The Brezhnev Regime: A Portrait of a Soviet Leader - Research Paper Example

The Brezhnev Regime: A Portrait of a Soviet Leader I. Introduction Any evaluation of the political condition of the post-Brezhnev period should commence with an understanding of the almost two decades tenure in leadership of the man who was promoted to supreme authority in 1964. Dissimilar to his hot-blooded forerunner, Leonid Ilich Brezhnev initiated vigilant leadership, and in turn relative stability, to the Kremlin. Yet similar to Khrushchev, he pursued to become a prominent icon in the Soviet history and to develop policy programmes that not merely addressed the foremost economic and social crises confronting the nation but also neutralised or appointed his detractors and adversaries (Hough 1980). Our traditional analysis of the Brezhnev period should also commence with awareness about the hazards of last impressions. The stories regarding the poor health of the General Secretary, which started in the 1970s, the persistent and publicly-grieved policy setbacks domestically and globally, the mounting sense of depression and stagnancy that distinguished the final decade of his leadership, and the forbidding death watch of his concluding years must not confuse the reality that his tenure in office was also distinguished by important new policy programs and the creation of a new goal for the future of the Soviet that were intended to guide the USSR through the evolving second industrial revolution and lead the nation to the further development of advanced socialism, as an enhanced standard of living, the budding scientific management of society, and a rising technologically advanced world was to be emerge (Hough 1980). We should also avoid the false assumption that the Brezhnev period was without political conflict at the highest ranks of authority. Similar to all Soviet rulers of the post-Stalin period, Brezhnev established a league of major institutional interests that supported him through the exploitation of discriminating appeals to their political and economic motives. His policy programmes and the indispensable calculated withdrawals that followed problems in the economy, the agricultural sector, or in foreign policy were consistently cutting both ways; even as they provide Brezhnev’s usual knowledge of the day regarding the course of policy-making, they also were designed to influence the character of his own alliance and belittle his detractors (McCauley 1993). To be certain, his approach was distinct from that of his unpredictable forerunners; argument and regular institutional interfering were substituted by a more careful manoeuvring of the function of the party in relation to other political players and by efforts to reform economic and political matters to his benefit. When conflicts arose, they were more frequently resolved by attempts to appoint and bribe rivals with policy incentives in other domains than by the pacification and dismissal of his detractors. The objective of this paper is to discuss the historical importance of Leonid Brezhnev as a leader of the Soviet as well as his importance in the political and social life of the nation. II. Brezhnev as a Leader Analysed traditionally, Brezhnev’s tenure in power materialise as almost two decades of vigilant policy programmes intended to strengthen the General Secretary’s grip on authority and to enforce economic and social reorganisations that would boost the standard of living and push the nation smoothly through the second industrial revolution. Even as the political strategy of the new administration was remarkably different from that of its forerunners, the toughness of the key policy issues that tormented Khrushchev and surfaced rapidly to trouble his successor is arresting. The reconstruction of the nation’s economy, the creation of administrative reforms, the increasing impatience of consumers who had long been assured of an improved standard of living, and the requirement to compel the party to redefine its function in society, all swiftly surfaced on the programme of Brezhnev (Westwood 1993). On the core political concern of the communist party’s role and its collaboration with other key institutional actors, Brezhnev sought for an objective option that merged the forceful resolve that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) sustain its primary role in relation to the economic administration with ever more loud appeals that the party admit novel challenges and organise its internal house. The first opportunity to delineate that position in ways that supported the institutional rights of the party and that gained advocacy from among party members preoccupied with preserving their powers arrived in relation with the economic changes supported by Alexei Kosygin in the 1960s, which reluctantly provided greater controls and autonomy to enterprise-level staff (Westwood 1993). On the contrary, the primary response of Brezhnev emphasised the long-established rights of the party and claimed sustained dependence on party power and management in the