Removal of Khrushchev

After returning from Scandinavia and Czechoslovakia, sensing nothing afoot, Khrushchev went on holiday in Pitsunda, near the Black Sea in October 1964. Upon his return, his Presidium officers congratulated him for his work in office. Anastas Mikoyan visited Khrushchev, hinting that he should not be too complacent about his present situation. Vladimir Semichastny, head of the KGB, was a crucial part of the conspiracy, as it was his duty to inform Khrushchev if anyone was plotting against his leadership. Nikolay Ignatov, who had been sacked by Khrushchev, discreetly requested the opinion of several Central Committee members. After some false starts, fellow conspirator Mikhail Suslov phoned Khrushchev on 12 October and requested that he return to Moscow to discuss the state of Soviet agriculture. Eventually Khrushchev understood what was happening, and said to Mikoyan, "If it's me who is the question, I will not make a fight of it". While a minority headed by Mikoyan wanted to remove Khrushchev from the office of First Secretary but retain him as the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, the majority headed by Brezhnev wanted to remove him from active politics.

Brezhnev and Nikolai Podgorny appealed to the Central Committee, blaming Khrushchev for economic failures, and accusing him of voluntarism and immodest behavior. Influenced by the Brezhnev allies, Politburo members voted to remove Khrushchev from office. In addition, some members of the Central Committee wanted him to undergo punishment of some kind. But Brezhnev, who had already been assured the office of the General Secretary, saw little reason to punish his old mentor further. Brezhnev was appointed First Secretary, but at the time was believed to be a transition leader of sorts, who would only "keep the shop" until another leader came in. Alexei Kosygin was appointed head of government, and Mikoyan became head of state. Brezhnev and his companions supported the general party line taken after Joseph Stalin's death, but felt the Khrushchev reforms had removed much of the Soviet Union's stability. One of the main reasons for Khrushchev's ousting was that he continuously overruled other party members. ''Pravda'', a newspaper in the Soviet Union, wrote of new enduring themes such as collective leadership, scientific planning, consultation with experts, organisational regularity and the ending of schemes. When Khrushchev left the public spot light, there was no popular commotion because most Soviet citizens, including the intelligentsia, anticipated a period of stabilisation, steady development of Soviet society and continuing economic growth in the years to come.

Leader (1964–82)

Consolidation of power

Khrushchev was removed mainly because of his disregard of many high-ranking organisations within the CPSU and the Soviet government. Throughout the Brezhnev era, the Soviet Union was controlled by a collective leadership (officially coined "Collectivity of leadership"), at least through the late 1960s and 1970s. The consensus within the party was that the collective leadership prevailed over the supreme leadership of one individual. T.H. Rigby argued that by the end of the 1960s, a stable oligarchic system had emerged in the Soviet Union, with most power vested around Brezhnev, Kosygin and Podgorny. While the assessment was true at the time, it coincided with Brezhnev's strengthening of power by means of an apparent clash with Central Committee Secretariat Mikhail Suslov. American Henry A. Kissinger, in the 1960s, mistakenly believed Kosygin to be the dominant leader of Soviet foreign policy in the Politburo. During this period, Brezhnev was gathering enough support to strengthen his position within Soviet politics. In the meantime, Kosygin was in charge of economic administration in his role as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. However Kosygin's position was weakened when he proposed an economic reform in 1965, which was widely referred to as the "Kosygin reform" within the Communist Party. The reform led to a backlash, and party Conservatives continued to oppose Kosygin after witnessing the results of reforms leading up to the Prague Spring. His opponents then flocked to Brezhnev, and they happily helped him in his task of strengthening his position within the Soviet system.

Brezhnev was adept at the politics within the Soviet power structure. He was a team player and never acted rashly or hastily; unlike Khrushchev, he did not make decisions without substantial consultation with his colleagues, and was always willing to hear their opinions. During the early 1970s, Brezhnev consolidated his domestic position. In 1977, he forced the retirement of Podgorny and became once again Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, making this position equivalent to that of an executive president. While Kosygin remained Premier until shortly before his death in 1980 (replaced by Nikolai Tikhonov as Premier), Brezhnev was the dominant driving force of the Soviet Union from the mid-1970s to his death in 1982.

