as factories, mines and offices were staffed by undisciplined personnel who put a great effort into not doing their jobs. This ultimately led to a "work-shy workforce" among Soviet workers and administrators.
1973 and 1979 reform
Kosygin initiated the 1973 Soviet economic reform1973 Soviet economic reform
The 1973 Soviet economic reform was an economic reform initiated by Alexei Kosygin, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers. During Leonid Brezhnev's rule of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics the Soviet economy began to stagnate; this period is referred to by historians as the Era of...
to enhance the powers and functions of the regional planners by establishing associations. The reform was never fully implemented; indeed, members of the Soviet leadership complained that the reform had not even begun by the time of the 1979 reform. The 1979 Soviet economic reform
1979 Soviet economic reform
The 1979 Soviet economic reform, or "Improving planning and reinforcing the effects of the economic mechanism on raising the effectiveness in production and improving the quality of work", was an economic reform initiated by Alexei Kosygin, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers...
was initiated to improve the then-stagnating Soviet economy. The reform's goal was to increase the powers of the central ministries
Ministries of the Soviet Union
-Ministries:- Other agencies under the Cabinet of Ministers :-See also:* Council of People's Commissars, head of government from 1917-1946* Council of Ministers, head of government from 1946-1991* Cabinet of Ministers, head of government in 1991...
by centralising the Soviet economy to an even greater extent. This reform was also never fully implemented, and when Kosygin died in 1980 it was practically abandoned by his successor, Nikolai Tikhonov
Nikolai Tikhonov
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Tikhonov was a Soviet Russian-Ukrainian statesman during the Cold War. He served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1980 to 1985, and as a First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, literally First Vice Premier, from 1976 to 1980...
. Tikhonov told the Soviet people
Soviet people
Soviet people or Soviet nation was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union. Initially used as a nonspecific reference to the Soviet population, it was eventually declared to be a "new historical, social and international unity of people".-Nationality politics in early Soviet...
at the 26th Party Congress that the reform was to be implemented, or at least parts of it, during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan
Eleventh Five-Year Plan (Soviet Union)
The Eleventh Five-Year Plan, or the 11th Five-Year Plan, of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a set of goals designed to strengthen the country's economy between 1981 and 1985...
(1981–1985). Despite this, the reform never came to fruition. The reform is seen by several Sovietologists as the last major pre-perestroika
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
reform initiative put forward by the Soviet government.
Kosygin's resignation
Following Nikolai PodgornyNikolai Podgorny
Nikolai Viktorovich Podgorny was a Soviet Ukrainian statesman during the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, or leader of the Ukrainian SSR, from 1957 to 1963 and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1965 to 1977...
's removal from office, rumours started circulating within the top circles, and on the streets, that Kosygin would retire due to bad health. During one of Kosygin's spells on sick leave, Brezhnev appointed Nikolai Tikhonov
Nikolai Tikhonov
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Tikhonov was a Soviet Russian-Ukrainian statesman during the Cold War. He served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1980 to 1985, and as a First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, literally First Vice Premier, from 1976 to 1980...
, a like-minded conservative, to the post of First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers; through this office Tikhonov was able to reduce Kosygin to a backup role. For example, at a Central Committee
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", earlier was also called as the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ...
plenum in June 1980, the Soviet economic development plan was outlined by Tikhonov, not Kosygin. Following Kosygin's resignation in 1980, Tikhonov, at the age of 75, was elected the new Chairman of the Council of Ministers. At the end of his life, Kosygin feared the complete failure of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan
Eleventh Five-Year Plan (Soviet Union)
The Eleventh Five-Year Plan, or the 11th Five-Year Plan, of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a set of goals designed to strengthen the country's economy between 1981 and 1985...
(1981–1985), believing that the sitting leadership was reluctant to reform the stagnant Soviet economy.
Soviet–First World relations
Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet Premier, tried to challenge Brezhnev on the rights of the General SecretaryGeneral Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the title given to the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. With some exceptions, the office was synonymous with leader of the Soviet Union...
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. Later, however, Kosygin, who had been the chief negotiator with the First World
First World
The concept of the First World first originated during the Cold War, where it was used to describe countries that were aligned with the United States. These countries were democratic and capitalistic. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term "First World" took on a...
during the 1960s, was hardly to be seen outside the Second World
Second World
The term "Second World" is a phrase used to describe those countries which are allied with or are supported by the "First World" countries . These include countries supported by the United States, such as Colombia, Israel, etc., and those supported by the former Soviet Union, also known as the the...
after Brezhnev strengthened his position within the Politburo. Kosygin did, however, head the Soviet Glassboro Summit Conference
Glassboro Summit Conference
The Glassboro Summit Conference, usually just called the Glassboro Summit, was the 23–25 June 1967 meeting of the heads of government of the United States and the Soviet Union—President Lyndon B. Johnson and Premier Alexei Kosygin, respectively—for the purpose of discussing Soviet–US relations...
delegation in 1967 with Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
, the then-current President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
. The summit was dominated by three issues: the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, the Six-Day War
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
and the Soviet–American arms race. Immediately following the summit at Glassboro, Kosygin headed the Soviet delegation to Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, where he met an angry Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
who accused the Soviet Union of "capitulationism".
Détente
Détente
Détente is the easing of strained relations, especially in a political situation. The term is often used in reference to the general easing of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1970s, a thawing at a period roughly in the middle of the Cold War...
, literally the easing of strained relations, or in Russian "unloading", characterised the early part of the era. It meant "ideological co-existence" in the context of Soviet foreign policy, but it did not, however, entail an end to competition between capitalist and communist societies. The Soviet leadership's policy did, however, help 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.
One such success of diplomacy came with Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt, born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm , was a German politician, Mayor of West Berlin 1957–1966, Chancellor of West Germany 1969–1974, and leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany 1964–1987....