economy. Instead of tolerating the appearance of even the most fragile of self-governing market relationships, the General Secretary claimed for sustaining party involvement and organisation as the means to enhanced performance. In its first appearance, such sustained party governance provided the encouraging possibility of superior institutional strength within a governmental structure that had been shaken by the persistent reforms of Khrushchev and that distressed the unusual domain of even fragmentary reforms (Laird 1987). In a more expanded point of view, Brezhnev’s justification of party rights bore with it ever more clamorous demands for enhanced performance. Whilst he justified the influences of the CPSU against the decentralisation schemes of Kosygin, he appealed for party groups in the economic bureaus to take on higher accountability for the accomplishment of their guest institutions. They were to break new ground in facilitating technological transformation and modernisation, in cutting through managerial blockages, and in organising the programmes of their collapsing bureaus. The party was undoubtedly to fulfil a higher interventionist function, but one dissimilar from the impulsive intervention that had typified its programmes under Khrushchev. Instead, its brand new involvement was to be embedded in its developing administrative and technological complexity and in its capability to reunite limited departmental concerns with the wider point of view (Suny 1998). Brezhnev’s redefinition of the party’s role gained increasing strength as an outcome of the appearance of advanced socialism as the conceptual foundation of his leadership. Even though he had retreated from the far-reaching commitments to the quick development of communist restrained in the 1961 party programme of Khrushchev, Brezhnev presented his more vigilant idea of the future. Theoretically, advanced socialism illustrated the rise of the USSR as an established industrial organism whose advanced evolution was reliant upon the employment of what Soviet scholars referred to as ‘the scientific and technological revolution’ (Kelley 1987, 3) to the Soviet’s social and economic crises. Although it was to be defined by the steady and politically unproblematic shift to higher persuasive forms, it however claimed that the party assume a militant position in cultivating the economic modernisation and that the CPSU completely modified its work approach. In other words, the party was assumed to personalise the values and functionalise the work approach of Brezhnev’s new-found world of advanced socialism. In a positive note, it was to be eager to recognise the requirement for systematic internal reorganisation and to guide other organisations through the transition (McCauley 1993). Policy Initiatives In spite of the noticeable nature of vigilance that characterised his leadership, Brezhnev nevertheless initiated major policy reforms. Similar to Khrushchev, he pursued to establish himself by daring projects in foreign policy, agriculture and production of goods, but dissimilar to his forerunners, he acted with carefulness, aiming to stabilise daring projects in one area with compromises in another or to adopt his detractors and their proposals instead of resorting to conflict (Chafetz 1993). Brezhnev rose as an obvious policy architect rather than just a stabiliser of foremost Kremlin interests, even though he was swift to balance his new initiatives in the face of policy failures or in light of emerging conflicts. Brezhnev’s perceptive sense of stability can be discerned in his dealing with the subject of economic modernisation. Although almost everyone in the Kremlin management acknowledged that reform was crucial, the General Secretary of the Party, which was Brezhnev, and the head of Council of Ministers, which was Kosygin, originally preferred alternative solutions. The agendas of Kosygin centred on the devolution of industrial management and on granting more prerogatives to factory workers, who were assumed to make use of new techniques of appraising enterprise behaviour to boost competence and efficiency, and promote technological advancement, and produce more industrial and private consumer goods. In a political context, his initiatives eliminated inadequate ‘marketisation’ (Kelley 1987, 5) and transferred greater administrative authority away from party administrators into the control of an ever more independent economic administration. Both for the reason that they guaranteed to disturb traditionally entrenched rights and because the hesitant and weakened reorganisations themselves fell short to generate impressive positive outcomes, Brezhnev was able to show the proposals of Kosygin as politically risky and incompetent (Kelley 1987). But with the counteraction of Kosygin’s provocation on economic matters, Brezhnev adopted the responsibility of reorganisation, although in different structure. In the 1970s, he suggested that reform attempts centres not on the level of individual venture, where conflict had been addressed from factory supervisors