Consolidation of power Upon replacing Khrushchev as the party's First Secretary, Brezhnev became the
de jure supreme authority of the Soviet Union. However, he was initially forced to govern as part of an unofficial
Triumvirate (also known by its Russian name
Troika) alongside the country's
Premier,
Alexei Kosygin, and
Nikolai Podgorny, a
Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and later
Chairman of the Presidium. Due to Khrushchev's disregard for the rest of the Politburo upon combining his leadership of the party with that of the Soviet government, a plenum of the Central Committee in October 1964 forbade any single individual from holding both the offices of
General Secretary and
Premier. During his consolidation of power, Brezhnev first had to contend with the ambitions of
Alexander Shelepin, the former chairman of the
KGB and current head of the
Party-State Control Committee. In early 1965, Shelepin began calling for the restoration of "obedience and order" within the Soviet Union as part of his own bid to seize power. Towards this end, he exploited his control over both state and party organs to leverage support within the regime. Recognizing Shelepin as an imminent threat to his position, Brezhnev mobilized the Soviet collective leadership to remove him from the Party-State Control Committee before having the body dissolved altogether on 6 December 1965. Additionally, by the end of 1965, Brezhnev had Podgorny removed from the Secretariat, thereby significantly curtailing the latter's ability to build support within the party apparatus. In the ensuing years, Podgorny's network of supporters was steadily eroded as the protégés he cultivated in his rise to power were removed from the Central Committee. By 1977, Brezhnev was secure enough in his position to replace Podgorny as head of state and remove him from the Politburo altogether. After sidelining Shelepin and Podgorny as threats to his leadership in 1965, Brezhnev directed his attentions to his remaining political rival, Alexei Kosygin. In the 1960s, U.S. National Security Advisor
Henry Kissinger initially perceived Kosygin to be the dominant leader of
Soviet foreign policy in the Politburo. Within the same timeframe, Kosygin was also in charge of economic administration in his role as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. However, his position was weakened following his enactment of several economic reforms in 1965 that collectively came to be known within the Party as the "
Kosygin reforms". Due largely to coinciding with the
Prague Spring (whose sharp departure from the Soviet model led to its armed suppression in 1968), the reforms provoked a backlash among the party's old guard who proceeded to flock to Brezhnev and strengthened his position within the Soviet leadership. In 1969, Brezhnev further expanded his authority following a clash with Second Secretary Mikhail Suslov and other party officials who thereafter became firm supporters of his leadership over the Party. Brezhnev was adept at politics within the Soviet Union. Unlike Khrushchev, he did not make decisions without consulting with his colleagues and hearing their opinions. By the early 1970s, Brezhnev had successfully consolidated his position as
first among equals within the Politburo. While Kosygin continued to hold office as Premier until shortly before his death in 1980, Brezhnev's dominance over the Soviet leadership remained secure from the mid-1970s up until his eventual death in 1982.
Domestic policies Ideological development Ideologically, Brezhnev's rule was associated with the doctrine of
Developed Socialism. This concept initially appeared in the
Eastern Bloc countries during the 1960s, was rhetorically adopted by Brezhnev in 1971, took the central position at the
Party Congress in 1976, and was inscribed in the
Constitution the following year. Brezhnev has defined it as the
Soviet-style socialism, which he believed had been successfully constructed in the Soviet Union. It emphasized the advanced technological developments with the use of nuclear power in production, computer planning, as well as a highly mechanized agriculture. Under developed socialism all social strata within the Soviet Union were closer to each other than ever before due to the highly developed productive force in the country. One of the main reasons behind the doctrine was an attempt to secure Soviet leadership among the Socialist bloc by presenting the USSR as a country that had reached a more advanced level of socialist development which other countries were yet to achieve. Domestically, Developed Socialism was a response to the inability to reach communism by 1980, as had been promised by Khrushchev. It entrenched Party rule and promoted conservativism and caution by focusing on gradual change.