's ascension to the West German chancellorship
Chancellor of Germany
The Chancellor of Germany is, under the German 1949 constitution, the head of government of Germany...
in 1969, as West German–Soviet tension started to ease. Brandt's Ostpolitik
Ostpolitik
Neue Ostpolitik , or Ostpolitik for short, refers to the normalization of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Eastern Europe, particularly the German Democratic Republic beginning in 1969...
policy, along with Brezhnev's détente, contributed to the signing of the Moscow
Treaty of Moscow (1970)
The Treaty of Moscow, was signed on August 12, 1970 between the USSR and West Germany . It was signed by Willy Brandt and Walter Scheel from the FRG side and by Alexei Kosygin and Andrei Gromyko from the USSR side.-Description:...
and Warsaw Treaties
Treaty of Warsaw (1970)
The Treaty of Warsaw was a treaty between West Germany and the People's Republic of Poland. It was signed by Chancellor Willy Brandt and Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz at the Presidential Palace on 7 December 1970, and it was ratified by the German Bundestag on 17 May 1972.In the treaty, both...
in which West Germany recognised the state borders established following World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, 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, these developments contributed to greatly reducing the animosity the Soviet people felt towards Germany, and Germans in general.
Not all efforts were so successful, however. The 1975 Helsinki Final Act, a Soviet-led initiative which was hailed as a success for Soviet diplomacy, "backfired", in the words of historian Archie Brown
Archie Brown
Archibald Haworth Brown CMG, FBA, commonly known as Archie Brown , is a British political scientist and historian. In 2005, he became Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University and an Emeritus Fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford, where he was a Professor of Politics and Director of St....
. The United States Government retained little interest through the whole process, and Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
once told a senior British official that the United States "had never wanted the conference". Other notables, such as Nixon's successor as President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
, Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford
Gerald Rudolph "Jerry" Ford, Jr. was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40th Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974...
, and National Security Advisor
National Security Advisor (United States)
The Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor , serves as the chief advisor to the President of the United States on national security issues...
Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
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. The Soviets were largely successful; some small differences were that state borders were "inviolable" rather than "immutable", meaning that borders could 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
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
and transparency. Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965, and as unofficial Chief Ideologue of the Party until his death in 1982. Suslov was responsible for party democracy and the separation of power...
and Gromyko, among others, were worried about some of the concessions. Yuri Andropov
Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.-Early life:...
, the KGB Chairman, believed the greater transparency was weakening the prestige of the KGB, and strengthening the prestige of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
First World
The concept of the First World first originated during the Cold War, where it was used to describe countries that were aligned with the United States. These countries were democratic and capitalistic. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term "First World" took on a...
came with the establishment of eurocommunism
Eurocommunism
Eurocommunism was a trend in the 1970s and 1980s within various Western European communist parties to develop a theory and practice of social transformation that was more relevant in a Western European democracy and less aligned to the influence or control of the Communist Party of the Soviet...
. Eurocommunists espoused and supported the ideals of Soviet communism while 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. Originating with the Prague Spring
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
, this new thinking made the First World more sceptical of Soviet communism in general.
In particular, Soviet–First World relations deteriorated when the US President Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
, following the advice of his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981....
, denounced the 1979 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan
Soviet war in Afghanistan
The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist-Leninist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against the Afghan Mujahideen and foreign "Arab–Afghan" volunteers...
(see Soviet–Afghan relations) 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
1980 Summer Olympics
The 1980 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event celebrated in Moscow in the Soviet Union. In addition, the yachting events were held in Tallinn, and some of the preliminary matches and the quarter-finals of the football tournament...
held in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. The Soviet Union responded by boycotting the 1984 Summer Olympics
1984 Summer Olympics
The 1984 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Los Angeles, California, United States in 1984...
held in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. The détente policy collapsed.
Sino–Soviet relations
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
(PRC), while Yuri Andropov
Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.-Early life:...
remained sceptical and Brezhnev did not even voice his opinion. In many ways, Kosygin even had problems understanding why the two countries were quarrelling with each other in the first place. The collective leadership; Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was an Armenian Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the rules of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev....
, Brezhnev and Kosygin were considered by the PRC to retain the revisionist attitudes of their predecessor, Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
. 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 for rapprochement with the PRC. When Kosygin met his counterpart, the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976...
, in 1964, Kosygin found him to be in an "excellent mood". The early hints of rapprochement collapsed, however, when Zhou accused Kosygin of Khrushchev-like behaviour after Rodion Malinovsky
Rodion Malinovsky
Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky was a Soviet military commander in World War II and Defense Minister of the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and 1960s. He contributed to the major defeat of Nazi Germany at the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Budapest...
's anti-imperialistic speech against the First World
First World
The concept of the First World first originated during the Cold War, where it was used to describe countries that were aligned with the United States. These countries were democratic and capitalistic. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term "First World" took on a...
.
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, so he decided to stop off in Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
on his way to Vietnamese Communist leaders in Hanoi
Hanoi
Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...
on 5 February 1965; there he met with Zhou. The two were able to solve smaller issues, agreeing to increase trade between the countries, as well as 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 Zhou’s moderate stance against the USSR, and believed he was open for serious talks about Sino–Soviet relations. After his visit to Hanoi, Kosygin returned to Beijing on 10 February, this time to meet Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
personally. At first Mao refused to meet Kosygin, but eventually agreed and the two met on 11 February. His meeting with Mao was in an entirely different tone to the previous meeting with Zhou. Mao criticised Kosygin, and the Soviet leadership, of revisionist behaviour. He also continued to criticise Khrushchev's earlier policies. This meeting was to become Mao's last meeting with any Soviet leader.
Relations did not improve, and in 1968 Lin Biao
Lin Biao
Lin Biao was a major Chinese Communist military leader who was pivotal in the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, especially in Northeastern China...
, the Chinese Defence Minister
Ministry of National Defense of the People's Republic of China
The Ministry of National Defense of the People's Republic of China is a ministry under the State Council. It is headed by the Minister of National Defense. The MND was set up according to a decision adopted by the 1st Session of the 1st National People's Congress in 1954...