hesitant to take on new accountabilities and which tendered extremely small an economic entity to handle major problems, but instead on the establishment of multi-factory unions (Ouimet 2003). These new-fangled divisions were to merge various enterprises that executed associated tasks, to bind more unstable and less productive factories with tougher counterparts that may facilitate their development, and to ascertain bonds between projects and research and development activities. Adapted partly after the experience of the Western world with horizontal and vertical integration of large firms, these organisations were to set a trend in technological innovation and in removing outmoded components of the work force for relocation to a different place (Ouimet 2003). In a political framework, the re-conceptualisation of economic modernisation in this manner allowed Brezhnev both to take hold of the matter from Kosygin and to resort to a higher position for party management at the association rank, where party groups within factories would take on crucial organising tasks, and to force down his case for a re-conceptualisation and systematic explanation of the position of the party, which was raised to put into effect advanced administrative leadership equal to the increasing technological development and institutional sophistication of the system. Whilst Brezhnev’s drive in forcing down such initiatives strengthened and weakened with his political lucks on other matters, the core principle of narrow devolution accompanied with an enhanced value of leadership stayed at the centre of his proposal for administrative changes (Suny 1998). Balanced in opposition to these economic reforms was the implicit guarantee to state authorities and senior party that their terms and the rights of leadership would not be variably defied for the benefit of immediate reform. As the managerial processes and the work approach of economic authorities in both the state and party machinery was to be overhauled, the people themselves may rest guaranteed that the regime of Brezhnev would abstain from the kind of unwise restructurings and extensive reforms that had been embarked on by Khrushchev. Evidently the agreement being implicitly proposed combined components of reorganisation and stability, connecting narrow devolution of managerial power with stability within elite groups and elevated powers for administrators and planners who were eager to conform to the new policies (Garthoff 1994). An identical objective strategy took place in terms of main concerns in investment. While his original reforms were for improvements in the agricultural sector, Brezhnev was swift to admit the concern of elevated production of consumer goods and to associate it with a claim that the important industrial sector fulfils a function in dealing with the needs of the nation for an improved standard of living. But his dedication to these main concerns was not unconditional and not resistant to alteration in the face of the existing lucks of other features of his programme. Brezhnev regularly transferred new investment into preferred technologically developed divisions of important industry, instigated a remarkable programme to modernise the East by developing its oil and mineral resources and by transferring fresh industry from Russia, and gave mounting investment for the military of the Soviet, which had an advantageous effect on key sectors of important industry (Garthoff 1994). In a strategic context, the political approach of Brezhnev also represented a vigilant stability of institutional factors. Dissimilar to his forerunners, who habitually transferred coalitions and pursued crucial motives off in opposition to one another, Brezhnev pursued to sustain a stability of advocates from every politically vital sectors of the Soviet institution. Partly due to the fact that his policy programmes were less aggressive to the motives of such players, partly due to the fact that he sought for a policy of negotiation and amendment rather than conflict, and partly due to the fact that he absorbed delegates of the major power federations into the Politburo, Brezhnev was able to sustain a technique of leadership that emphasised compromise building and implicit cooperation (Chafetz 1993). As first among equals, the duty of Brezhnev was to identify his policy programmes in manners appropriate to the key institutional factors and to facilitate the materialisation of compromise among them (Chafetz 1993); the reality that he was able to defend the implementation of majority of his key innovations verifies the good judgment of his vigilant policy and to his capabilities as a policy-maker rather than to his skill to command his collaborators. Party Politics In spite of his goal of a developed and more modernised party that would govern through its effective administration of the technological and scientific revolution, Brezhnev acted vigilantly in terms of domestic party activities. Immediately pointing anxious party authorities that Khrushchev’s attempts to weaken the party apparatus