Repression , the
chairman of the KGB who presided over the pervasive crackdown under Brezhnev's regime Brezhnev's stabilization policy included ending the
liberalizing reforms of Khrushchev, and clamping down on cultural freedom. This policy gradually led to an increasingly authoritarian and conservative attitude. By the mid-1970s, there were an estimated 10,000 political and religious prisoners across the Soviet Union, living in grievous conditions and suffering from malnutrition. Many of these prisoners were
considered by the Soviet state to be mentally unfit and were hospitalized in
mental asylums across the Soviet Union. Under Brezhnev's rule, the KGB infiltrated most, if not all, anti-government organisations, which ensured that there was little to no opposition against him or his power base. The trial of the writers
Yuli Daniel and
Andrei Sinyavsky in 1966, the first such public trials since Stalin's reign, marked the reversion to a repressive cultural policy. Under
Yuri Andropov the state security service (in the form of the
KGB) regained some of the powers it had enjoyed under Stalin. However, there was no return to the purges of the 1930s and 1940s, and Stalin's legacy remained largely discredited among the Soviet
intelligentsia.
Economics Economic growth until 1973 Between 1960 and 1970, Soviet agriculture output increased by 3% annually. Industry also improved: during the
Eighth Five-Year Plan (1966–1970), the output of factories and mines increased by 138% compared to 1960. The
economic reform of 1965 was initiated by Kosygin, though its origins are often traced back to the Khrushchev Era. The reform introduced market principles to Soviet enterprises to reduce their dependence on plan indicators. It was ultimately cancelled by the
Central Committee, though the Committee admitted that economic problems did exist Under Brezhnev, the Politburo abandoned Khrushchev's
decentralization experiments. By 1966, two years after taking power, Brezhnev abolished the
Regional Economic Councils, which were organized to manage the regional economies of the Soviet Union. The Politburo became aggressively
anti-reformist and the Soviet Union could not afford to maintain its massive subsidy for the
Eastern Bloc in the form of cheap oil and gas exports. Brezhnev attempted to raise the standard of living by increasing the production of consumer goods during the
Ninth Five-Year Plan, but it was ultimately unsuccessful, and the bulk of the state investment remained in industrial capital-goods production. By the early 1970s, the Soviet Union had the world's second largest industrial capacity, and produced more steel, oil,
pig-iron, cement and tractors than any other country. Before 1973, the Soviet economy was expanding at a faster rate than that of the American economy (albeit by a very small margin). The USSR also kept a steady pace with the economies of Western Europe. Between 1964 and 1973, the Soviet economy stood at roughly half the output per head of Western Europe and a little more than one third that of the U.S. In 1973, the process of catching up with the rest of the West came to an end and the
Era of Stagnation was apparent.
Economic stagnation until 1982 The
Era of Stagnation is a term coined by Mikhail Gorbachev to describe the time when Brezhnev was in power and his inability to deal with changing times. The CIA estimated that the Soviet economy peaked in the early 1970s. After that, economic growth began to slow down due to the prioritization of heavy industry and military spending over
consumer goods. The social stagnation was stimulated by the growing demands of unskilled workers, labor shortages and a decline in productivity and labor discipline. The GNP growth rate fell to 1% to 2% per year, falling behind the rate for the United States. The Soviet Union outproduced the U.S. in heavy industry, but due to the cumbersome procedures of the centralized planning system, Soviet industries were incapable of the innovation needed to meet public demand. The Soviets had almost no access to microcomputers, and the availability of cars and phones per capita was lower than in its Eastern satellites. This gap was also seen in agriculture, where the Soviet Union was import-dependent. In 1978, all satellites surpassed the Soviet Union in meat and egg production per capita, and Hungary produced more wheat. In 1971, Brezhnev acknowledged that vast military expenditure slowed the growth of the Soviet economy. However, he was able to defer economic collapse by selling oil to Western Europe and arms to the
Arab World.
Agricultural policy Brezhnev's agricultural policy reinforced conventional methods for organizing the
collective farms. Output quotas continued to be imposed centrally. Brezhnev also continued Khrushchev's policy of amalgamating farms. In order to address problems such as insufficient production of fodder crops and a declining sugar beet harvest, he allowed the enlargement of privately owned plots and pushed for an increase in state investments in farming, which amounted to an all-time high in the 1970s of 27% of all state investment. Robert Service characterized the Soviet government's involvement in agriculture under Brezhnev as generally "unimaginative" and "incompetent". Since Khrushchev's rule, the import of cereal had become a staple of Soviet policy. When Brezhnev had difficulty sealing commercial trade agreements with the United States, he turned to other countries such as
Argentina. In 1976, the Politburo issued a resolution that ordered
kolkhozes close to each other to collaborate in their efforts to increase production. In the meantime, the state's subsidies to the food-and-agriculture sector did not prevent bankrupt farms from operating at a loss as rises in the price of produce were offset by the increased cost of fuel and other resources. Brezhnev's call for an increase in the maximum size of privately owned plots within the Soviet Union removed important obstacles for the expansion of agricultural output but did not solve underlying problems. These included the growing shortage of skilled workers, the payment of workers in proportion to the quantity rather than quality of their work, and farm machinery that was too large for small collective farms and the roadless countryside. Under Brezhnev, private plots yielded 30% of the national agricultural production when they cultivated only 4% of
the land. This was seen by some as proof that de-collectivization was necessary to prevent Soviet agriculture from collapsing, but leading Soviet politicians shrank from supporting such drastic measures due to ideological and political interests.
