Leonid Brezhnev

3.3.1. Consolidation of Authority

Upon replacing Khrushchev as the party's First Secretary, Brezhnev became the de jure supreme authority of the Soviet Union. However, he was initially compelled to govern as part of an unofficial triumvirate, also known as a Troika, alongside Premier Alexei Kosygin and Nikolai Podgorny, who was a Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and later Chairman of the Presidium. This arrangement was formalized by a Central Committee plenum in October 1964, which, in reaction to Khrushchev's disregard for the Politburo and his combination of party and government leadership, forbade any single individual from holding both the General Secretary and Premier offices simultaneously. This collective leadership structure would persist until the late 1970s, when Brezhnev decisively secured his position as the most powerful figure in the Soviet Union.

During his consolidation of power, Brezhnev first addressed the ambitions of Alexander Shelepin, the former KGB chairman and then head of the Party-State Control Committee. In early 1965, Shelepin began advocating for the restoration of "obedience and order" in the Soviet Union as part of his bid for power. He exploited his control over state and party organs to garner support within the regime. Recognizing Shelepin as an immediate threat, Brezhnev mobilized the Soviet collective leadership to remove him from the Party-State Control Committee, which was subsequently dissolved on December 6, 1965.

By the end of 1965, Brezhnev had also maneuvered to have Podgorny removed from the Secretariat, significantly limiting his ability to build support within the party apparatus. Over the ensuing years, Podgorny's network of supporters was steadily eroded as his protégés were forcibly "retired" from the Central Committee. Although Podgorny quickly became the second most powerful figure in the country when his authority as Chairman of the Presidium was expanded in 1973, his influence over Soviet policy continuously declined relative to Brezhnev's, especially after Brezhnev bolstered his support within the national security apparatus. By 1977, Brezhnev was secure enough to replace Podgorny as head of state and remove him from the Politburo, cementing his own role as the undisputed leader.

After sidelining Shelepin and Podgorny in 1965, Brezhnev turned his attention to his remaining political rival, Alexei Kosygin. In the 1960s, U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger initially perceived Kosygin as the dominant figure in Soviet foreign policy within the Politburo. Concurrently, Kosygin also managed economic administration as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. However, his position weakened following his enactment of several economic reforms in 1965, collectively known as the "Kosygin reforms." These reforms, coinciding with the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia (whose sharp deviation from the Soviet model led to its armed suppression in 1968), provoked a backlash among the party's old guard. This opposition flocked to Brezhnev, strengthening his position within the Soviet leadership. In 1969, Brezhnev further expanded his authority after a clash with Second Secretary Mikhail Suslov and other party officials, who never again challenged his supremacy within the Politburo.

Brezhnev proved adept at navigating the Soviet power structure. He was a team player, careful not to act rashly or hastily. Unlike Khrushchev, he made decisions only after substantial consultation with his colleagues and was always willing to consider their opinions. During the early 1970s, Brezhnev solidified his domestic position. In 1977, he forced Podgorny's retirement and once again became Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, effectively making this position equivalent to that of an executive president. While Kosygin remained Premier until shortly before his death in 1980 (when he was replaced by Nikolai Tikhonov), Brezhnev had established himself as the dominant figure in the Soviet Union from the mid-1970s until his death in 1982. He also interfered in economic policy, which was Kosygin's domain, further expanding his influence.

4.1.1. Ideological Development and 'Developed Socialism'

Brezhnev articulated the concept of "Developed Socialism," which he presented as the Soviet-style socialism that had successfully built socialism in the Soviet Union and reached Vladimir Lenin's transitional stage from socialism to communism. Brezhnev emphasized the advanced technological developments in the USSR, including the full electrification of the country, the use of nuclear power in production, computer planning, and highly mechanized agriculture. He asserted that all social strata within the USSR were closer than ever before due to the country's highly developed productive forces. Consequently, according to Brezhnev, the dictatorship of the proletariat had evolved into a people's government. Brezhnev believed that all socialist countries, irrespective of their national and material conditions, would undergo the same socialist development and social transformation according to the Soviet model.

4.1.2. Political Repression and Human Rights

Brezhnev's stabilization policy included a reversal of Khrushchev's liberalizing reforms and a clamping down on cultural freedom. During the Khrushchev years, Brezhnev had supported the denunciation of Stalin's arbitrary rule, the rehabilitation of many purge victims, and the cautious liberalization of Soviet intellectual and cultural policy. However, upon becoming leader, he began to reverse this trend, adopting an increasingly authoritarian and conservative stance.

