Embedded Files
In mid-October 1964, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, a protégé of Nikita Khrushchev, emerged from his mentor's shadow as the new man in charge of the Soviet Union. Lacking the confidence of the both the powerful Presidium and Central Committee of the Communist Party, Khrushchev was compelled to resign his offices to a new collective leadership of Brezhnev, Alexei Kosygin, and Nikolai Podgorny. As Party Secretary Brezhnev would overshadow his colleagues and become the dominant figure in the Soviet leadership until his death in 1982. His regime, the second longest in Soviet history, would be known as a period of stability and economic stagnation through which the bureaucratic status quo became seemingly permanently entrenched. The Brezhnev years also witnessed the emergence of the USSR as a military superpower on par with the United States.
Leonid Brezhnev 1977
As a personality Brezhnev was anything but the somber and dull figure known to the West before 1964. He was an exuberant and somewhat vain figure with expensive tastes for comfort and gadgets. Physically powerful, he smoked heavily and occasionally drank to excess with seemingly no ill effects. He enjoyed hunting and fast cars and hosting foreign dignitaries at his luxurious villas in the Moscow countryside and at Yalta. As did Khrushchev, he liked earthy stories and telling dirty jokes - even to foreign heads of state. In public he was flirtatious and enjoyed flattering women. Married and with grown children, Brezhnev appeared to have a proper but private family life. Unlike Nina Khrushchev who went on state visits with her husband, Victoria Brezhnev was rarely seen in public. As grandparents both Brezhnevs loved doting on their grandchildren.
The son of a migrant Russian steel worker, Brezhnev was born in 1906 in the Ukraine. Because his father's career had benefited from the advent of Communist rule in 1917, the young Brezhnev became actively committed to the Party's cause. Through his membership in the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) he was trained as a surveyor and then as a metallurgical engineer. With the Stalinist purge of the Ukrainian party leadership in the late 1930s, Brezhnev came to the attention of the new Ukrainian party boss, Nikita Khrushchev. As Khrushchev's protégé, Brezhnev became a leading figure in the Stalinist Ukrainian leadership. During the war he served with distinction, first directing the conversion of Ukrainian industry from civilian to military production then as a commissar in charge of military propaganda and morale. He rapidly rose to the rank of major general. Following the war his career followed that of Khrushchev, first taking him to Moscow, then to Kazakhstan, where he helped administer the Virgin Lands project. In 1960 Khrushchev appointed Brezhnev President of the Supreme Soviet, a largely ceremonial position but one of importance as it made him a member of the ruling Party Presidium. As Soviet President, Brezhnev had the opportunity to travel widely outside the USSR as a spokesman for Khrushchev's foreign policy. In October 1964, he and fellow Presidium members Kosygin and Podgorny engineered the conspiracy that forced Khrushchev into retirement. The Central Committee confirmed him as the new Party Secretary.
Throughout his eighteen years in power, the principle of collective leadership remained in effect, although it was clear that Brezhnev exercised full authority. Alexei Kosygin, as Premier, was technically head of the government and represented the Soviet Union abroad on state visits, much as Bulganin had done during the early Khrushchev years. In 1980 the ailing Kosygin was replaced as Premier by Nikolai Tikhonov. Nikolai Podgorny held the office of President of the Supreme Soviet until his dismissal in 1977 when Brezhnev assumed that position. In his Politburo Brezhnev would be ably served by Andrei Gromyko, Foreign Minister since 1957, his friend and confidant from the 1940s Konstantin Chernenko, and KGB chief Yuri Andropov. Regardless of their names and titles, the men associated with Brezhnev served as his advisors and implementers of his policy and programs. Unlike Khrushchev, who had to consolidate his power by building a power base and removing his opponents over a period of years, Brezhnev's exercise of power was without opposition and relatively smooth.
Domestic and Military Policy, 1964 - 1982
The Brezhnev years are known for their stability and lack of innovation. The bureaucratic institutionalization of Soviet life created by Stalin remained securely in place. Those in the Party and government hierarchy likewise remained secure, for many their positions becoming lifetime sinecures. Thus, the administrative and bureaucratic structures became static, operating on their own momentum. Soviet leadership and management, consequently, fell into a conservatism intended to make the Stalinist system work rather than reform it.