, 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, and both Khrushchev and Brezhnev were derided as "betrayers of [Vladimir] Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
" by the Chinese. To counter the accusations made by the Chinese Central Government, Brezhnev condemned the PRC's "frenzied anti-Sovietism
Anti-Sovietism
Anti-Sovietism and Anti-Soviet refer to persons and activities actually or allegedly aimed against the Soviet Union or government power within the Soviet Union.Three different flavors of the usage of the term may be distinguished....
", and asked Enlai to follow up on his word to normalise Sino–Soviet relations. In another speech, this time in Tashkent
Tashkent
Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan and of the Tashkent Province. The officially registered population of the city in 2008 was about 2.2 million. Unofficial sources estimate the actual population may be as much as 4.45 million.-Early Islamic History:...
, Uzbek SSR in 1982, 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
Collective security
Collective security can be understood as a security arrangement, regional or global, in which each state in the system accepts that the security of one is the concern of all, and agrees to join in a collective response to threats to, and breaches of, the peace...
treaty in which the USSR would defend any country against a possible attack from the PRC. The Soviet leadership after Brezhnev's death
Death and funeral of Leonid Brezhnev
On 10 November 1982, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, the third General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the fifth leader of the Soviet Union, died a 75 year-old man after suffering a heart attack following years of serious ailments. His death was officially acknowledged on 11...
actively pursued a more friendly foreign policy to the PRC, and the normalisation of relations which had begun under Brezhnev, continued under his successors.
Soviet–Eastern Bloc relations
The Soviet leadership's policy towards the Eastern BlocEastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
did not change much with Khrushchev's replacement. The Brezhnev regime inherited a sceptical attitude towards reform programmes which became more radical in tone following the Prague Spring
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
in 1968. János Kádár
János Kádár
János Kádár was a Hungarian communist leader and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, presiding over the country from 1956 until his forced retirement in 1988. His thirty-two year term as General Secretary makes Kádár the longest ruler of the People's Republic of Hungary...
, the leader of the People's Republic of Hungary
People's Republic of Hungary
The People's Republic of Hungary or Hungarian People's Republic was the official state name of Hungary from 1949 to 1989 during its Communist period under the guidance of the Soviet Union. The state remained in existence until 1989 when opposition forces consolidated in forcing the regime to...
, initiated a couple of reforms similar to Alexei Kosygin's 1965 economic reform
1965 Soviet economic reform
The 1965 Soviet economic reform, widely referred to simply as the Kosygin reform or Liberman reform, was a reform of economic management and planning, carried out between 1965 and 1971...
. The reform measures, named the New Economic Mechanism
New Economic Mechanism
The New Economic Mechanism was a major economic reform launched in the People's Republic of Hungary in 1968.- Reform :The period from 1956–1968 was one of reform in Eastern Europe...
, were introduced in Hungary during Khrushchev's rule, and were protected by Kosygin in the post-Khrushchev Era. Polish leader Władysław Gomułka, who was removed from all of his posts in 1970, was succeeded by Edward Gierek
Edward Gierek
Edward Gierek was a Polish communist politician.He was born in Porąbka, outside of Sosnowiec. He lost his father to a mining accident in a pit at the age of four. His mother married again and emigrated to northern France, where he was raised. He joined the French Communist Party in 1931 and was...
who tried to revitalise the economy of the People's Republic of Poland
People's Republic of Poland
The People's Republic of Poland was the official name of Poland from 1952 to 1990. Although the Soviet Union took control of the country immediately after the liberation from Nazi Germany in 1944, the name of the state was not changed until eight years later...
by borrowing money from the First World
First World
The concept of the First World first originated during the Cold War, where it was used to describe countries that were aligned with the United States. These countries were democratic and capitalistic. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term "First World" took on a...
. The Soviet leadership approved both countries' respective economic experiments, since it was trying to reduce its large Eastern Bloc subsidy programme in the form of cheap oil and gas exports.
Not all reforms were supported by the Soviet leadership, however. Alexander Dubček
Alexander Dubcek
Alexander Dubček , also known as Dikita, was a Slovak politician and briefly leader of Czechoslovakia , famous for his attempt to reform the communist regime during the Prague Spring...
's political and economic liberalisation in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was the official name of Czechoslovakia from 1960 until end of 1989 , a Soviet satellite state of the Eastern Bloc....
led to a Soviet-led invasion of the country
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
On the night of 20–21 August 1968, the Soviet Union and her main satellite states in the Warsaw Pact – Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic , Hungary and Poland – invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in order to halt Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring political liberalization...
by Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...
countries in August 1968. Not all in the Soviet leadership were as enthusiastic for a military intervention; Brezhnev remained wary of any sort of intervention and Kosygin reminded leaders of the consequences of the Soviet suppression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution. In the aftermath of the invasion the Brezhnev Doctrine
Brezhnev Doctrine
The Brezhnev Doctrine was a Soviet Union foreign policy, first and most clearly outlined by S. Kovalev in a September 26, 1968 Pravda article, entitled “Sovereignty and the International Obligations of Socialist Countries.” Leonid Brezhnev reiterated it in a speech at the Fifth Congress of the...
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 doctrine was condemned by the Socialist Republic of Romania
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
, the People's Republic of Albania and Yugoslavia
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
. As a result, the worldwide communist movement became poly-centric, meaning that the Soviet Union lost its role as 'leader' of the world communist movement. In the aftermath of the invasion, Brezhnev reiterated this doctrine in a speech at the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party
Polish United Workers' Party
The Polish United Workers' Party was the Communist party which governed the People's Republic of Poland from 1948 to 1989. Ideologically it was based on the theories of Marxism-Leninism.- The Party's Program and Goals :...