By the mid-1970s, an estimated 5,000 political and religious prisoners were held across the Soviet Union, enduring severe conditions and malnutrition. Many were deemed "mentally unfit" by the Soviet state and confined to mental asylums, a practice known as political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union. Under Brezhnev's rule, the KGB, led by Yuri Andropov, extensively infiltrated anti-government organizations, ensuring minimal opposition to the regime. However, Brezhnev largely refrained from the widespread, all-out violence seen under Stalin's rule.

The trial of writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky in 1966, the first such public trials since Stalin's era, signaled the return to a repressive cultural policy. While the KGB regained much of its power under Andropov, there was no return to the purges of the 1930s and 1940s, and Stalin's legacy remained largely discredited among the Soviet intelligentsia. This period also saw policies of Russification in various Soviet republics, with a decrease in the proportion of children taught in their native languages and restrictions on local-language media, accompanied by the imprisonment of "nationalists."

4.1.3. Economic Performance and the 'Era of Stagnation'

Between 1960 and 1970, Soviet agricultural output increased by 3% annually. Industrial production also saw improvement: during the Eighth Five-Year Plan (1966-1970), the output of factories and mines grew by 138% compared to 1960 levels. Despite the Politburo's increasingly anti-reformist stance, Kosygin managed to secure approval from Brezhnev and the Politburo to allow the Hungarian People's Republic to implement its "New Economic Mechanism" (NEM), which permitted limited retail markets. In the Polish People's Republic, under Edward Gierek, a different approach was taken in 1970, seeking Western loans to accelerate heavy industry growth. The Soviet leadership approved this, as the Soviet Union could no longer afford its massive subsidies to the Eastern Bloc through cheap oil and gas exports. However, not all reforms were accepted, as demonstrated by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 in response to Alexander Dubček's reforms. Under Brezhnev, the Politburo abandoned Khrushchev's decentralization experiments, and by 1966, Brezhnev abolished the Regional Economic Councils that managed regional economies.

The Ninth Five-Year Plan (1971-1975) marked a shift: for the first time, industrial consumer products out-produced industrial capital goods. Consumer items like watches, furniture, and radios were produced in abundance. However, the plan still directed the majority of state investment towards industrial capital-goods production. This outcome was not viewed positively by most top party functionaries, and by 1975, consumer goods were expanding 9% slower than industrial capital-goods. This policy persisted despite Brezhnev's stated commitment to rapidly shift investment to satisfy Soviet consumers and improve living standards, which ultimately did not occur.

Before 1973, the Soviet economy was growing at a faster, albeit small, rate than the American economy and maintained a steady pace with Western European economies. Between 1964 and 1973, Soviet economic output per capita was roughly half that of Western Europe and slightly more than one-third that of the U.S. By the early 1970s, the Soviet Union had the world's second-largest industrial capacity, producing more steel, oil, pig-iron, cement, and tractors than any other country. However, this period of catching up with the West ended around 1973, as the Soviet Union increasingly lagged in computer technology, which proved crucial for Western economies. It was around this time that the "Era of Stagnation" became apparent.

The Era of Stagnation, a term coined by Mikhail Gorbachev, stemmed from a combination of factors. These included the ongoing arms race, the Soviet Union's engagement in international trade without adapting to changes in Western societies, increased authoritarianism, the costly Soviet-Afghan War, the transformation of the bureaucracy into an undynamic gerontocracy, a lack of meaningful economic reform, pervasive political corruption, and other structural problems. Domestically, social stagnation was exacerbated by growing demands from unskilled workers, labor shortages, and declining productivity and labor discipline. Although Brezhnev, albeit sporadically, attempted to reform the economy through Alexei Kosygin in the late 1960s and 1970s, these efforts yielded few positive results. The 1965 economic reform, initiated by Kosygin, was ultimately canceled by the Central Committee, despite the committee acknowledging the existence of economic problems. Gorbachev would later characterize the economy under Brezhnev's rule as "the lowest stage of socialism."