Society Over the eighteen years that Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union, average income per head increased by half, slightly less growth than what it had been the previous years; three-quarters of this growth came in the 1960s and early 1970s. This can be explained by the end of the post-war recovery. Consumption per head rose by an estimated 70% under Brezhnev. Most of the increase in consumer production in the early Brezhnev era can be attributed to the
Kosygin reform. When the Soviet Union's economic growth stalled in the 1970s, the
standard of living and
housing quality improved significantly. The Soviet leadership under Brezhnev tried to improve the living standard in the Soviet Union by extending
social benefits. Despite some improvements, the situation for ordinary Russians remained bad. Alcoholism, suicide, mental illness and divorce were on the rise. The living space remained rather small, with the average Soviet person living on 13.4 square metres. The standard of living in the
Russian SFSR was lower than that of the
Estonian or
Georgian SSRs, a disparity that led to resentment among Russians. Although difficulties in the Soviet economy became apparent as early as the late 1960s, the population’s living conditions continued to improve. The majority of the population earned what it considered an acceptable wage and lived in decent apartments. The state provided education, medical care, housing, and paid leave free of charge. Most families also had free access to daycare and after-school activities. Full employment, generous and free disability insurance, and the lowering of the retirement age with full benefits (55 for women and 60 for men) all contributed to an improvement in living standards. The
Lyndon B. Johnson administration privately discussed a diplomatic end to the conflict with the Soviets. Once that failed due to North Vietnamese rejection, they pursued a treaty on arms control, which did not materialize because of infighting in the Kremlin and the escalation of the war. Further attempts at reconciliation led to the
Glassboro Summit Conference in the U.S., which, despite a friendly atmosphere, did not lead to any breakthroughs. Newly elected U.S. President Richard Nixon visited
Moscow in 1972 to, among other things, negotiate on the Vietnam War, but nothing was agreed upon. Ultimately, years of Soviet military aid to North Vietnam finally bore fruit when collapsing morale among U.S. forces compelled their complete withdrawal from South Vietnam by 1973, thereby making way for the country's unification under communist rule two years later.
Sino–Soviet relations (left) and Brezhnev (right) with
Nicolae Ceaușescu in Bucharest, 1965 Soviet
foreign relations with the People's Republic of China quickly deteriorated after
Nikita Khrushchev's attempts to reach a
rapprochement with more liberal Eastern European states such as
Yugoslavia and with the West. When Brezhnev consolidated his power base in the 1960s, China was descending into crisis because of
Mao Zedong's
Cultural Revolution, which led to the decimation of the
Chinese Communist Party and other ruling offices. Brezhnev, a pragmatic politician who promoted the idea of "stabilization", could not comprehend why Mao would start such a "self-destructive" drive to finish the
socialist revolution. In the aftermath of the
Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet leadership proclaimed the
Brezhnev Doctrine: any threat to "socialist rule" in any state of the
Soviet Bloc was a threat to all of them, and would justify the intervention. This new policy increased tension not only with the Eastern Bloc, but also the Asian communist states. By 1969, relations with other communist countries had deteriorated to a level where Brezhnev was not even able to gather five of the fourteen ruling communist parties to attend an international conference in Moscow. In the aftermath of the failed conference, the Soviets concluded, "there was no leading center of the international communist movement." Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine in the late 1980s, as the Kremlin accepted the peaceful overthrow of Soviet rule in all its
satellite countries in Eastern Europe. Later in 1969, the deterioration in bilateral relations culminated in the
Sino–Soviet border conflict. The Sino–Soviet split had chagrined Premier
Alexei Kosygin a great deal, and for a while he refused to accept its irrevocability; he briefly visited Beijing in 1969 in an effort to ease the tension between the USSR and China. By the early 1980s, both the Chinese and the Soviets were issuing statements calling for a normalization of relations between the two states. The conditions given to the Soviets by the Chinese were the reduction of Soviet military presence on the Sino–Soviet border, the withdrawal of Soviet troops in Afghanistan and the
Mongolian People's Republic; furthermore, China also wanted the Soviets to end their support for the
Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. Brezhnev responded in his March 1982 speech in
Tashkent where he called for the normalization of relations. Full Sino–Soviet normalization of relations would take years, until the last Soviet ruler,
Mikhail Gorbachev, came to power.