Industrial production between 1964 and 1982 showed general gains but not enough to provide for the needs of both the state and people. By 1982 the USSR had fallen to fifth place among the world's industrial nations, lagging in overall production behind the United States, Japan, and the Germanys. Soviet exports were of raw materials, not manufactured goods. In fact, the USSR was losing valuable capital by importing needed manufactured goods, machinery, and technology much as were many of the Third World countries. While the production of consumer goods was increasing, heavy industry and defense needs continued to take priority. Often Soviet technology was embarrassingly obsolete, with machinery lagging from five to fifty years behind that of the United States. The use of computers in the Soviet Union did not begin until 1977, and then on a very restricted basis. Soviet managers were reluctant to modernize their equipment for fear that the changeover might disrupt production, causing them to fail to meet their government-set quotas.
Because of the centralized planning system, consumer goods and services were unexciting, of poor quality, and in short supply. Complacent officials and managers resorted to illegal means, usually some form of bribery, either to enrich themselves or to keep their plants operating and avoid government scrutiny. There developed a "second economy" wherein private citizens illegally provided services or manufactured and distributed goods independently of the state system. The "second economy" functioned according to capitalist market forces. The black market of goods and services became so pervading that party and police officials (many actually being part of it!) did not actively press to destroy it for fear of harming the overall economy.
Agricultural production during the Brezhnev years remained rooted in the Stalinist system of collective farms. Centrally regulated and operated from the ministries in Moscow, farm output very seldom provided enough to meet needs. Many collectives lacked adequate machinery for cultivation and harvesting. There was a great deal of waste. Lack of paved roads in agricultural regions caused transport delays and breakdowns. Foodstuffs waiting for shipment rotted in unrefrigerated warehouses. Serious grain shortages in the 1970s forced the Soviet government to negotiate huge wheat purchases from the United States. Critics urged the government to decentralize agriculture and allow greater experimentation with free market forces, but the Brezhnev regime instead attempted to refine the Stalinist system. The bureaucrats and managers were safe. The government's "reforms" did nothing to change the system. By 1982 some 33% of government spending was going into agriculture, yet overall production was decreasing.
There was, however, one area of Soviet agriculture that was successful – the private sector. Farmers on collectives had been permitted private plots, the produce of which they could sell in the public markets. By 1982 the 1.4% of farmland that was privately held was producing 30% of the nation's meat and vegetables and 40% of its fruit. Observers attest this productivity to incentives that were lacking on the wage-based collectives. As with the "second economy" of goods and services in the cities, the promise of greater income through some private enterprise on the side had great appeal.
The Soviet economy under Brezhnev seemed to be either at a standstill or moving sluggishly at best. The social implications of slavish dependence on the Stalinist system were becoming increasingly evident. The state-run workplace lacked incentive. Absenteeism and alcoholism became increasingly common within the work force. Housing in urban areas was in short supply, leading to the social tensions of families and neighbors overcrowded into inadequate apartments. The divorce rate more than doubled between 1965 and 1980. The birth rate began to decline, and maternal alcoholism, abortion, and poor nutrition were causing an embarrassing increase in infant mortality.
If there were an area of significant growth between 1965 and 1982, it was in the Soviet military. The Kremlin's diplomatic retreat in face of American resolve during the Cuban missile crisis had proved embarrassing to the Soviet military. In spite of significant gains made during the Khrushchev era, it was clear that the United States had a strategic advantage, especially in the area of long-range missiles. Brezhnev was determined that the Soviet Union would not only catch up, it would surpass the United States as a strategic power. Thus it was that the Soviet military had virtual carte blanche to expand its defensive capabilities.
A massive program of military spending created new classes of strategic missiles and armed them with thousands of nuclear warheads. The new SS-18 missile could deliver ten nuclear warheads, making it the single most destructive weapon on earth. By 1982 the USSR had over 7000 nuclear weapons, an atomic arsenal equal to that of the US. Particularly alarming to the West was a new class of shorter range missiles targeted against Europe. Not only did Brezhnev increase Soviet strategic capabilities, he also authorized increases in and modernization of conventional forces. The Soviet navy was expanded to over 300 vessels enabling the USSR to exercise a global military presence.