Based on its surveillance, the CIA reported that the Soviet economy peaked in the 1970s, reaching 57% of American GNP. However, starting around 1975, economic growth began to decline, partly due to the regime's sustained prioritization of heavy industry and military spending over consumer goods. Furthermore, Soviet agriculture struggled to feed the urban population, let alone provide for the rising standard of living promised as the fruits of "mature socialism" and on which industrial productivity depended. Ultimately, the GNP growth rate slowed to 1% to 2% per year. As GNP growth rates decreased in the 1970s from the levels held in the 1950s and 1960s, they also began to fall behind those of Western Europe and the United States. Eventually, the stagnation reached a point where the United States began growing at an average of 1% per year faster than the Soviet Union.

The stagnation of the Soviet economy was further fueled by its ever-widening technological gap with the West. Due to the cumbersome procedures of the centralized planning system, Soviet industries were incapable of the innovation needed to meet public demand, particularly in the field of computers. In response to the lack of uniform standards for peripherals and digital capacity, Brezhnev's regime ordered an end to all independent computer development, requiring all future models to be based on the IBM System/360. However, after adopting the IBM/360 system, the Soviet Union was never able to build enough platforms or improve on its design. As its technology continued to lag behind the West, the Soviet Union increasingly resorted to pirating Western designs.

The last significant reform undertaken by the Kosygin government, and arguably in the pre-perestroika era, was a joint decision by the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers in 1979, aimed at "Improving planning and reinforcing the effects of the economic mechanism on raising the effectiveness in production and improving the quality of work." This "1979 reform," in contrast to the 1965 reform, sought to increase the central government's economic involvement by enhancing the duties and responsibilities of the ministries. However, with Kosygin's death in 1980 and his successor Nikolai Tikhonov's conservative approach to economics, very little of the reform was actually implemented.

The Eleventh Five-Year Plan (1981-1985) delivered disappointing results, with growth rates declining from 5% to 4%. The previous Tenth Five-Year Plan had aimed for 6.1% growth but failed to meet this target. Brezhnev managed to defer economic collapse by trading with Western Europe and the Arab World, especially as the Soviet Union benefited from being the world's largest oil producer during the oil shocks of the 1970s. However, this reliance on natural resources meant that the foreign currency earned was largely spent on importing high-tech equipment, grain, and luxury goods from the West, hindering the transformation of the heavy industry-centric economy. A dramatic consequence of Brezhnev's rule was that some Eastern Bloc countries became more economically advanced than the Soviet Union itself.

4.1.4. Agricultural Policy

Brezhnev's agricultural policy largely reinforced traditional methods of organizing collective farming, with output quotas centrally imposed. Khrushchev's policy of amalgamating farms was continued by Brezhnev, who shared the belief that larger kolkhozes would increase productivity. Brezhnev advocated for increased state investments in farming, which reached an all-time high in the 1970s, accounting for 27% of all state investment, excluding investments in farm equipment. In 1981 alone, 33.00 B USD (at contemporary exchange rates) was invested into agriculture.

Agricultural output in 1980 was 21% higher than the average production rate between 1966 and 1970, with cereal crop output increasing by 18%. However, these improvements were not entirely encouraging. The primary criterion for assessing agricultural output in the Soviet Union was the grain harvest. The import of cereal, which began under Khrushchev, had become a normal phenomenon by Soviet standards due to a severe deficiency in domestic fodder crop production. When Brezhnev faced difficulties securing commercial trade agreements with the United States, he turned to other countries, such as Argentina. Another struggling sector was the sugar beet harvest, which had declined by 2% in the 1970s.

Brezhnev's approach to these issues was to increase state investment. Politburo member Gennady Voronov proposed dividing each farm's workforce into "links," units entrusted with specific functions, such as running a farm's dairy unit. His argument was that larger workforces felt less responsible. This program, initially proposed to Joseph Stalin by Andrey Andreyevich Andreyev in the 1940s and opposed by Khrushchev, was also rejected by Brezhnev, leading to Voronov's removal from the Politburo in 1973.

Despite the official stance, experimentation with "links" was not entirely disallowed at the local level. For instance, Mikhail Gorbachev, then First Secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee, experimented with links in his region. Overall, the Soviet government's involvement in agriculture was, according to Robert Service, "unimaginative" and "incompetent." Facing mounting agricultural problems, the Politburo issued a resolution titled, "On the Further Development of Specialisation and Concentration of Agricultural Production on the Basis of Inter-Farm Co-operation and Agro-Industrial Integration." This resolution mandated that adjacent kolkhozes collaborate to increase production. However, state subsidies to the food-and-agriculture sector failed to prevent bankrupt farms from operating, and rising produce prices were offset by increases in the cost of oil and other resources. By 1977, oil cost 84% more than it did in the late 1960s, with other resource costs also climbing.