(PUWP) on 13 November 1968:
On 25 August 1980 the Soviet Politburo established a commission chaired by Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965, and as unofficial Chief Ideologue of the Party until his death in 1982. Suslov was responsible for party democracy and the separation of power...
to examine the political crisis in Poland
Soviet reaction to the Polish crisis of 1980–1981
The Polish crisis of 1980–1981, associated with the emergence of the Solidarity mass movement in Poland, challenged the Soviet control over the satellite countries of the Eastern Bloc....
that was beginning to gain speed. The importance of the commission was demonstrated by its composition: Dmitriy Ustinov
Dmitriy Ustinov
Dmitriy Feodorovich Ustinov was Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union from 1976 until his death.-Early life:Dimitry Feodorovich Ustinov was born in a working-class family in Samara. During the civil war, when hunger became intolerable, his sick father went to Samarkand, leaving Dimitry as head...
(Minister of Defence), Andrei Gromyko
Andrei Gromyko
Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet . Gromyko was responsible for many top decisions on Soviet foreign policy until he retired in 1987. In the West he was given the...
(Minister of Foreign Affairs), Yuri Andropov
Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.-Early life:...
(KGB Chairman) and Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko was a Soviet politician and the fifth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He led the Soviet Union from 13 February 1984 until his death thirteen months later, on 10 March 1985...
, the Head of the General Department of the Central Committee and Brezhnev's closest associate. After just three days, the commission proposed the possibility of a Soviet military intervention, among other concrete measures. Troops and tank divisions were moved to the Soviet–Polish border. Later, however, the Soviet leadership came to the conclusion that they should not intervene in Poland. Stanisław Kania, the First Secretary
General Secretary
The office of general secretary is staffed by the chief officer of:*The General Secretariat for Macedonia and Thrace, a government agency for the Greek regions of Macedonia and Thrace...
of the PUWP, mooted the Soviet proposal for introducing martial law in Poland
Martial law in Poland
Martial law in Poland refers to the period of time from December 13, 1981 to July 22, 1983, when the authoritarian government of the People's Republic of Poland drastically restricted normal life by introducing martial law in an attempt to crush political opposition to it. Thousands of opposition...
. Erich Honecker
Erich Honecker
Erich Honecker was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic as General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1971 until 1989, serving as Head of State as well from Willi Stoph's relinquishment of that post in 1976....
, the First Secretary of the East German Socialist Unity Party
Socialist Unity Party of Germany
The Socialist Unity Party of Germany was the governing party of the German Democratic Republic from its formation on 7 October 1949 until the elections of March 1990. The SED was a communist political party with a Marxist-Leninist ideology...
, 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
Kremlin
A kremlin , same root as in kremen is a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...
later that year, Brezhnev had concluded that it would be better to leave the domestic matters of Poland alone for the time being, reassuring the Polish delegation, headed by Kania, that the USSR would intervene only if asked to.
As Archie Brown
Archie Brown
Archibald Haworth Brown CMG, FBA, commonly known as Archie Brown , is a British political scientist and historian. In 2005, he became Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University and an Emeritus Fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford, where he was a Professor of Politics and Director of St....
notes in his book The Rise and Fall of Communism, "Poland was a special case". The Soviet Union had intervened in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was a government of Afghanistan between 1978 and 1992. It was both ideologically close to and economically dependent on the Soviet Union, and was a major belligerent of the Afghan Civil War.- Saur Revolution :...
the previous year, and the increasingly hard-line policies of the Reagan Administration
Reagan Administration
The United States presidency of Ronald Reagan, also known as the Reagan administration, was a Republican administration headed by Ronald Reagan from January 20, 1981, to January 20, 1989....
along with the vast organisational network of the opposition, were among the major reasons why the Politburo Commission pushed for martial law
Martial law
Martial law is the imposition of military rule by military authorities over designated regions on an emergency basis— only temporary—when the civilian government or civilian authorities fail to function effectively , when there are extensive riots and protests, or when the disobedience of the law...
instead of an intervention. When Wojciech Jaruzelski
Wojciech Jaruzelski
Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski is a retired Polish military officer and Communist politician. He was the last Communist leader of Poland from 1981 to 1989, Prime Minister from 1981 to 1985 and the country's head of state from 1985 to 1990. He was also the last commander-in-chief of the Polish People's...
became Prime Minister of Poland 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.
During the final years of Brezhnev's rule, and in the aftermath of his death
Death and funeral of Leonid Brezhnev
On 10 November 1982, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, the third General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the fifth leader of the Soviet Union, died a 75 year-old man after suffering a heart attack following years of serious ailments. His death was officially acknowledged on 11...
, the Soviet leadership was forced by domestic difficulties to allow the Eastern Bloc governments to introduce more nationalistic communist policies to head off similar unrest to the turmoil in Poland and hence preventing it spreading to other communist countries. In a similar vein, Yuri Andropov
Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.-Early life:...
, Brezhnev's successor, claimed in a report to the Politburo that maintaining good relations with the Eastern Bloc "took precedence in Soviet foreign policy".
Soviet–Third World relations
All self-proclaimed African socialist states and the Middle Eastern country of South Yemen were labelled by Soviet ideologists as "States of Socialist Orientation". Numerous African leaders were influenced by MarxismMarxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, and even Leninism
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...
. Several Soviet think-tanks were opposed to the Soviet leadership's policy towards Third World self-proclaimed socialist states, claiming that none of them had built a strong enough capitalist base of development as to be labelled as anykind of socialist. According to historian Archie Brown
Archie Brown
Archibald Haworth Brown CMG, FBA, commonly known as Archie Brown , is a British political scientist and historian. In 2005, he became Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University and an Emeritus Fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford, where he was a Professor of Politics and Director of St....
these Soviet ideologists were correct, and, as a result no true socialist states were ever established in Africa, though the People's Republic of Mozambique
People's Republic of Mozambique
The People's Republic of Mozambique , was a self-declared socialist state that lasted from June 25, 1975 through December 1, 1990, becoming the present day Republic of Mozambique.After gaining independence from Portugal in 1975, the People's Republic of Mozambique was established shortly...
certainly came close.
