Question by asdfghjkl: What are two ways that the Soviet authorities dealt with dissidents under the leadership of Brezhnev?
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Answer by hey yo
Both Soviet power internationally and Brezhnev’s power domestically, however, rested on a Soviet economy which was stagnant, and which probably went into decline from about 1970. There were two fundamental causes for this. Firstly, the Soviet economy, despite Stalin’s industrialisation, was still heavily dependent on agriculture. Stalin’s collectivisation of agriculture had effectively destroyed the independent peasantry of the country, and agricultural productivity remained low despite massive state investment. Soviet agriculture increasingly could not feed the urban population, let alone provide for the rising standard of living which the regime promised as the fruits of “mature socialism”, and on which industrial productivity depended.
The second problem was that the Soviet industrial economy built by Stalin in the 1930s, and rebuilt after World War II, was incapable of modernisation or technical innovation, since it was governed by the state plan rather than responding to market signals, and had no incentives for innovation or efficiency. The end of the purges, in the absence of any other method of renewing personnel, meant that the Party, state and industrial bureaucracies aged and stagnated and were not replaced. Although the regime promised rising standards of living, it was unable to produce the consumer goods which would provide workers with an incentive to improve productivity and earn higher wages. Moreover, wages were determined by state and generally did not depend on productivity or quality.
These factors combined and reinforced each other through the second half of the 1970s. The enormous expenditure on the armed forces and on prestige projects such as the space programme, aggravated by the need to import food grains at high market prices, reduced the scope for investment in industrial modernisation or improving standards of living. Public housing and the state health and education systems deteriorated, further reducing morale and productivity among the urban population. The response was a huge “informal economy” to provide a market for limited consumer goods and services. This fostered official corruption on a huge scale, something which had been unknown in earlier Soviet periods. Brezhnev set the tone in this with his conspicuous tastes in foreign cars and clothes. This was also one of the reasons why he was disliked by the people of the Soviet Union under his rule.
The last years of Brezhnev’s rule were marked by a growing personality cult, reaching a peak at his 70th birthday in December 1976. He was well known for his love affair with medals. The final count stands at 114. In 1976, for his birthday he was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union (the highest order of the Soviet Union, notably given to heroes who sacrificed their lives during World War II, which came with the order of Lenin and the Gold Star). Brezhnev received the award three more times, once again in celebration of his birthdays. Unlike the cult of Stalin, however, the Brezhnev cult was widely seen as hollow and cynical, and in the absence of the purge could command neither respect nor fear, resulting in a lack of reception and apathy. How much of this Brezhnev was aware of is unclear, since he increasingly preoccupied himself with international summitry (such as the SALT II treaty, signed with Jimmy Carter in June 1979), and ignored domestic matters. These were left to his subordinates, some of whom, like his agriculture chief Mikhail Gorbachev, became increasingly convinced that fundamental reform was needed. There was, however, no plotting in the leadership against Brezhnev, and he was allowed to grow increasingly feeble and isolated in power as his health declined. His declining health was rarely — if ever — mentioned in the Soviet newspapers, but it was practically evident with the deteriorating political and economic situation.
Brezhnev’s final and fatal legacy to his successors was the December 1979 decision to intervene in Afghanistan, where an unpopular Communist regime was struggling to hold power. This decision was not taken by the Politburo, but by Brezhnev’s inner circle at an informal meeting. It led to the sudden end of the detente era, with the imposition of a grain embargo by the U.S., gravely exacerbating the Soviet Union’s economic problems. In March 1982 Brezhnev suffered a stroke, and thereafter increasingly struggled to retain control. He died of a heart attack on November 10, 1982 and was buried near the Kremlin wall.
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