Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

F

Brezhnev Era

Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev as first secretary of the party (the position was changed back to general secretary in 1966). Aleksey Kosygin, a longtime industrial administrator, became chairman of the Council of Ministers, or premier, while Podgorny was appointed chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Mikhail Suslov, the party’s chief of ideology, figured prominently in the leadership’s work. Its early announcements stressed collective deliberation and “businesslike” procedures.

Brezhnev asserted his primacy over his fellow leaders, but step by step and cautiously. Using his powers of appointment, he rewarded supporters with seats in the Politburo and other party organs at the CPSU congresses of 1971 and 1976. It was not until 1977 that he eased Podgorny into retirement and had himself selected head of state. Kosygin remained as premier until shortly before his death in 1980, although he was by then overshadowed by the general secretary. A Brezhnev personality cult blossomed in the late 1970s, as his memoirs were printed in huge editions and his patchy war record was extolled.

F

1

From Stability to Stagnation

The watchword of Brezhnev’s 18 years in office was stability—continuity of personnel, procedures, and policy. He repudiated Khrushchev’s frequent shuffles of officials and reorganizations of governmental and CPSU structures. Unsatisfactory Khrushchev reforms, such as the bifurcation of the party apparatus and the shift of industrial planning to regional organs, were quietly reversed. Brezhnev praised professional and technical specialists for their contributions to administration and lauded 'scientific' methods that would take full advantage of expertise. Such changes of policy as did occur were slow to materialize and had leisurely schedules for implementation.

While such a style of rule may have been, for the officials below him, preferable to either Stalin’s inhumanity or Khrushchev’s bluster, and was enough to keep Brezhnev safe in office until his death, it proved to be very costly to the Soviet system. Timid changes in government operations were combined with severe and mounting intolerance toward expressions of preference for more fundamental changes in the regime. The Prague Spring of 1968, in which liberal Communists in Czechoslovakia attempted to craft “socialism with a human face,” showed that a reform-minded communism was a viable possibility in the Soviet bloc in at least the first half of Brezhnev’s reign. When a Soviet-led invasion force, with Brezhnev’s authorization, crushed the experiment, pessimism and cynicism about improvement of the system spread through Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union. The second half of Brezhnev’s time in power was characterized mostly by the growing feebleness of the top leader and his colleagues and by an ever more apparent stagnation in institutions, policies, and ideas.

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G

Foreign Affairs

Once its system of satellite states was built up after World War II, Eastern Europe (and, for some time, China) was the area of most concern to the Soviet Union. With the United States and the Western alliance, relations were marked by alternating episodes of crisis and cooperation. An innovation of the post-Stalin years was the widening of contacts with the developing nations of the Third World, which Moscow saw as fertile ground for extension of its military, political, and economic influence.

G

1

Relations with Eastern Europe

Soviet military and political relations with its satellite states in Eastern Europe were mainly bilateral until the mid-1950s. Formation of the Warsaw Pact in 1955 gave the Soviet bloc a counterpart to NATO, increased military coordination, and provided a forum in which wider political issues could be considered. Cominform, founded in 1947 in an attempt to impose political uniformity on friendly states and movements, was disbanded in April 1956.

East Germany (the German Democratic Republic, or GDR), constituted as a sovereign state in 1949, remained of special concern to Moscow. In June 1953 Soviet troops helped put down a rebellion of workers in East Berlin. The status of Berlin, where the border between the two German states was open, became a more hotly contested issue as West German prosperity induced hundreds of thousands of East Germans to flee through the divided city. In August 1961 the Soviet Union and the East German government built the infamous Berlin Wall, which prevented East Germans from freely emigrating to the West.

Tito’s Yugoslavia, which refused to cave in to Stalin in 1948, stuck to its separate identity and did not join either the Warsaw Pact or COMECON. Relations improved after the death of Stalin, only to decline again in the 1960s, especially after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. After 1961 the Soviet Union lost all influence in Yugoslavia’s small neighbor, Albania, which until 1978 remained closely allied with China.

The principal instrument for economic integration of the Soviet bloc was COMECON. Under plans worked out by the Soviet Union, and accepted with some qualifications by the member states, each country was to produce what it was best prepared for and purchase other products from the other countries. Opposition to this supranational system under Soviet domination developed, notably in Romania, which rejected its role as a basically agricultural and oil-producing country. Despite such dissatisfaction, additional economic links were later established, including an International Bank of Economic Collaboration. Pipelines carrying Soviet oil and gas to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and East Germany further integrated the economies of these nations with that of the USSR.

G1

a

Polish and Hungarian Crises

Soviet control of Eastern Europe was most seriously jeopardized in 1956, during the relaxation following the first wave of de-Stalinization. Popular discontent and rallies in Poland were followed by agreements in October and November 1956 providing for cancellation of some Soviet debts, the granting of additional credits, acceptance of the new Polish leadership under Władysław Gomułka, and continuance of Soviet troops in the country. In Hungary, student and worker demonstrations on behalf of national independence led to a change of government, a Soviet military intervention which killed thousands, and the formation of a new pro-Soviet government under J´nos Kád´r.

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