would be halted, he eradicated the supposed rotation rule, which prohibited the ‘reelection of a portion of higher party bodies at each successive election’ (Kelley 1987, 9), and reconciled the agricultural and industrial agencies of the party, which were divided in the split of 1962. Brezhnev as well as understated the ambiguously populist task of the Party/State Control Committee of Khrushchev, which had carried out an intimidating watchdog task (Kelley 1987). The message of Brezhnev, to the party in general, was obvious: institutional permanence and domestic reorganisation were connected in a manner that assured to trade the eagerness of the General Secretary to give up regular restructuring for a favourable response to the appeal to improve performance. The incentive of a higher responsibility for the party and a current re-conceptualisation of its authority in the face of the technological and scientific revolution were to change the stick of weak restructuring and discharge of Khrushchev. While politically alluring, the offered deal was imperfect in execution, as party rulers eventually found the new administration hesitant to make use of even meek sanctions against party authorities who recognised the much favoured guarantee of stability but refused to accept any changes in their traditional work approach and rights (Hough 1980). At the highest ranks of party leadership, impressive stability continued during the rule of Brezhnev. Partly as an outcome of his tactic to absorb key institutional components and partly as an outcome of his own compromise-focused leadership approach, this solidity presented an inner centre of Kremlin leadership and communicated an unambiguous sign to lower-level members (Hough 1980). For nearly the whole 18 years of the leadership of Brezhnev, that inner centre was made up of Brezhnev, Kosygin as Council of Ministers’ head, Suslov as secretary for ideology of the senior party, Kirilenko as overall supervisor of the crucially vital members office and important industry, and, later on, Chernenko as the assistant of Brezhnev. Obviously, this is not to say, that they have the same opinion on policy matters (McCauley 1993). Kosygin’s disagreements with the General Secretary on the matters of administrative reorganisation and production of consumer goods have previously been discussed, and Kirilenko’s backsliding as successor apparent soon prior to the death of Brezhnev will be discussed next. In 1973, KGB chief Yuri Andropov, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, and Defence Minister Andrei Grechko were raised to Politburo position. When in 1976 Grechko died, Dmitrii Ustinov, previously a member of the Politburo and appointed in defence production, assumed his position and stayed there until his downfall in 1984. Their rise highlighted the increasing inclination to modify the Politburo into an operational representative dimension of the Soviet institution. Fyodor Kulakov’s appointment to the Politburo in 1971, who was an affiliate of the secretariat responsible with agriculture, also verified the tendency toward counteracting regional delegation with the attendance of policy experts, as did the assumption of Mikhail Gorbachev of the agriculture case after the death of Kulakov in 1978 (Kelley 1987, 10). Identical carefulness was also manifested in the management of Brezhnev of the Central Committee. There was no indiscriminate discharge of the appointees of Khrushchev, possibly to some extent because such step would have breached the implicit directive for intraparty permanence that directed the general secretary’s elevation to power but as well as possibly due to the 1964 coup which showed that an actual majority had previously ditched Khrushchev and moved their loyalty to the new regime: ‘once a member of that body, there was little likelihood that an individual would be dropped either for blatant failures or as a result of choosing the losing side in intraparty squabbling’ (Kelley 1987, 11). Nevertheless, this is not to say that Brezhnev did not have an influence on the Central Committee. Instead, that impact was attained through the politically more vigilant policy of broadening full and entrant membership. Each succeeding party assembly throughout the rule of Brezhnev enlarged the Central Committee, partly indicating Brezhnev’s capability to entice additional advocates forward but as well as partly further validating the eagerness of the top leadership to carry on in absorbing crucial leadership components (Kelley 1987). Nonetheless, to see that Brezhnev sought for a vigilant policy in relation to other key components of the party and that his leadership style emphasised compromise building instead of conflict does not blur the reality that there was evident, politically-induced discharges from the Politburo throughout his regime. Nikolai Podgornyi, an obvious contender in the initial years following the fall of Khrushchev, was pacified in 1965 through his reassignment from the Secretariat to the fundamentally traditional position of head