Arms limitations negotiations with the United States were conducted with the objective of securing an agreement that would reflect US recognition of Soviet power and in no way hamper or reduce Soviet strategic development. Thus it was that the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitations Talks) agreements between the two superpowers in 1972 and 1979 set categories and ceilings on the numbers of weapons systems to be developed. Rather than reduce armaments, the SALT treaties enabled both nations to continue to develop and build new weapons according to agreed-upon maximums. When President Nixon traveled to Moscow in the spring of 1972 to sign the SALT I agreements, a delighted Brezhnev was ecstatic. The US was dealing with the USSR as an equal.
Brezhnev and Dissent
The Brezhnev era witnessed a return to a somewhat Stalinist response to dealing with dissent. The Khrushchev years saw a controlled relaxation of censorship through which writers and other intellectuals might express their creativity within vague and changing limits set by the state. Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a vivid account of conditions in Stalin's gulag, was permitted publication in 1962 because it served Khrushchev's purpose of discrediting Stalin. Khrushchev's "open door" to limited intellectual freedom was slammed shut by Brezhnev. Intellectuals who were considered critical of the Party, state, or of Leninism, were put under surveillance of the KGB, the state security police. In 1965 the arrest of two dissident writers, Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavski, signaled the beginning of a new wave of repression. Even Solzhenitsyn came under attack. His works, critical of the abuses of Stalin, were forbidden publication in the USSR and abroad and the KGB attempted to seize his manuscripts. In 1970 he was forbidden to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1974 he was arrested, accused of treason (for publishing The Gulag Archipelago abroad) and expelled from the country. The response of the Soviet intelligentsia to the case of Solzhenitsyn and other writers was the human rights movement.
Those who dared to speak out for Soviet human rights demanded that the government honor the rights granted in the Soviet constitution. Such stated rights included freedom of speech and religion as well as guarantees of due process of law. Those who criticized the government's policies opened themselves to KGB harassment and possible arrest. Those condemned of anti-Soviet activities were exiled or sent to labor camps or psychiatric hospitals.
The most famous of the human rights activists was the brilliant and highly honored nuclear physicist, Andrei Sakharov. Sakharov was the "father" of the Soviet hydrogen bomb and had been awarded the nation's highest honor, the prestigious Order of Lenin medal. In 1975 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for his writings on behalf of disarmament. He was widely respected within the Soviet academic community, and his voice in dissent was unacceptable to Soviet authorities. Outspoken in his criticism of human rights violations by the Soviet government, Sakharov became a major embarrassment to Brezhnev. In 1980 in order to silence Sakharov, the Brezhnev regime arrested him and condemned him to internal exile in Gorky, a city closed to foreigners. In exile he became a cause célébre of human rights activists everywhere. The United States condemned the Soviet Union for its disregard for international human rights agreements, and the Sakharov case became an issue of discord in US-Soviet relations. (In late 1986 Sakharov was pardoned and freed by Gorbachev. On returning home to Moscow under the protective umbrella of Gorbachev's glasnost policy, he continued unrepentant to champion the causes of human rights and disarmament until his death in late 1989.)
Dissent came from other sources, namely Christian church leaders and Jews. While the Soviet constitution guaranteed the right to freedom of worship, practicing Christians were few and far between. Only a few churches were permitted to hold services and KGB surveillance of churchgoers was intimidating. Practicing Christians were denied job promotions and other benefits held by Soviet citizens. Church leaders protested the government's policies, demanding greater religious freedom and less interference in the spiritual life of the Soviet people. Fearing arrest for wanting to leave the USSR, a group of Soviet Pentecostals took refuge in the American Embassy where they remained for years before the Gorbachev government allowed them to emigrate.
Many Soviet Jews, likewise disturbed by the government's overall religious policy and fearful of the traditional Russian hostility to Jews, sought to immigrate to Israel. Highly educated and articulate, Soviet Jews made up a large part of the intelligentsia. Their ranks included writers, scholars, scientists, doctors, technicians – all people whose talents and energies made important contributions to the overall wellbeing of Soviet society. Many Soviet Jews were active in the human rights movement and campaigned for reform.