After the Angolan War of Independence
Angolan War of Independence
The Angolan War of Independence began as an uprising against forced cotton cultivation, and became a multi-faction struggle for control of Portugal's Overseas Province of Angola with three nationalist movements and a separatist movement...
of 1975, the Soviet Union's role in Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
politics increased dramatically. Some of the regions were important for national security, while 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
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
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 Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
men. Diplomatic and economic ties were established with several countries during the 1970s, and several countries, such as Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
, 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), an Eastern Bloc trading organisation established in 1949. 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 also played a key role in the secessionist struggle against the Portuguese Empire
Portuguese Empire
The Portuguese Empire , also known as the Portuguese Overseas Empire or the Portuguese Colonial Empire , was the first global empire in history...
and the struggle for black majority rule in Southern Africa
Southern Africa
Southern Africa is the southernmost region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. Within the region are numerous territories, including the Republic of South Africa ; nowadays, the simpler term South Africa is generally reserved for the country in English.-UN...
. Control of the Somali Democratic Republic
Somali Democratic Republic
The Somali Democratic Republic was the name that the communist regime of former President of Somalia Major General Mohamed Siad Barre gave to Somalia after seizing power during a bloodless coup d'état in 1969...
was of great interest to both the Soviet Union and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, due to the country's strategic location at the mouth of the Red Sea
Red Sea
The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez...
. After the Soviets broke foreign relations with Siad Barre
Siad Barre
Mohamed Siad Barre was the military dictator and President of the Somali Democratic Republic from 1969 to 1991. During his rule, he styled himself as Jaalle Siyaad ....
's regime in Somalia, the Soviets turned to the Derg Government in Ethiopia
Derg
The Derg or Dergue was a Communist military junta that came to power in Ethiopia following the ousting of Haile Selassie I. Derg, which means "committee" or "council" in Ge'ez, is the short name of the Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces, Police, and Territorial Army, a committee of...
and supported them in their war against Somalia
Ogaden War
The Ogaden War was a conventional conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia in 1977 and 1978 over the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. In a notable illustration of the nature of Cold War alliances, the Soviet Union switched from supplying aid to Somalia to supporting Ethiopia, which had previously been...
. 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
Ogaden War
The Ogaden War was a conventional conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia in 1977 and 1978 over the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. In a notable illustration of the nature of Cold War alliances, the Soviet Union switched from supplying aid to Somalia to supporting Ethiopia, which had previously been...
.
In South-East Asia, Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
had initially supported North Vietnam
North Vietnam
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...
out of "fraternal solidarity", but as the war escalated he urged the North Vietnamese leadership to give up the quest of liberating South Vietnam
South Vietnam
South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...
. He continued to reject offers to assist the North Vietnamese government, and instead told them to enter negotiations in the United Nations Security Council
United Nations Security Council
The United Nations Security Council is one of the principal organs of the United Nations and is charged with the maintenance of international peace and security. Its powers, outlined in the United Nations Charter, include the establishment of peacekeeping operations, the establishment of...
. Brezhnev, after taking power, started once again to aid the communist resistance in Vietnam. In February 1965, Kosygin travelled to Hanoi
Hanoi
Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...
with dozens of Soviet air force generals and economic experts. During the Soviet visit, President Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
had allowed US bombing raids
Operation Flaming Dart
Operation Flaming Dart was a U.S. and Vietnam Air Force military operation, conducted in two parts, during the Vietnam War. During the bombing raid Premier Alexei Kosygin headed a Soviet delegation to North Vietnam....
on North Vietnamese soil in retaliation of the recent Pleiku airbase attack
Viet Cong attack on Pleiku airbase
The attack on Camp Holloway occurred during the early hours of 7 February 1965, in the early stages of the Vietnam War. Camp Holloway was a helicopter facility constructed by the United States Army in 1962, to support the operations of Free World Military Forces in the Central Highlands of...
by the Viet Cong. In post-war Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, Soviet aid became the cornerstone of socio-economic activity. For example, in the early 1980s, 20 to 30 percent of the rice eaten by the Vietnamese people was supplied by the Soviet Union. Since Vietnam never developed an arms industry during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, it was the Soviet Union who assisted them with weapons and matériel
Materiel
Materiel is a term used in English to refer to the equipment and supplies in military and commercial supply chain management....
during the Sino–Vietnamese War.
The Soviet Union supported the Vietnamese in their 1978 invasion of Cambodia, an invasion considered by the First World
First World
The concept of the First World first originated during the Cold War, where it was used to describe countries that were aligned with the United States. These countries were democratic and capitalistic. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term "First World" took on a...
, most notably the United States, and the People's Republic of China to be under the direct command of the Soviet Union. The USSR also became the largest backer of the new puppet state in Cambodia, the People's Republic of Kampuchea
People's Republic of Kampuchea
The People's Republic of Kampuchea , , was founded in Cambodia by the Salvation Front, a group of Cambodian leftists dissatisfied with the Khmer Rouge, after the overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot's government...
(PRK). In a 1979 summit Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
complained to Brezhnev about the presence of Vietnamese troops in Cambodia, to which Brezhnev replied that the citizens of the PRK were delighted to have overthrown of the Khmer Rouge
Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge literally translated as Red Cambodians was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan...
-led government; in this, as historian Archie Brown
Archie Brown
Archibald Haworth Brown CMG, FBA, commonly known as Archie Brown , is a British political scientist and historian. In 2005, he became Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University and an Emeritus Fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford, where he was a Professor of Politics and Director of St....
notes, he was right.
Afghan–Soviet relations
Although the government of Democratic Republic of AfghanistanDemocratic Republic of Afghanistan
The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was a government of Afghanistan between 1978 and 1992. It was both ideologically close to and economically dependent on the Soviet Union, and was a major belligerent of the Afghan Civil War.- Saur Revolution :...