of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, and then dismissed from the Politburo in 1977 when he blatantly opposed Brezhnev’s efforts to take on that position (Westwood 1993). An analogous fate happened to Alexander Shelepin, who was likewise viewed as a challenger for higher position in the 1960s. From his experience as KGB head he was at first assigned by the new regime to supervise the Party/State Control Committee, a position which he headed until it was reorganised as the less intimidating People’s Control Committee in late 1965, at the same time he lost his post as Council Ministers’ deputy chairman. Another decisive event happened in 1967, when he was dismissed from the Secretariat and reassigned to the obviously less important position of chairman of the All-Union Central Trade Union Council. In spite of these evident relegations, he stayed as a Politburo member for an entire decade until 1975. Several lesser members were dismissed in the 1970s from the Politburo (Westwood 1993). Brezhnev’s ultimate incursion against formidable aspirants to his position arrived in 1978, with the dismissal of Kiril Mazurov from the Politburo, who was the first Council of Ministers’ deputy chairman. Simultaneously, Konstantin Chernenko was promoted to full membership in that division, and Nikolai Tikhonov, another ally of Brezhnev, was promoted to entrant membership to wait for further promotion to the Council Ministers chairmanship with the demise of Kosygin (McCauley 1993). III. Brezhnev’s Impact on Soviet’s Political and Social Life The discussion commenced by warning against the threat that last impressions could blur the constructive and reformist features of the Brezhnev period. The discussion should conclude by granting proper credence to the obvious sense of stagnancy that typified the concluding years of the leadership of the general secretary. Even leaving behind the stories of poor health and the sinister death watch, it should be remembered that the abundant and outwardly unsolvable problems that troubled the maturing Soviet leadership generated a sentiment that the nation was overwhelmed by a severe depression; if the positively aimed reforms fell short and were consigned to mere catchphrases of state authorities and conservative party who hindered their enforcement, then the highest leadership itself implicitly agreed to their downfall. A similarly harsh sense of futility and dishonesty plagued the last years of Brezhnev’s leadership. Having discarded the daring vision of Khrushchev of the communist potential achievable within this period and replaced the more technocratic idea of advanced socialism as the prototype of the future, the general secretary realised that it was challenging to maintain a sense of futurism (Chafetz 1993). To the degree that the intelligentsia of the nation or the beggar in the street reflected upon the inappropriateness between the assurance and the actuality, they were more expected to begrudge the letdown of reforms and the sluggish leadership of the weakening generation than to aim for a new path. The rampant corruption that plagued all echelons of society also worsened the condition. Whether it was the blatant dishonesty of authorities caught in the act of sidetracking public treasuries to their own coffers or the commonplace violations of ordinary citizens who breached the rules or resorted to the informal economy to in order to give their lives some convenience, the view that everyone was concerned, and that everyone turned to alternative solutions, was widespread (Chafetz 1993). The final decade of Brezhnev’s leadership was inundated by policy disappointments domestically and globally that provided credibility to the idea that Soviet rulers were incapable of controlling events. In the economic context, the greatly publicised initiatives to bring in new technology and reorganise administration along lines proposed by corporate systems in the West did not have a favourable outcome (Kelley 1987). The level of technology of Soviet industry advanced at a snail’s pace, and the restricted availability of developed Western strategies accomplished little to change the condition. The predicament was not just that local research and development attempts were unsuccessful to generate workable innovations but also that the putting into effect of any innovations was opposed by administrators who were anxious of change. Nor did the administrative reorganisations result in the formation of economically practical divisions. Partly because factory workers received differing pointers regarding the appraisal of their efforts, and partly because ministry authorities re-enforced consolidated controls, the unions on no account rose as the revolution of the modernisation attempt (Garthoff 1994). Other economic setbacks weighed down the Soviet nation. Economic growth persisted to plummet during the last years of Brezhnev’s regime, and attempts to rejuvenate production through an appeal for improved productivity and a more efficient utilisation of a dwindling work force had modest effect. Increasing energy