What was leonid brezhnev’s policy?

Question by jeanniemrls: leonid brezhnev what was his foreign policy, economic policy, military policy, and personal policy?

Answers and Views:

Answer by Spellbound
Foreign policy:
The Brezhnev Doctrine. This applied to all “fraternal countries”, that is, all communist countries would be defended if they “fell to “bourgeois forces”, in other words any country in Communist Eastern Europe would be invaded if it decided to become capitalist.
Detente: The policy of rapprochement with the west to limit nuclear arsenals. This was also tied with trade deals.

Economic Policies: Continuation of the Stalinist Five Year Plans, concentrating on heavy industry. Light industry was better funded throughout the 1970s, with TV sets, radios and cars being made more available. Agricultural policy: Collective farms turned into State Farms – this meant better wages and resources for the farms, but essentially a continuation of Stalin’s agricultural policies.

Military Policies: Global Reach: This was the desire to be able to project Soviet Power to every corner of the Globe, through long range bombers, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, Nuclear submarines and a massive surface fleet. National Liberation to be militarily supported in colonised countries, particularly through local communist parties and supporters of socialism. Nuclear Doctrine: Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), neither the USSR nor the USA would start a war, as it meant that both would be equally destroyed. This changed in the late 1970s, as did US nuclear doctrine, to preemptive strikes – ie. attack the enemy without warning to knock out the enemies ability to strike back. Thankfully this doctrine was never put into practice, but in the early 1980s the World was the closest it ever came to nuclear war – even closer than during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Personal Policy: Stability of Cadres. This policy was designed to counter the baffling changes that happened under Khrushchev. It meant that party and state officials more or less had jobs for life, regardless of ability or honesty. Brezhnev lived the good life. He was driven in imported limousines (as well as in giant Chaikas and Zils), holidayed in luxury dachas, enjoyed hunting and fishing trips in the USSR and in Eastern Bloc countries. His family were totally corrupt, his daughter often “borrowed” expensive jewellery from Moscow shops; one of her husbands was arrested on corruption charges.

See:
The Soviet Union 1917 – 1991 by Martin McCauley

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