, formed in the aftermath of the Saur Revolution
Saur Revolution
The Saur Revolution is the name given to the Communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan takeover of political power from the government of Afghanistan on 28 April 1978. The word 'Saur', i.e...
of 1978, pursued several socialist policies, the country was "never considered socialist by the Soviet Union", according to historian Archie Brown. Indeed, since the USSR had backed the previous regime under Mohammed Daoud Khan
Mohammed Daoud Khan
Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan or Daud Khan was Prime Minister of Afghanistan from 1953 to 1963 and later becoming the President of Afghanistan...
, the revolution, which had surprised the Soviet leadership, created many difficulties for the Soviet Union. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan was a communist party established on the 1 January 1965. While a minority, the party helped former president of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, to overthrow his cousin, Mohammed Zahir Shah, and established Daoud's Republic of Afghanistan...
, the Afghan communist party, consisted of two opposing factions, the khalq
Khalq
Khalq was a faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Its historical leaders were Presidents Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin. It was also the name of the leftist newspaper produced by the same movement. It was supported by the USSR and was formed in 1965 when the PDPA was born...
s and the parcham
Parcham
Parcham was the name of one of the factions of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. The Parcham faction seized power in the country after toppling Hafizullah Amin....
s; the Soviet leadership supported the latter, which had also join Moscow in backing the previous Daoud regime. After engineering the coup, however it was the Khalq faction that took over the reins of power. Nur Muhammad Taraki
Nur Muhammad Taraki
Nur Muhammad Taraki was an Afghan politician and statesman during the Cold War. Taraki was born near Kabul and educated at Kabul University, after which he started his political career as a journalist...
became both President
President of Afghanistan
Afghanistan has only been a republic between 1973 and 1992 and from 2001 onwards. Before 1973, it was a monarchy that was governed by a variety of kings, emirs or shahs...
and Prime Minister of Afghanistan
Prime Minister of Afghanistan
The Prime Minister of Afghanistan is a currently defunct post in the Afghan Government.The position was created in 1927, and was appointed by the king, mostly as an advisor, until the end of the monarchy in 1973...
, while Hafizullah Amin
Hafizullah Amin
Hafizullah Amin was the second President of Afghanistan during the period of the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan....
became the Deputy Prime Minister of Afghanistan, and, from May 1979, Prime Minister. The new Khalq government ordered the execution of several high-standing and low-standing members of the Parcham faction. To make matters even worse, Taraki's and Hafizullah's relationship which each other soon turned sour as opposition against their government increased. On 20 March 1979 Taraki travelled to the Soviet Union and met with Premier Kosygin, Dmitriy Ustinov
Dmitriy Ustinov
Dmitriy Feodorovich Ustinov was Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union from 1976 until his death.-Early life:Dimitry Feodorovich Ustinov was born in a working-class family in Samara. During the civil war, when hunger became intolerable, his sick father went to Samarkand, leaving Dimitry as head...
(Defence Minister), Andrei Gromyko
Andrei Gromyko
Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet . Gromyko was responsible for many top decisions on Soviet foreign policy until he retired in 1987. In the West he was given the...
(Foreign Minister) and Boris Ponomarev
Boris Ponomarev
Boris Nikolayevich Ponomarev was a Soviet politician, ideologist and historian, and a member of the Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union...
(head of the International Department of the Central Committee
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", earlier was also called as the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ...
), to discuss the possibilities of a Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Kosygin opposed the idea, believing that the Afghan leadership had to prove it had the support of the people by combating opposition on its own, though he did agree to increase material aid to Afghanistan. When Taraki asked Kosygin about the possibilities of a military intervention led by the Eastern Bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
Kosygin rebuked him once more, again telling him that the Afghan leadership had to survive on its own. However, in a closed meeting without Kosygin, the Politburo unanimously supported a Soviet intervention.
In late 1979 Taraki failed to assassinate Amin, who, in a revenge attack, successfully engineering Taraki's own assassination on 9 October. Later, in December, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan
Soviet war in Afghanistan
The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist-Leninist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against the Afghan Mujahideen and foreign "Arab–Afghan" volunteers...
at the behest of Khan. On 27 December a KGB unit killed Amin. Babrak Karmal
Babrak Karmal
Babrak Karmal was the third President of Afghanistan during the period of the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. He is the best known of the Marxist leadership....
, the leader of the Parcham faction, was chosen by the Soviet leadership as Amin's successor in the aftermath of the Soviet intervention. Unfortunately for the Soviet leadership Karmal did not turn out to be the leader they expected, and he, just as his predecessors had arrested and killed several Parcham-members, arrested and killed several high-standing and low-standing Khalq members simply because they supported the wrong faction. With Soviet troops still in the country, however, he was forced to bow to Soviet pressure, and released all Khalq prisoners. To make matters even worse for Karmal several of the previously arrested Khalq-members were forced to join the new government. At the time of Brezhnev's death, the Soviet Union was still bogged down in Afghanistan.
Dissident movement
Soviet dissidents
Soviet dissidents were citizens of the Soviet Union who disagreed with the policies and actions of their government and actively protested against these actions through either violent or non-violent means...
and human rights groups were routinely repressed by the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
. The Soviet dissident movement grew considerably during the Brezhnev Era, due to the revitalisation of some old Stalinist policies. The two leading figures in the Soviet dissident movement during the Brezhnev Era were Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
and Andrei Sakharov
Andrei Sakharov
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was a Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. He earned renown as the designer of the Soviet Union's Third Idea, a codename for Soviet development of thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the...
. Despite their individual fame, both had problems organising an effective opposition to the Soviet regime in the country itself. Sakharov was forced into internal exile in 1979, and Solzhenitsyn was forced out of the country in 1974.