scarcities transpired in spite initiatives to tap the abundant resources of the Far East and West Siberia. The agricultural sector was also one of the economic afflictions. In spite of Brezhnev’s substantial investment initiative, recurrent crop failures compelled Soviet rulers to trade in grain and to instigate an extensive food programme to handle the increasing scarcities (Westwood 1993). In the final years of Brezhnev’s regime the foreign policy of the Soviet experienced a chain of failures and setbacks. The relationship between the United States and the Soviet deteriorated even prior to the induction of the Reagan regime, and the new quality of Washington subsequent to 1980 resulted in a further weakening of ties. The letdown of SALT II and the expansion of American arms compelled Soviet rulers to have second thoughts about their hypotheses regarding correspondence with the United States. Alliance with Western Europe were pressured over defence matters and arms control, and the unsuccessful hindering of U.S. preparations to set up cruise rockets and Pershing II was a chief problem for the diplomatic attempts of the Soviet. Participation in Afghanistan and Angola as well as other Third World countries conveyed no palpable military or diplomatic triumphs and merely further contributed to set hurdles to ties with Washington (Ouimet 2003). Ties with Eastern Europe, which had long been inactive since the 1968 Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, once more engaged Kremlin rulers as an outcome of occurrences in Poland. On the economic context, Soviet attempts to boost foreign trade to acquire sophisticated technology or to entice foreign investments in the tapping of the massive resources of Siberia were denigrated by political pressures or by the investors’ feelings of insecurity, and technologically backward Soviet products discovered a potential market solely in the Third World (Ouimet 2003). A sense of sluggishness also beset the Communist Party. In spite of Brezhnev’s summon for the party to facilitate the cultivating of economic and social reforms and to rejuvenate its own leadership style by implementing modern administrative strategies, the old sentinel stood firm against such changes. Envious of their personal and institutional rights and hesitant to recognise the assumption that the new era of advanced socialism had possibly ignored them, they opposed the general secretary’s appeal for changes. The absence of turnover at the highest ranks of state and party also added to the believed stagnancy, and although new and younger members were climbing to less important positions in the regions, the tendency of the regime to appoint members of their generation to top positions discouraged the aspirations of younger members (Suny 1998). To a great extent the disappointments that Brezhnev could have felt in his last years were brought about by his own actions, or, possibly more appropriate, of the political agreements that had elevated him to power virtually two decades previously. Similar to his forerunners, he had embraced the idea that wide-ranging reforms were necessary not just in the economy and society at large but also in the Communist party. Yet also similar to Khrushchev, his reorganisation attempts had run impulsive into the resistance of deep-seated bureaucratic motives who opposed any intimidation to their power or any indication that their administration was out of place in a developed industrial nation. But the core character of the awareness that was reached when he was elevated to power weighed unfavourably to any successful reorganisation. The ‘respect for members’ strategy (Kelley 1987, 16) that had guided party activities since 1964 implied that the general secretary may neither turn to extensive discharges of disobliging state and party authorities, nor distress the conservative organisations through widespread restructurings. He was left with the particularly minor efficient techniques of publicising the reformist repercussions of advanced socialism and the technological and scientific development and encouraging consistently distrustful authorities to modify their work styles for the sake of economic productivity and an improved standard of living (Kelly 1987). Some extent of the mounting disappointment Brezhnev could have sensed was communicated in his remarks to the Central Committee plenum held in November 1978 (Kelley 1987, 16): What is needed... is persistence, selflessness and, if you like, courage. Here sometimes one has almost to learn things anew and to demand the same of others. He who is afraid of the new holds back development. It is from this position that one must proceed in evaluating cadres--- both economic and party cadres. For such boldness, new leadership would be necessary. On the other hand, Soviet conservatives triumphed in more issue domains and geographic matters than reformers in the Brezhnev regime, but neither inclination prevailed. Several of the primary explanations behind the continuing advocacy for both conservative and reformist directions were