The Doctrine of Brezhnev

"The Brezhnev Doctrine" was first set out in the newspaper "Pravda" in the distant 1968. The main essence of the doctrine gave it a second name - "the doctrine of limited sovereignty."

In order to understand the essence of this direction, it is necessary to return to the period after the Second World War, which significantly changed the alignment of forces in Europe. After the Soviet Union defeated fascism, it no doubt began to dictate certain conditions in the world space. This manifested itself primarily in the spread of socialism to the west of Europe and in strengthening the positions of pro-communist forces in the parliaments of such states as Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, etc. Only Yugoslavia recovered in time from the communist domination and quickly deployed the vector in the direction of the developed capitalist countries. The countries of Eastern Europe for the sake of control were united in a new military alliance - the Warsaw Pact, which was established in 1955. This allowed to further polarize the world political arena: two clear opposing sides emerged, a capitalist and socialist camp. The tone of the socialist camp has always been asked by the leaders of the Soviet Union. Leonid Brezhnev, whose foreign policy also bore the imprint of his personality, was no exception. This was a qualitatively new course, which differed from the direction of the previous politicians, since it was built taking into account the mistakes of Stalin and Khrushchev.

What are the features of the course? Brezhnev's foreign policy was primarily aimed at maneuvering and self-elimination from hot world conflicts. Brezhnev by nature was a patient and rather cunning politician, moreover, at the end of his reign, after suffering a stroke, he tried not to get involved in major disputes between the giants of this world. In most cases, Leonid Ilyich only agreed with obvious, uncompromising decisions aimed at pacification. And those party members who in the last years stood behind Brezhnev, did not dare to enter the world level in foreign policy - they preferred to "do business" within their own country. The Brezhnev doctrine also had one more feature - collective decision-making. In most cases this was a complete props, since all decisions were taken by the leader, and for the world community this was a decision of a number of countries. Of course, that outwardly it looked much more democratic, but it should be remembered that all these countries were members of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, and hence puppets in the hands of the Soviet Union.

Outwardly such decisions were backed up by a beautiful ideological background. The Brezhnev doctrine was built on the unity of the peoples of the countries of Eastern Europe, which were to be clearly aware: the Union's foreign policy is the policy of proletarian internationalism, which means equality, sovereignty and independence. Therefore, all the actions carried out by the Soviet state were considered quite justified, because they were carried out in the framework of achieving this very equality, sovereignty and independence. And it does not matter that sometimes military force was used to carry out certain measures, as was done in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Another pillar on which Brezhnev's doctrine was built was a change in the chronological framework for the achievement of communism. Or rather, communism itself, which had been going on since the time of VI Lenin, was now called as developed socialism, and its achievement was prolonged for hundreds of years. This made it possible to hide many failures and shortcomings in terms of the economy, which now no longer promised the Soviet people a bright future in ten to twenty years. And for a long time, the desire for socialism was proposed by Leonid Brezhnev to live in peace and harmony with countries of various types of development, for example, capitalist ones. This caused the tolerance of Brezhnev to the developed countries of Europe, active rapprochement with some of them.

Brezhnev's doctrine at the moment revealed its caricature essence, but in the seventies of the last century it was a competent and correct strategic step that allowed in the future to avoid military conflicts and to direct the Union's foreign policy on a peaceful course.