Soviet–U.S. relations Gerald Ford signing a joint
communiqué on the
SALT treaty in Vladivostok During his eighteen years as
Leader of the USSR, Brezhnev's signature foreign policy innovation was the promotion of
détente. According to Melvyn P. Leffler, Brezhnev’s geopolitical vision was shaped by his memories of the Second World War which led him to remain anxious about a war of such scale breaking out once more. In 1974, he confided to U.S. President
Gerald Ford that he did not want to ‘inflict that on the people once again.’.’ While sharing some similarities with approaches pursued during the
Khrushchev Thaw, Brezhnev's policy significantly differed from Khrushchev's precedent in two ways. The first was that it was more comprehensive and wide-ranging in its aims, and included signing agreements on arms control, crisis prevention, East–West trade, European security and human rights. The second part of the policy was based on the importance of equalizing the military strength of the United States and the Soviet Union. Defense spending under Brezhnev between 1965 and 1970 increased by 40%, and annual increases continued thereafter. In the year of Brezhnev's death in 1982, 12% of GNP was
spent on the military. This build up led numerous observers – including Western ones – to argue that by the mid-1970s the USSR had surpassed the United States as the world's strongest military power. At the
1972 Moscow Summit, Brezhnev and U.S. president
Richard Nixon signed the
SALT I Treaty. The first part of the agreement set limits on each side's development of nuclear missiles. The second part of the agreement, the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, banned both countries from designing systems to intercept incoming missiles so neither the U.S. or the Soviet Union would be emboldened to strike the other without fear of nuclear retaliation. In 1979, Henry Kissinger acknowledged that his policy of détente was faltering by the mid-1970s. The détente had rested on the assumption that a "linkage" of some type could be found between the two countries, with the U.S. hoping that the signing of
SALT I and an increase in Soviet–U.S. trade would stop the aggressive growth of communism in the third world. This did not happen, as evidenced by Brezhnev's continued military support for the
communist guerillas fighting against the U.S. during the
Vietnam War. . After
Gerald Ford lost the presidential election to
Jimmy Carter, American foreign policies became more overtly aggressive in vocabulary towards the Soviet Union and the
communist world. Attempts were also made to stop funding for repressive anti-communist governments and organizations the United States supported. While at first standing for a decrease in all defense initiatives, the later years of Carter's presidency would increase spending on the U.S. military. When Brezhnev authorized the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Carter, following the advice of his
National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, denounced the intervention, describing it as the "most serious danger to peace since 1945". The U.S. stopped all grain exports to the Soviet Union and boycotted the
1980 Summer Olympics held in Moscow. The Soviet Union responded by boycotting the
1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles. During Brezhnev's rule, the Soviet Union reached the peak of its political and strategic power in relation to the United States. As a result of the limits agreed to by both superpowers in the first SALT Treaty, the Soviet Union obtained parity in nuclear weapons with the United States for the first time in the Cold War. Additionally, as a result of negotiations during the Helsinki Accords, Brezhnev succeeded in securing the legitimization of Soviet hegemony over Central and Eastern Europe.
Intervention in Afghanistan After the
communist revolution in Afghanistan in 1978, authoritarian actions forced upon the populace by the Communist regime led to the
Afghan civil war, with the
mujahideen leading the popular backlash against the regime. To stabilize the situation, Afghanistan's leader
Nur Muhammad Taraki visited Moscow and asked for a military intervention in March 1979. Brezhnev was against it and was ready only to send an additional 500 civilian and military specialists, doubling the current number. The operation was expected to be swift and generate little opposition from the USA. The initial invasion was successful, and in February 1980, the Soviets started to consider withdrawal, with Brezhnev agreeing that it would take a year or two. Ultimately, the war dragged on far longer, lasting nearly a decade and involving hundreds of thousands of troops.