Brezhnev's response to these challenges was to issue two decrees, one in 1977 and another in 1981, which called for an increase in the maximum size of privately owned plots within the Soviet Union to half a hectare. While these measures removed significant obstacles to expanding agricultural output, they did not resolve the fundamental problems. Under Brezhnev, private plots, cultivating only 4% of the land, yielded 30% of the national agricultural production. This led some to believe that de-collectivization was necessary to prevent the collapse of Soviet agriculture, but leading Soviet politicians shied away from such drastic measures due to ideological and political considerations. The underlying issues included a growing shortage of skilled workers, a damaged rural culture, a system of worker payment based on quantity rather than quality of work, and farm machinery that was too large for small collective farms and the often roadless countryside. Faced with these challenges, Brezhnev's only options were large-scale land reclamation and irrigation projects, as radical reforms were avoided.

4.1.5. Society and Living Standards

Over the eighteen years of Brezhnev's rule, average income per capita in the Soviet Union increased by half, with three-quarters of this growth occurring in the 1960s and early 1970s. During the latter half of his premiership, average income per capita grew by one-quarter. In the first half of the Brezhnev period, income per capita increased by 3.5% per annum, a slightly lower rate than previous years, partly due to Brezhnev's reversal of most of Khrushchev's policies. Consumption per capita rose by an estimated 70% under Brezhnev, with three-quarters of this growth taking place before 1973 and only one-quarter in the second half of his rule. Much of the early increase in consumer production can be attributed to the Kosygin reform.

Despite the USSR's economic growth stalling in the 1970s, the overall standard of living and housing quality for Soviet citizens improved significantly. Rather than focusing solely on the economy, the Soviet leadership under Brezhnev sought to improve living standards by expanding social benefits, which led to a minor increase in public support. However, living standards in the RSFSR lagged behind those in the Georgian SSR and the Estonian SSR, leading many Russians to believe that Soviet government policies were disadvantaging the Russian population. The state frequently reassigned workers from one job to another, a pervasive feature of Soviet industry. Government industries, including factories, mines, and offices, were staffed by undisciplined personnel who often made little effort to perform their duties, leading to what Robert Service termed a "work-shy workforce." The Soviet Government lacked effective countermeasures, as it was exceedingly difficult to replace ineffective workers due to the country's lack of unemployment.

While some areas saw improvement during the Brezhnev era, the majority of civilian services deteriorated, and living conditions for Soviet citizens declined rapidly. Diseases were on the rise due to a decaying healthcare system. Living space remained rather small by First World standards, with the average Soviet person occupying only 144 ft^{2 (13.4 m2)}. Thousands of Moscow residents became homeless, living in shacks, doorways, and parked trams, while food rationing returned to cities like Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) in the late 1970s.

The state did provide recreation facilities and annual holidays for diligent citizens, with Soviet trade unions rewarding hard-working members and their families with beach vacations in Crimea and Georgia.

Social rigidification became a common feature of Soviet society. In contrast to the Stalin era of the 1930s and 1940s, where a common laborer could aspire to a white-collar job through study and obedience to Soviet authorities, this was no longer the case in Brezhnev's Soviet Union. Individuals holding desirable positions clung to them for as long as possible; mere incompetence was not considered sufficient grounds for dismissal. This contributed to the static nature of Soviet society that Brezhnev bequeathed to his successors.

4.2.1. Intervention in Czechoslovakia and the Brezhnev Doctrine

The first major crisis for Brezhnev's regime emerged in 1968 with the attempt by the Communist leadership in Czechoslovakia, under Alexander Dubček, to liberalize the Communist system, an event known as the Prague Spring. In July, Brezhnev publicly denounced the Czechoslovak leadership as "revisionist" and "anti-Soviet." Despite his hardline public statements, archival evidence suggests that Brezhnev was not the strongest proponent of military force in Czechoslovakia when the issue was debated within the Politburo. He initially sought a temporary compromise with the reform-friendly Czechoslovak government. However, facing mounting pressure within the Soviet leadership to "re-install a revolutionary government" in Prague, Brezhnev concluded that abstaining from or voting against intervention would risk growing turmoil domestically and within the Eastern Bloc.