the more liberal deliberation over policy options and managerial techniques; the intricacy and variability of local and international situations; the demand for several sorts of capabilities and information in policy making and enforcement; and the value of differentiated programmes and reactions to pressures created by irreconcilable Soviet objectives and to interconnected dilemmas and prospects in a period typified by escalating shortages and challenging decisions (McCauley 1993). The Brezhnev period carried over numerous alternatives and prospects. Soviet authorities argued the policy repercussions of the transition from a ‘bipolar to a multipolar world,’ (Edmonds 1983, 247) of the changing role of the United States in the Western ties, and of the intricate and baffling growth in the Third World. Advancement toward economic and political detente was attained through firmer alliances with Western Europe and with several stable Third World regimes (Laird 1987). Yet in spite of or due to problems in the Third World, Soviet advocacy for home-grown and global revolutions was revitalised in the 1970s. Just in adjacent Afghanistan did a Communist regime assume power and immediately weaken, inciting a protracted occupation of the Soviet military. Other emerging Communist governments strengthened powers in provinces of geostrategic value to the Soviet or to its supporter Vietnam. These radical programmes, along with the decision of the Soviet to set up SS-20 halfway-range rockets in the Far East, European Russia and Eastern Europe, were perhaps the main causes Brezhnev was unable to make significant steps forward detente on military concerns with Western allies. Despite of the ill health and policy failures of Brezhnev, he never lost considerable power due to the oligarchy of national administration (Edmonds 1983). At the beginning of the Brezhnev regime, as seen by Vernon Aspaturian, Soviet leaders could have believed “not only than an aggressive ideological orientation in foreign policy tends to mobilise the capitalist world against them but also that it serves to drain scarce resources required to enhance the material prosperity of the Soviet population, ideologically described as ‘building Communism’” (Aspaturian 1971, 498). Nonetheless, Soviet global performance in the 1970s was not based on this belief. The causes perhaps involved the downfall of executive power in the United States and also the misguided assumption of the Brezhnev Politburo that the administration and the general public in the United States had acknowledged the Soviet understanding of detente (Garthoff 1994). The Soviet rulers for that reason assumed that the dangers and expenditures of military undertakings in the Third World would not be that substantial under circumstances of nuclear equality and improved diplomatic and commercial relationship between the East and the West. Furthermore, Brezhnev and his collaborators misjudged the capability of the USSR to produce consumer goods and manufacture weapons while supporting financially Eastern Europe and advocating certain national liberation movements. Moreover, the Soviet leadership perhaps assumed that the economic contest among the highly industrialised nations of United States and Western Europe would guarantee a secured supply of sophisticated technology and markets for the technologically backward products of the nation (Ouimet 2003). IV. Conclusions To sum it up, the Brezhnev regime fell short in recognising or agreeing on the compromises that would have to be initiated among its major foreign policy objectives and between local and international policy objectives. Vernon Aspaturian (1971) was accurate in remarking: “While the contradiction between Soviet security interests and ideological goals in foreign policy has long been recognised by observers of the Soviet scene, a new variable in Soviet policy is the contradiction between enhancing economic prosperity at home and fulfilling international obligations” (p.499). Both inconsistencies worsened during Brezhnev’s leadership. References Aspaturian, V.V. Process and Power in Soviet Foreign Policy. Hardcover, 1971. Chafetz, Glenn R. Gorbachev, Reform and the Brezhnev Doctrine: Soviet Policy toward Eastern Europe, 1985-1990. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993. Edmonds, R. Soviet Foreign Policy in the Brezhnev Years. Paperback, 1983. Garthoff, Raymond L. The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994. Hough, Jerry F. Soviet Leadership in Transition. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1980. Kelley, Donald R. Soviet Politics from Brezhnev to Gorbachev. New York: Praeger, 1987. Laird, Robbin F., ed. Soviet Foreign Policy. New York: Academy of Political Science, 1987. McCauley, Martin. The Soviet Union: 1917-1991. London: Longman, 1993. Ouimet, Matthew. The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Soviety Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Westwood, J.N. Endurance and Endeavour: Russian History, 1812-1992. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Read More