During the Brezhnev years thousands of Jews were granted exit visas permitting them to leave, but many more thousands were refused such permissions. Many of these "refusniks," as they came to be called, were denied exit permission on the grounds that their professions were critical to the defense of the USSR and their leaving would be a security risk. Some of the more outspoken refusniks, such as Anatoly Shcharansky, were accused of espionage, arrested, and imprisoned. In 1977, in spite of pleas for amnesty from around the world, Shcharansky was sentenced to three years in prison and ten years in a labor camp for allegedly passing state secrets to the United States. (Shcharansky was later released by Gorbachev and allowed to immigrate to Israel.) The status of Soviet Jews became a foreign policy concern for the United States which urged the USSR to allow open emigration. The Soviet government accused the US of interference in Soviet internal affairs.
Soviet Foreign Policy, 1964 - 1982
The emphases of Soviet foreign policy during the Brezhnev era focused on Eastern Europe, détente with the United States, and exerting a greater global presence. In foreign policy Brezhnev was cautious and calculating and not inclined to take risks. Soviet policy was expertly guided by the perennial veteran Andrei Gromyko, Foreign Minister from 1957 to 1985
Eastern Europe occasioned the Brezhnev Doctrine. In 1968 a moderate reform movement in Czechoslovakia threatened Soviet interests in that country. The Czech Communist Party, much like the Hungarian some twelve years earlier, had come under the leadership of moderate nationalists favoring greater autonomy. Led by Alexander Dubček, the Czech Communists relaxed censorship, released political prisoners, called for economic decentralization, and instituted a program of democratization. There was talk of establishing closer relations with Western Europe and even of withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact alliance system.
The "Prague Spring," as the Czech liberalization movement was known, came to an abrupt end in August 1968. The changes in Czechoslovakia proved very troublesome to the Soviet Union, which both condemned and warned the Czechs that their actions threatened socialist solidarity. In July talks between Brezhnev and Dubček intended to defuse the growing crisis failed to reach a mutually-satisfactory agreement. On consultation with the leaders of other Warsaw Pact countries, Brezhnev authorized armed intervention to bring Czechoslovakia back in line. In August some 600,000 Warsaw Pact troops, largely Soviet, invaded Czechoslovakia and occupied Prague. Unlike Hungary in 1956, Czech resistance was minimal, mostly angry crowds jeering the invaders. There was no bloody purge of the Czech leadership. An agreement was reached whereby in return for the withdrawal of the invasion forces, the reforms would be undone and Czechoslovakia would return to Communist orthodoxy. Dubček was discredited, demoted, and eventually retired as the hard-liners led by Gustav Husak resumed their control of the Party.
The Soviet suppression of the Czech liberalization movement demonstrated what came to be known as the Brezhnev Doctrine. Through this doctrine the USSR would intervene in the affairs of any Eastern European Communist state if Communism were threatened by that country's policies. The USSR would, therefore, determine the extent to which the satellite countries would exercise sovereignty within their own boundaries.
In 1980 labor unrest in Poland prompted renewed Soviet concern for internal events in that country. As the result of government controls and centralization, the Polish economy had come to a standstill. High prices and shortages angered the Polish population, and the Communist leadership seemed either insensitive to their plight or unable to effect reform. An illegal strike that began in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk (Danzig) caught the attention of the country and soon strikes were breaking out all over Poland.
Within a short time the Polish strikers had been effectively organized by a Gdansk shipyard electrician named Lech Walesa into a free labor movement called Solidarity (Solidarnosc). The strikers won a great victory when the economically-pressed Polish government recognized Solidarity as a legal labor union, the only independent labor union in any Communist country. Now that Solidarity was legal, millions of Polish workers rushed to join it as it pressed for further reforms. Emboldened by their success, Walesa and other Solidarity leaders coupled Poland's future economic recovery to changes in the political system and called for freedom of the press and democracy in local elections.
To the Soviet Union Polish recognition of Solidarity threatened Communist unity not only in Poland but throughout Communist Eastern Europe. Solidarity was, therefore, dangerous. The message was not lost on the Polish leadership. Internal disruption in Poland could mean activation of the Brezhnev Doctrine and Soviet intervention. In the fall of 1981 the Polish Communist Party named Poland's new leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski. The military would restore order to Poland. Jaruzelski acted in December, 1981, by declaring martial law. Solidarity was outlawed and Walesa and its leaders were arrested. Demonstrations in protest were broken up by police truncheons, water cannons, and further arrests. Poland seethed below the surface of martial law. The spirit engendered by Solidarity did not die, and the suppressed movement continued a covert existence supported by the Polish people and the Catholic Church. General Jaruzelski professed Poland's commitment to Marxist-Leninist socialism and made the requisite visits to Moscow. The Soviet Union seemed satisfied.