Consequently, Brezhnev ordered the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August, leading to Dubček's removal. Following the intervention, Brezhnev met with Czechoslovak reformer Bohumil Šimon, a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and reportedly stated, "If I had not voted for Soviet armed assistance to Czechoslovakia you would not be sitting here today, but quite possibly I wouldn't either." Contrary to Moscow's intention of stabilizing the Eastern Bloc, the invasion catalyzed further dissent throughout the region.

In the aftermath of the Prague Spring's suppression, Brezhnev publicly declared that the Soviet Union reserved the right to interfere in the internal affairs of its satellite states to "safeguard socialism." This assertion became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine, though it essentially reaffirmed existing Soviet policy, as demonstrated by Khrushchev's intervention in Hungary in 1956. Brezhnev reiterated the doctrine in a speech at the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party on November 13, 1968:
:When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries.
The term "socialism" in this context implied control by communist parties loyal to the Kremlin. This new policy heightened tensions not only within the Eastern Bloc but also with Asian communist states. By 1969, relations with other communist countries had deteriorated to such an extent that Brezhnev was unable to gather even five of the fourteen ruling communist parties for an international conference in Moscow. Following the failed conference, the Soviets concluded that "there was no leading center of the international communist movement." Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eventually repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine in the late 1980s, accepting the peaceful overthrow of Soviet rule in all its satellite countries in Eastern Europe.

Later, in 1980-1981, a political crisis erupted in Poland with the emergence of the Solidarity movement. By the end of October, Solidarity boasted 3 million members, and by December, 9 million. A public opinion poll organized by the Polish government indicated that 89% of respondents supported Solidarity. With the Polish leadership divided, the majority opposed imposing martial law, as suggested by Wojciech Jaruzelski. The Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc states were uncertain 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 intervention to control the escalating problems in Poland. A CIA report even suggested that the Soviet military was mobilizing for an invasion.

However, in a meeting of Eastern Bloc representatives at the Kremlin in 1980-1981, Brezhnev ultimately concluded on December 10, 1981, that it would be best to let Poland handle its domestic matters, reassuring Polish delegates that the USSR would only intervene if explicitly requested. This decision effectively marked the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine. Despite the absence of a Soviet military intervention, Wojciech Jaruzelski eventually acceded to Moscow's demands by imposing a "state of war," the Polish equivalent of martial law, on December 13, 1981.

4.2.2. The Vietnam War

Under Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union initially supported North Vietnam out of "fraternal solidarity." However, as the Vietnam War escalated, Khrushchev urged the North Vietnamese leadership to abandon the goal of liberating South Vietnam. He rejected an offer of assistance from the North Vietnamese government, instead advising them to engage in negotiations within the United Nations Security Council. After Khrushchev's ouster, Brezhnev resumed providing aid to the communist resistance in Vietnam. In February 1965, Premier Kosygin visited Hanoi accompanied by a dozen Soviet air force generals and economic experts. Throughout the war, Brezhnev's regime would ultimately ship 450.00 M USD worth of arms annually to North Vietnam.

Lyndon B. Johnson privately proposed to Brezhnev that the U.S. would guarantee an end to South Vietnamese hostility if Brezhnev would ensure a similar cessation from North Vietnam. Brezhnev initially showed interest but rejected the offer after Andrei Gromyko informed him that the North Vietnamese were not interested in a diplomatic resolution to the war. The Johnson administration responded by escalating the American presence in Vietnam but later invited the USSR to negotiate an arms control treaty. The USSR did not initially respond, partly due to a power struggle between Brezhnev and Kosygin over who had the right to represent Soviet interests abroad, and later due to the escalation of the "dirty war" in Vietnam.

In early 1967, Johnson offered a deal to Ho Chi Minh, proposing to end U.S. bombing raids in North Vietnam if Ho would cease infiltration into South Vietnam. U.S. bombing briefly halted, and Kosygin publicly supported this offer. However, the North Vietnamese government failed to respond, leading the U.S. to resume its raids. Following this, Brezhnev concluded that diplomatic solutions to the Vietnam War were futile. Later in 1968, Johnson invited Kosygin to the United States for the Glassboro Summit to discuss ongoing problems in Vietnam and the arms race. The summit was marked by a friendly atmosphere, but no concrete breakthroughs were achieved by either side.