As a result, many dissidents became members of the Communist Party instead of protesting actively against the Soviet system throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These dissidents were defined by Archie Brown
Archie Brown
Archibald Haworth Brown CMG, FBA, commonly known as Archie Brown , is a British political scientist and historian. In 2005, he became Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University and an Emeritus Fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford, where he was a Professor of Politics and Director of St....
as "gradualists" who wanted to change the way the system worked in a slow manner. The International Department of the Central Committee and the Socialist Countries Department of the Central Committee – departments considered by the First World media to be filled with conservative communists – were in fact the departments where Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
, as Soviet leader, would draw most of his "new thinkers" from. These officials had been influenced by Western culture and ideals by their travelling and reading. Reformers were also in much greater numbers in the country's research institutes.
Dissident success was mixed. Jews wanting to emigrate from the Soviet Union in the 1970s
Aliyah from the Soviet Union in the 1970s
In the 1970s a major immigration wave of Soviet Union Jews went to Israel.-Background:A mass emigration was politically undesirable for the Soviet regime. In the wake of Israel's victory in the Six-Day War in 1967, the USSR broke off the diplomatic relations with the Jewish state...
formed the most successful, and most organised, dissident movement. Their success can be attributed to the movement's support abroad, most notably from the Jewish community in the United States. In addition, 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
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. The Soviet Government subsequently sought to improve diplomatic ties with the First World
First World
The concept of the First World first originated during the Cold War, where it was used to describe countries that were aligned with the United States. These countries were democratic and capitalistic. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term "First World" took on a...
by allowing the Jews to emigrate. The emigration flow was reduced dramatically as Soviet–American tension increased in the later half of the 1970s, though it was revived somewhat in 1979, peaking at 50,000. In the early 1980s, however, the Soviet leadership decided to block emigration completely.
In general, the dissident movement had spurts of activity, including during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, when several people demonstrated at Red Square in Moscow
1968 Red Square demonstration
The 1968 Red Square demonstration took place on August 25, 1968 at Red Square, Moscow, Soviet Union, to protest the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, that occurred during the night of 20–21 August 1968, crushing the so-called Prague spring, a set of...
. With safety in numbers, dissidents who were interested in democratic reform were able to show themselves, though the demonstration, and the short-lived organised dissident group, were eventually repressed by the Soviet Government. The movement was then renewed once again with the Soviet signing of the Helsinki Accords
Helsinki Accords
thumb|300px|[[Erich Honecker]] and [[Helmut Schmidt]] in Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Helsinki 1975....
. Several Helsinki Watch Groups
Helsinki Watch
Helsinki Watch was a private American NGO devoted to monitoring Helsinki implementation throughout the Soviet bloc. It was created in 1978 to monitor compliance to the Helsinki Final Act...
were established across the country, all of which were routinely repressed, and many closed down. Due to the strong position of the Soviet Government, many dissidents had problems reaching a "wide audience", and by the early 1980s, the Soviet dissident movement was in disarray: the country's most notable dissidents had been exiled, either internally or externally, sent to prison or deported to the Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
s.
Ideology and beliefs
Soviet society is generally regarded as having reached modernity under Brezhnev's rule. 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 became better educated and more professionalised. In contrast to previous periods dominated by "terrors, cataclysms and conflicts", the Brezhnev Era constituted a period of continuous development without interruption. There was a fourfold growth in higher education between the 1950s and 1980s; this development was referred to as the "scientific-technological revolution". In addition, women came to make up half of the country's educated specialists.Following Khrushchev's controversial claim that (pure) communism could be reached "within 20 years"
Communism in 20 years
Communism in 20 years was a slogan put forth by Nikita Khrushchev at the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1961.In his speech, Khrushchev promised that communism will be built "in the main" by 1980. His phrase "The current generation of Soviet people will live under...
, the new Soviet leadership responded by fostering the concept of developed socialism. For them, developed socialism would be socialism "attaining developed conditions", the result of "perfecting" the socialist society which had been created. In short, it would be just another stage in the development of communism. Developed socialism evolved into the Brezhnev regime's ideological cornerstone, and helped it to explain the situation of the Soviet Union. However, the theory of developed socialism theory also held that the Soviet Union had reached a state in development where it was crisis-free, and this proved to be incorrect. As a result, Yuri Andropov
Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.-Early life:...
, Brezhnev's successor, initiated the de-Brezhnevisation of the Soviet Union during his short time in office, and introduced more realistic ideological theses. He did retain developed socialism as a part of the state ideology, however.
Culture
During the Brezhnev Era, pressure from below forced the Soviet leadership to alter some cultural policies, though the fundamental characteristics of the Communist system remained the same. Rock musicRock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
and jeans, which had been criticised as hallmarks of Western culture, were legalised. The Soviet Union even started to manufacture its own jeans in the 1970s. As time progressed, however, the youth were more eager to buy Western products. The Soviet black market flourished during the Brezhnev Era, and "fake Western jeans" became very popular. Western rock groups such as The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
remained very popular throughout the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
, even if Soviet official policy remained weary of it. Soviet rock music
Soviet music
Soviet music is the music composed and produced in the USSR. It varied in many genres and epochs. Although the majority of it was written by Russians, it was also influenced by various national minorities in the Soviet Republic. The Soviet state supported musical institutions, but also carried out...
evolved, and became a form of dissidence against the Soviet system. Vladimir Vysotsky
Vladimir Vysotsky
Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky was a Soviet singer, songwriter, poet, and actor whose career had an immense and enduring effect on Russian culture. He became widely known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which featured social and political commentary in often humorous street...
, Alexander Galich and Bulat Okudzhava
Bulat Okudzhava
Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava was a Soviet and Russian poet, writer, musician, novelist, and singer-songwriter. He was one of the founders of the Russian genre called "author song"...
were the most renowned rock musicians, and their lyrics, and music in general, were critical of the country's Stalinist past, as well as its undemocratic system.