In relations with the United States Brezhnev had to deal with five American presidents (Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan), each with his own objectives. The US involvement in Vietnam was certainly to the Soviet advantage as it kept the United States preoccupied in Southeast Asia, but the US wielded such great power that the USSR could not be reckless. Peaceful coexistence, therefore, continued to be at the foundation of Brezhnev's US policies. On this background, he would pursue policies intended to guarantee Soviet security, particularly in regard to the buildup of Soviet strategic arms. In this he was fortunate to be dealing with President Richard Nixon and the dynamic Henry Kissinger. The results would be the SALT agreements and Détente.
Seeking to extricate the United States from the war in Vietnam, Nixon saw the value of accommodation with North Vietnam's allies, the USSR and China. Improved relations with the USSR and China would undermine their support for the Vietnamese Communists and be to Nixon's advantage as he sought peace with North Vietnam. Nixon's national security advisor and later Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, saw the Vietnamese conflict in terms of great power maneuvering. Détente with the Soviet Union would be the key to a permanent world peace as all regional conflicts were linked to US and Soviet interests. As both powers were interested in arms control, Kissinger pressed for conclusion of an arms control agreement as the initial means to Détente.
The resulting Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) served the objectives of both nations. As mentioned above, Brezhnev was seeking to modernize and expand Soviet strategic capabilities. The US wanted to avoid renewal of a costly arms race. Thus, both sides wanted an agreement. Kissinger proved willing to allow the Soviets to reach a strategic par with the US in order to have the Détente that would allow the US to work with the USSR on a grander global scale. Placing great value in personal diplomacy, Kissinger traveled to the USSR and showed himself effectively able to negotiate with both Gromyko and Brezhnev. The SALT I agreements of 1972 were seen as a triumph of diplomacy for both parties. Nixon went to Moscow for the formal signing in May 1972, and later in 1973 Brezhnev visited the United States. In 1974 Nixon returned to the USSR for further face-to-face SALT negotiations. Kissinger was a frequent visitor to Moscow throughout the negotiations.
SALT I was two agreements. Very simply, both sides agreed 1) to restrict the building of anti-ballistic missile defense systems (for fear such a system, if perfected, would give its holder a defensible first-strike capability) and 2) to stop construction of new missile launchers and freeze the existing number of missile systems. They also agreed to continue the SALT negotiations for a future formal treaty that would limit the specific numbers of missiles and warheads. Not included in the SALT I agreement was any restriction on MIRVing existing missiles – that is, expanding a missile's destructive capability by arming it with multiple warheads. Thus it was that both sides could continue to expand their strategic arsenals having agreed to limit them! Brezhnev got US recognition of the USSR's superpower status; Kissinger and Nixon got their Détente. When US bombers attacked North Vietnamese ports and sank a Soviet merchant ship in December 1972, there was only mild protest from the USSR.
SALT II was negotiated over the next several years and signed by Brezhnev and President Jimmy Carter in Vienna in 1979. A much more comprehensive treaty than SALT I, SALT II set specific limitations on the numbers of missile systems, warheads, and development of new systems. SALT II confirmed Soviet strategic parity, on paper at least, with the United States. For Brezhnev, who kissed Carter at the signing (Nixon got a hug for SALT I!), SALT II was the triumph of Soviet diplomacy.
Through Détente both the US and USSR implicitly agreed to accept the existence of their respective social, economic, and political systems and seek means of reducing the tensions between them. Beyond the advantages of the SALT agreements, the policy had numerous benefits to the USSR. New trade opportunities with the US meant foreign investment in the USSR. Academic exchanges and cooperative scientific ventures meant exposure to sophisticated western technology, so lacking in the Soviet system. In international affairs, agreements were reached on Berlin whereby the US recognized its division as permanent. The US also extended diplomatic recognition to East Germany, thus ending the division of Germany as a Cold War issue. In 1975 the US and Soviet Union joined 33 other mostly European nations in the Helsinki Accords. Through this agreement all the signatories pledged to respect the sovereignty of other nations[1] and agreed to a comprehensive statement in defense of human rights.