In the aftermath of the Sino-Soviet border conflict, China continued to aid the North Vietnamese regime. However, with the death of Ho Chi Minh in 1969, China's strongest link to North Vietnam was severed. Meanwhile, Richard Nixon had been elected U.S. President. Despite his prior anti-communist rhetoric, Nixon stated in 1971 that the U.S. "must have relations with Communist China." His plan involved a slow withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam while still preserving the South Vietnamese government, which he believed was only possible by improving relations with both Communist China and the USSR. He later visited Moscow to negotiate treaties on arms control and the Vietnam War, though no agreement was reached on Vietnam. Ultimately, years of Soviet military aid to North Vietnam contributed to collapsing morale among U.S. forces, compelling their complete withdrawal from South Vietnam by 1973, paving the way for the country's unification under communist rule two years later.

4.2.3. Sino-Soviet Relations

Soviet foreign relations with the People's Republic of China rapidly deteriorated following Nikita Khrushchev's attempts to achieve 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 engulfed in the crisis of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, which decimated the Chinese Communist Party and other ruling bodies. Brezhnev, a pragmatic politician who promoted "stabilization," reportedly struggled to comprehend Mao's "self-destructive" drive to complete the socialist revolution.

However, Brezhnev soon faced his own challenges in Czechoslovakia, whose sharp deviation from the Soviet model prompted him and the rest of the Warsaw Pact to invade their Eastern Bloc ally. In the aftermath of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, which involved the overthrow of the reformist government, the Soviet leadership proclaimed the Brezhnev Doctrine. This doctrine asserted that any threat to "socialist rule" in any state of the Soviet Bloc in Central and Eastern Europe was a threat to all of them, justifying intervention by fellow socialist states to forcibly remove the threat. The references to "socialism" specifically meant control by communist parties loyal to the Kremlin. This new policy exacerbated tensions not only within the Eastern Bloc but also with Asian communist states. By 1969, relations with other communist countries had deteriorated to a point where Brezhnev could not even gather five of the fourteen ruling communist parties to attend an international conference in Moscow. Following the failed conference, the Soviets concluded that "there was no leading center of the international communist movement." Mikhail Gorbachev later 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 deeply troubled Premier Alexei Kosygin, who for a while refused to accept its irrevocability. He briefly visited Beijing in 1969 amidst rising tensions between the USSR and China. By the early 1980s, both Chinese and Soviet officials began issuing statements calling for a normalization of relations between the two states. China's conditions for normalization included a reduction of Soviet military presence along the Sino-Soviet border, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan and the Mongolian People's Republic, and an end to Soviet support for the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. Brezhnev responded in his March 1982 speech in Tashkent, calling for the normalization of relations. However, full Sino-Soviet normalization would take years, eventually being achieved under the last Soviet ruler, Mikhail Gorbachev.

4.2.4. Détente with the United States

During his eighteen years as leader of the USSR, Brezhnev's signature foreign policy innovation was the promotion of détente. While sharing some similarities with approaches pursued during the Khrushchev Thaw, Brezhnev's policy differed significantly in two ways. Firstly, it was more comprehensive and wide-ranging in its aims, including agreements on arms control, crisis prevention, East-West trade, European security, and human rights. Secondly, the policy emphasized 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%, with annual increases continuing thereafter. By 1982, the year of Brezhnev's death, 12% of the Soviet GNP was allocated to the military. Under Brezhnev, the Soviet Union's military budget increased eightfold, leading to the largest number of ICBMs, nuclear warheads, aircraft, tanks, and conventional forces globally. This military buildup led numerous observers, including Western ones, to argue that by the mid-1970s, the USSR had surpassed the United States to become 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 this agreement set limits on each side's development of nuclear missiles. The second part, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, prohibited both countries from designing systems to intercept incoming missiles, ensuring that neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union would be emboldened to strike the other without fear of nuclear retaliation.

By the mid-1970s, Henry Kissinger's policy of détente towards the Soviet Union began to falter. Détente had rested on the assumption that some "linkage" 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 halt the aggressive spread of communism in the Third World. This did not happen, as evidenced by Brezhnev's continued military support for the communist guerrillas fighting against the U.S. during the Vietnam War.