Standard of living
From 1964 to 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 in equivalent US dollars. In the first half of the Brezhnev period, income per head increased by 3.5 percent per annum, though this represented slightly less growth than in the last years of Khrushchev. This can be explained by the reversion of most of Khrushchev's policies when Brezhnev came to power. Over time, however, citizens did find themselves better off than under Khrushchev. Consumption per head rose by an estimated 70% under Brezhnev, though three-quarters of this growth happened before 1973 and only one-quarter in the second half of his time in office. Most of the increase in consumer production in the early Brezhnev era can be attributed to the Kosygin reform, according to an analysis on the performance of the reform carried out by the Moscow State UniversityMoscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...
.
When the USSR's economic growth stalled in the 1970s, government focus shifted onto improving the standard of living
Standard of living
Standard of living is generally measured by standards such as real income per person and poverty rate. Other measures such as access and quality of health care, income growth inequality and educational standards are also used. Examples are access to certain goods , or measures of health such as...
and housing quality. The standard of living in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....
(RSFSR) had fallen behind that of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (GSSR) and the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic
Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic
The Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic , often abbreviated as Estonian SSR or ESSR, was a republic of the Soviet Union, administered by and subordinated to the Government of the Soviet Union...
(ESSR) under Brezhnev; this led many Russians to believe that the policies of the Soviet Government were hurting the Russian population. To regain support, instead of paying more attention to the stagnant economy, the Soviet leadership under Brezhnev extended social benefits to boost the standard of living. This did indeed lead to an increase, albeit a minor one, in public support for the regime.
During the Brezhnev era, there were material improvements for the Soviet citizen, but the Politburo of the CPSU
Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Politburo , known as the Presidium from 1952 to 1966, functioned as the central policymaking and governing body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.-Duties and responsibilities:The...
was given no credit for this; the material improvements in the 1970s, i.e. the cheap provision of consumer goods
Consumer goods in the Soviet Union
The industry of the Soviet Union was usually divided into two major categories. Group A was "heavy industry," which included all goods that serve as an input required for the production of some other, final good...
, food, shelter, clothing, sanitation, health care and transport
Transport in the Soviet Union
Transport in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was an important part of the nation's economy. The economic centralisation of the late 1920s and 1930s led to the development of infrastructure at a massive scale and rapid pace. Before the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, there were a wide...
, were taken for granted by the common Soviet citizen. The common citizen associated Brezhnev's rule more with its limitation than its actual progress: as a result, Brezhnev earnt neither affection nor respect. Most Soviet citizens had no power to change the existing system, so 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 increased the Soviet people
Soviet people
Soviet people or Soviet nation was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union. Initially used as a nonspecific reference to the Soviet population, it was eventually declared to be a "new historical, social and international unity of people".-Nationality politics in early Soviet...
's standard of living. Refrigerators, owned by only 32 percent of the population in the early 1970s, had reached 86 percent of households by the late 1980s, and the ownership of colour televisions increased from 51 percent in the early 1970s to 74 percent in the 1980s. On the other hand, though 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, and living space remained rather small by First World
First World
The concept of the First World first originated during the Cold War, where it was used to describe countries that were aligned with the United States. These countries were democratic and capitalistic. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term "First World" took on a...
standards, with the common Soviet person living in 13.4 square metres. At the same time thousands of Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
inhabitants were homeless, most of them living in shacks, doorways and parked trams. Nutrition ceased to improve in the late 1970s, with rationing of staple food products returning to locales such as Sverdlovsk
Yekaterinburg
Yekaterinburg is a major city in the central part of Russia, the administrative center of Sverdlovsk Oblast. Situated on the eastern side of the Ural mountain range, it is the main industrial and cultural center of the Urals Federal District with a population of 1,350,136 , making it Russia's...
.
These effects were not felt uniformly, however. For example, by the end of the Brezhnev era, blue-collar workers 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. A small minority benefitted even more substantially. The state provided daily recreation and annual holidays for hard-working citizens. Soviet trade unions
Trade unions in the Soviet Union
Trade unions in the Soviet Union trace their history back to Russian Revolution of 1905. Many trade unions were shut down or restricted on the eve of World War I and during the War, but they revived after the February Revolution and their leaders were democratically elected during 1917.Anarchists...
rewarded hard-working members and their families with beach vacations in Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
and Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
. Workers who fulfilled the monthly production quota
Production quota
A production quota is a goal for the production of a good. It is typically set by a government or an organization, and can be applied to an individual worker, firm, industry or country. Quotas can be set high to encourage production, or can be used to limit production to control the supply of goods...
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 placements, though they did not prevent the degeneration of Soviet society. Urbanisation had led to unemployment in the Soviet agricultural 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
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
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, in addition to the others previously mentioned, the Soviet society Brezhnev passed on to his successors had become "static".
Historical assessments
Despite Brezhnev's failures in domestic reforms, his foreign affairs and defence policies turned the Soviet Union into a superpowerSuperpower
A superpower is a state with a dominant position in the international system which has the ability to influence events and its own interests and project power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests...
. His popularity among citizens lessened during his last years, and support for the ideals of communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
and Marxism-Leninism
Marxism-Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
waned, even if the majority of Soviet citizens remained wary of liberal democracy
Liberal democracy
Liberal democracy, also known as constitutional democracy, is a common form of representative democracy. According to the principles of liberal democracy, elections should be free and fair, and the political process should be competitive...
and multi-party system
Multi-party system
A multi-party system is a system in which multiple political parties have the capacity to gain control of government separately or in coalition, e.g.The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition in the United Kingdom formed in 2010. The effective number of parties in a multi-party system is normally...
s in general.
The political corruption
Political corruption
Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...
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 could possibly recover if the government was able to increase social discipline amongst workers. Brezhnev was seen as very vain and self-obsessed, but was praised for leading the Soviet Union into an unprecedented age of stability and domestic calm.
Following Andropov's death, political wrangling led to harsh criticism of Brezhnev and his family. Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
, the last Soviet leader, drew support from hard-line communists and the Soviet population by criticising Brezhnev's rule, and referred to his rule as the "Era of Stagnation". Despite these attacks, in a poll taken in 2006, 61 percent of the people responded that they viewed the Brezhnev era as good for Russia.