Détente did not mean the Soviet-US relations were without problems. In 1973 the Soviet Union threatened to intervene militarily to save the Arab forces trapped by the Israeli army in the October War. President Nixon responded by putting the US military, including strategic nuclear strike forces, on a war-readiness alert. Kissinger then suggested to Brezhnev that the matter be resolved through a cooperative effort in the United Nations. The Soviets agreed.
Soviet treatment of dissidents and Jewish refusniks was also another source of discord in relations with the United States. The Carter administration was highly outspoken on the matter of human rights and vehemently criticized Soviet treatment of such figures as Shcharanski and Sakharov. The US claimed that Moscow was in violation of the Helsinki Accords. Moscow accused the US of meddling in a Soviet domestic matter.
In late 1979 Détente suffered a severe setback when Soviet troops were sent into Afghanistan. President Carter condemned the action as aggression and announced several US responses. He would request the Senate not to ratify the SALT II Treaty. Grain sales and shipments to the USSR would be ended. The US would not send teams to participate in the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. Afghanistan represented a turning point in Soviet relations with the United States. Détente was over and relations seemed to return to the icy formality of the Cold War. The election of Ronald Reagan on 1980 did not seem promising. The new conservative president referred to the USSR as an "evil empire" and called for a massive program of US military expansion.
Globally, Soviet foreign policy reflected expanding interest in regional conflicts. Ever since the 1956 Suez crisis, the Soviet Union had championed the Arab cause in the Middle East conflict with Israel. Seeing an opportunity to destabilize Western, particularly US, interests in the Middle East, the Soviet Union had become the principal arms supplier for the Arab states, particularly Egypt and Syria. When the Arab armies were defeated in both the 1967 June War and the 1973 October War, the USSR had not only replenished the weapons lost but provided advisors to train the Arabs in their use. Soviet assistance to the Arabs has forced the US to provide similar assistance for Israel. In 1972 President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, seeking to improve relations with the US, ended Egypt's longtime Soviet military connection by requesting the withdrawal of all Soviet personnel from the country. Expelled from Egypt, the Soviets improved their relationship with Syria. Soviet diplomatic and arms support for Syria in the late 1970s made Syria a significant factor in Middle Eastern affairs, not only in regard to Israel but also in regard to the developing crisis of Lebanon. As Lebanese sovereignty collapsed into civil war, Syria saw an opportunity to expand its hegemony over Lebanon. Because of its role in the Middle East, the USSR insisted that it be part of any attempt at international negotiation to achieve peace in the region.
In the mid-1970s the Brezhnev government took advantage of civil conflict in Africa and Latin America. Marxist governments came to power in Ethiopia and Angola, and the USSR played a major role in arming them and assisting them against rebel movements. In Angola Soviet interests were pursued by Cuba, which sent troops to support the Angolan government in its conflict with US-supported rebels. The Angolan-Cuban connection was also exercised in support of Marxist guerrillas in Namibia (Southwest Africa) then conducting a sporadic, but bloody, resistance to the South African-installed government. Soviet and Cuban support for Ethiopia enabled the Marxist government of that country to resist rebel movements for the independence of Eritrea and attack from neighboring Somalia. Through Cuba the USSR sought to increase its influence in Latin America. In 1979 the unpopular and corrupt Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua was overthrown by the Marxist Sandinista movement. The US, resenting their Marxism and seizure of foreign investments in Nicaragua, proved reluctant to support the Sandinistas who turned increasingly to Cuba and the USSR. Cuban, and later Soviet, shipments of arms and fuel to Nicaragua alarmed the Reagan administration which condemned the Sandinista regime as a Soviet-Cuban puppet.
In December 1979, Brezhnev ordered the Soviet army to enter and occupy neighboring Afghanistan. Concerned that instability within the Marxist government of Afghanistan might encourage militant Muslim fundamentalism and destabilize Afghanistan to Soviet disadvantage, the Soviet government engineered a coup that brought the Afghan Communist Babrak Karmal to power. Karmal then "invited" the USSR to send its forces to protect the new regime. Thus, in the name of socialist solidarity, some 100,000 Soviet troops would be sent to Afghanistan.