After Gerald Ford lost the presidential election to Jimmy Carter, American foreign policy became more overtly aggressive in its rhetoric towards the Soviet Union and the communist world. Attempts were also made to cease funding for repressive anti-communist governments and organizations supported by the United States. While initially advocating for a decrease in all defense initiatives, the later years of Carter's presidency saw an increase in U.S. military spending. When Brezhnev authorized the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Carter, following the advice of his National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, denounced the intervention as the "most serious danger to peace since 1945." The U.S. responded by halting all grain exports to the Soviet Union and boycotting the 1980 Summer Olympics held in Moscow. The Soviet Union retaliated 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 relative to the United States. As a result of the limits agreed upon by both superpowers in the first SALT Treaty, the Soviet Union achieved nuclear weapons parity with the United States for the first time in the Cold War. Additionally, through negotiations during the Helsinki Accords, Brezhnev successfully secured the legitimization of Soviet hegemony over Central and Eastern Europe.

4.2.5. Intervention in Afghanistan

After the communist Saur Revolution in Afghanistan in 1978, the authoritarian actions imposed by the new Communist regime led to the Afghan Civil War, with the mujahideen leading a popular backlash. The Soviet Union grew concerned about losing influence in Soviet Central Asia. After a KGB report claimed that Afghanistan could be taken in a matter of weeks, Brezhnev and several top party officials agreed to a full intervention.

Contemporary researchers tend to believe that Brezhnev was misinformed about the situation in Afghanistan. His health had significantly decayed, and proponents of direct military intervention gained influence within the Politburo by allegedly using falsified evidence and suppressing dissenting opinions. They advocated for a relatively moderate scenario, maintaining a cadre of 1,500 to 2,500 Soviet military advisers and technicians already present in large numbers since the 1950s, but disagreed on sending hundreds of thousands of regular army units. Some sources suggest that Brezhnev's signature on the decree was obtained without him being fully informed, implying he would never have approved such a decision otherwise. Soviet ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Dobrynin, believed that the true mastermind behind the invasion, who misinformed Brezhnev, was Mikhail Suslov. Brezhnev's personal physician, Mikhail Kosarev, later recalled that Brezhnev, when fully lucid, had in fact resisted full-scale intervention. Deputy Chairman of the State Duma, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, stated officially that despite some military support for the solution, hardline Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov was the only Politburo member who insisted on sending regular army units. Parts of the Soviet military establishment were opposed to any active Soviet military presence in Afghanistan, believing the Soviet Union should avoid involvement in Afghan politics.

The decision to intervene in Afghanistan in December 1979 proved to be a final and ultimately fatal legacy for Brezhnev's successors. This intervention effectively ended détente, leading to economic sanctions from the United States (such as the grain embargo) and a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Coupled with the fall in oil prices in 1986 due to increased Saudi Arabian production, the massive military spending in Afghanistan rapidly exacerbated the Soviet Union's existing economic problems. This substantial economic burden in the arms race with the U.S., which began under Carter and accelerated under Ronald Reagan, contributed to the USSR's severe economic deterioration, paving the way for Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika reforms and the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the invasion drew widespread international condemnation from Western, Chinese, and Islamic nations.

4.2.6. Support for Communist Movements

Brezhnev's policy of supporting communist movements and allied regimes globally significantly expanded Soviet influence in various regions. This included providing substantial military and economic aid to North Vietnam throughout the Vietnam War. Following the Vietnamese unification, the Soviet Union supported Vietnam in its conflict with Democratic Kampuchea, which was backed by China and the U.S.

In Africa, the Soviet Union provided military and economic assistance to Angola during its civil war (1975-1979), supplying arms and advisers to the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and deploying Cuban forces as proxies. Similarly, during the Ogaden War (1977-1978) between Ethiopia and Somalia, the Soviet Union switched its support from Somalia to Ethiopia, providing massive military aid and technical assistance that enabled Ethiopia to defeat Somalia. This period saw the Soviet military's active global projection of power, with the navy, under Admiral Sergey Gorshkov, gaining a worldwide presence and acquiring warm-water ports in locations like Aden in South Yemen, Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, and Tartus in Syria. These interventions and proxy wars in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, alongside Soviet military support for India in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 and preparations for troop deployment during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, underscored the Soviet Union's expanding reach and competition with the United States and China.