Brezhnev Doctrine in East Berlin in 1967 In the aftermath of the
Prague Spring's suppression, Brezhnev announced that the Soviet Union had the right to interfere in the internal affairs of its satellites to "safeguard socialism". This became known as the
Brezhnev Doctrine, although it was really a restatement of existing Soviet policy, as enacted by Khrushchev in
Hungary in 1956. Brezhnev reiterated the doctrine in a speech at the Fifth Congress of the
Polish United Workers' Party on 13 November 1968: Later in 1980, a
political crisis emerged in
Poland with the emergence of the
Solidarity movement. By the end of October, Solidarity had 3 million members, and by December, had 9 million. In a public opinion poll organised by the Polish government, 89% of the respondents supported Solidarity. With the Polish leadership split on what to do, the majority did not want to impose
martial law, as suggested by
Wojciech Jaruzelski. The Soviet Union and other states of the
Eastern Bloc were unsure how to handle the situation, but
Erich Honecker of
East Germany pressed for military action. In a formal letter to Brezhnev, Honecker proposed a joint military measure to control the escalating problems in Poland. A
CIA report suggested the
Soviet military were mobilizing for an invasion. In 1980–81 representatives from the
Eastern Bloc nations met at the
Kremlin to discuss the Polish situation. Brezhnev eventually concluded on 1981 that it would be better to leave the domestic matters of Poland alone, reassuring the Polish delegates that the USSR would intervene only if asked to. This effectively marked the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine. Notwithstanding the absence of a Soviet military intervention,
Wojciech Jaruzelski ultimately gave in to Moscow's demands by imposing a
state of war, the Polish version of martial law, on 13 December 1981.
Cult of personality . The last years of Brezhnev's rule were marked by a growing
personality cult. His love of medals (he received over 100) was well known, so in December 1966, on his 60th birthday, he was awarded the
Hero of the Soviet Union. Brezhnev received the award, which came with the
Order of Lenin and the Gold Star, three more times in celebration of his birthdays. On his 70th birthday he was awarded the rank of
Marshal of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union's highest military honour. After being awarded the rank, he attended an 18th Army Veterans meeting, dressed in a long coat and saying "Attention, the Marshal is coming!" He also conferred upon himself the rare
Order of Victory in 1978, which was posthumously revoked in 1989 for not meeting the criteria for citation. A promotion to the rank of
Generalissimo of the Soviet Union, planned for Brezhnev's seventy-fifth birthday, was quietly shelved due to his ongoing health problems. Brezhnev's eagerness for undeserved glory was shown by his memoirs recalling his military service during World War II, which treated the
minor battles near
Novorossiysk as a decisive military theatre. Despite his book's apparent weaknesses, it was awarded the
Lenin Prize for Literature and was hailed by the
Soviet press. The book was followed by
two other books, one on the
Virgin Lands campaign.
Health problems Brezhnev's personality cult was growing at a time when his health was in rapid decline. His physical condition was deteriorating; he had been a heavy smoker until the 1970s, had become addicted to
sleeping pills and
tranquilizers. Over the years Brezhnev had become
overweight. From 1973 until his death, his
central nervous system underwent chronic deterioration and he had several minor strokes as well as
insomnia. In 1975 he suffered his first heart attack. When receiving the
Order of Lenin, Brezhnev walked shakily and fumbled his words. According to one American intelligence expert, United States officials knew for several years that Brezhnev had suffered from severe
arteriosclerosis and believed he had suffered from other unspecified ailments as well. In 1977, American intelligence officials publicly suggested that Brezhnev had also been suffering from
gout,
leukemia and
emphysema from decades of heavy smoking, as well as chronic
bronchitis. After a month-long recovery, Brezhnev worked intermittently through November. On 7 November 1982, he was present standing on the
Lenin's Mausoleum's balcony during the annual military parade and demonstration of workers commemorating the 65th anniversary of the
October Revolution. The event marked Brezhnev's final public appearance before dying three days later after suffering a
heart attack. He was honored with a state funeral after a three-day period of nationwide mourning. He is buried in the
Kremlin Wall Necropolis in
Red Square, in one of the twelve individual tombs located between Lenin's Mausoleum and the
Moscow Kremlin Wall. A number of countries including Cuba, Nicaragua, Mozambique, Afghanistan, India and others had declared national mourning over his death. National and international statesmen from around the globe attended his funeral. His wife and family were also present. Brezhnev was dressed for burial in his Marshal's uniform along with his medals. ==Personal life==