They met immediate resistance. While the Afghan army remained loyal to Karmal, numerous Afghans resented both Karmal and the Soviet occupation. The Afghan resistance, mostly rural tribesmen known collectively as the Mujahedin ("holy warriors"), even with their primitive weapons, proved a formidable match for the Soviets. To the Mujahedin the Soviets and their treasonous allies in the government were not only enemies of Afghanistan, they were also enemies of Islam. Their resistance, consequently, was characterized by both patriotic and spiritual fanaticism.
The result was a long and brutal war. Millions of Afghans were either killed or fled the country to the misery of refugee camps in Pakistan. The war entered a new stage when the Mujahedin began to receive shipments of sophisticated weapons (anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft rockets, etc.) from the United States, Pakistan, and other sources. The Soviets controlled the capital, Kabul, and the Afghan cities, but the Mujahedin controlled the countryside. Unable to defeat the Mujahedin on the battlefield, the Soviet military effort bogged down in an ugly war of attrition in which civilians suffered the greatest casualties. It was clear to both foreign and Soviet observers that Afghanistan had become the Soviet Union's Vietnam.
The Afghanistan invasion marked a distinct shift away from Brezhnev's usually cautious and risk-free foreign policy. Not only did it mean the end of Détente with the United States, it also meant almost universal condemnation by the world's Muslim nations. The radical fundamentalist government of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran condemned the USSR as a "Satan" almost as evil as the United States and urged Soviet Muslims to take up arms against their government.
Although he had blamed Khrushchev for the breakdown of Soviet relations with China, Brezhnev proved unwilling to work for their improvement. In the mid-1960s China experienced its Cultural Revolution, a massive social upheaval intended to revitalize its Communist revolutionary spirit. China's leadership loudly condemned Soviet "revisionism" as a betrayal of Marxist-Leninism, and the Soviet embassy in Beijing was the scene of massive demonstrations of Chinese hostility. In 1969 sporadic fighting broke out between Chinese and Soviet forces along the border of Manchuria. In 1972 China's leaders enthusiastically welcomed President Nixon to Beijing and expressed hope that the new Chinese-US relationship would deter Soviet hegemony in Asia. The Soviets concentrated troops and missiles along the borders with China. The Chinese built huge bomb shelters beneath their major cities. At the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982, the situation remained relatively unchanged.
In ill health for almost a decade, Brezhnev succumbed to heart failure in November 1982, three days after reviewing the great parade that annually commemorated the Bolshevik Revolution. With unprecedented speed two days later, the Central Committee named 68-year-old KGB chief Yuri Andropov as the new Party Secretary. Andropov's selection had already been made by the Politburo apparently without a great deal of dissent. Brezhnev was buried with honors following a solemn state funeral. In addressing the Central Committee, Andropov praised his predecessor and indicated that he would continue Brezhnev's policies.
Leonid Brezhnev's legacy was mixed. His greatest accomplishment was to make the Soviet Union a military superpower. The price the Soviet people paid for that greatness, however, was one of economic stagnation and bureaucratic permanence of the Stalinist system. The rising voice of dissent remained effectively stifled and isolated from the mainstream of the Soviet population. In foreign relations, Brezhnev kept Eastern Europe securely within the Soviet orbit, benefited from détente with the United States, and expanded Soviet influence globally. That his Afghan blunder undermined much of what he accomplished seems reflective of the reticence inherent in his leadership. His greatest failure was to ignore the future.
On Brezhnev's death his mantle was passed not to a new generation of leaders but to the conservative and comfortable old men who were his colleagues. In the name of stability and security he had unwittingly closed the doors to opportunity for leadership. A younger generation of bright, curious, and talented men who had been spared the Stalinist terror and xenophobia were waiting in the wings, eager for their chance to make the socialist system work. They would have to wait. Like a deteriorating old locomotive slowly and fitfully wheezing along rusting rails and pulling a train of outdated cars fully loaded with modern weapons but pathetically empty of freight and foodstuffs, the gigantic bureaucratic machine that was the Soviet Union had passed from one old and ailing engineer to another.
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[1] The Helsinki agreement, consequently, compelled the US to accept the legality of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe.
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