Domestic policies

Repression

The trial of the writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky in 1966—the first such trials since Stalin's day—marked the reversion to a repressive cultural policy. Under Yuri Andropov the state security service (the KGB) regained much of the power it had enjoyed under Stalin, although there was no return to the purges of the 1930s and 1940s, and Stalin's legacy remained largely discredited among the Soviet intelligentsia. On 22 January 1969, a Soviet Army deserter, Viktor Ilyin, tried to assassinate Brezhnev and was diagnosed with mental illness and placed in solitary confinement in a psychiatric hospital. By the mid-1970s, there were an estimated 10,000 political and religious prisoners across the Soviet Union, living in grievous conditions and suffering from malnutrition; many of these prisoners were considered by the Soviet state to be mentally unfit and were hospitalised in mental asylums across the Soviet Union. The KGB infiltrated most if not all anti-government organisations under Brezhnev's rule, which ensured that there was little to no opposition against him or his power base. Brezhnev did however refrain from the all-out violence seen under the rule of Stalin.

Economics

Economic growth until 1973

The Ninth Five-Year Plan delivered a change: for the first time industrial consumer products out-produced industrial capital goods. Consumer goods such as watches, furniture and radios were produced in abundance. However, the Plan still left the bulk of state's investment in industrial capital-goods production. This outcome was not seen as a positive sign for the future of the Soviet state by the majority of top party functionaries within the government; by 1975 consumer goods expanded 9% slower than industrial capital-goods. The policy continued despite Brezhnev's committement to make a rapid shift of investment which would satisfy Soviet consumers and lead to an even higher standard of living. This did not happen.

From 1928–1973, the Soviet Union was growing economically at a pace that would eventually catch up with the United States and Western Europe. This was true despite the advantage the United States had—the USSR was hampered by Joseph Stalin's bold policy of collectivisation and the effects of the Second World War which had left most of Western USSR in ruins. In 1973, the process of catching up with the rest of the West came to an abrupt end, with this year being seen by some scholars as the start of the Era of Stagnation. The beginning of the stagnation coincided with a financial crisis in Western Europe and the US. By the early 1970s, the Soviet Union had the world's second largest industrial capacity and produced more steel, oil, pig-iron, cement and tractors than any other country. Before 1973, the Soviet economy was expanding at a rate faster, by a small margin, than that of the United States. The USSR also kept a steady pace with the economies of Western Europe. Between 1964–1973, the Soviet economy stood at roughly half the output per head of Western Europe and a little more than one third that of the US.

Agricultural policy

Agricultural output in 1980 was much higher than the average production rate between 1966–1970; 21% higher than the average. Cereal crop output increased by 18%. However, these improved results are not encouraging. In the Soviet Union the criterion for assessing agricultural output was the grain harvest. The import of cereal, which begun under Khrushchev, had in fact become a normal phenomenon by Soviet standards. When Brezhnev had difficulties sealing commercial trade agreements with the United States, he went elsewhere, such as to Argentina. Trade was necessary because the Soviet Union's domestic production of fodder crops was severely deficient. Another sector which was meeting the wall was the sugar beet harvest which had declined by 2% in the 1970s. Brezhnev's way of resolving these issues was to increase state investment. Politburo member Gennady Voronov advocated for the division of each farm's work-force into what he called "links". These "links" would be entrusted with specific functions, such as to run a farm's dairy unit. His argument was that the larger the work force, the less responsible they felt. This program had been proposed to Joseph Stalin by Andrey Andreyev in the 1940s, and been opposed by Khrushchev before and after Stalin's death. Voronov was also unsuccessful; Brezhnev turned him down, and in 1973 he was removed from the Politburo.

Experimentation with "links" was not disallowed on a local basis, with Mikhail Gorbachev, the then First Secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee, experimenting with links in his region. In the meantime, the Soviet government's involvement in agriculture was otherwise "unimaginative" and "incompetent". Facing mounting problems with agriculture, the Politburo issued a resolution entitled; "On the Further Development of Specialisation and Concentration of Agricultural Production on the Basis of Inter-Farm Co-operation and Agro-Industrial Integration". The resolution ordered kolkhozes close to each other to collaborate in their efforts to increase production. In the meantime, the state's subsidies to the food-and-agriculture sector did not prevent bankrupt farms from operating: rises in the price of produce were offset by rises in the cost of oil and other resources. By 1977, oil cost 84% more than it did in the late 1960s. The cost of other resources had also climbed by the late 1970s.

Brezhnev's answer to these problems was to issue two decrees, one in 1977 and one in 1981, which called for the expansion of all plots owned by the Soviet Union to half a hectare. These measures removed important obstacles for the expansion of agricultural output, but did not solve the problem. Under Brezhnev, private plots yielded 30% of the national agricultural production when they only cultivated four percent of Soviet agriculture. This was seen by some as proof that de-collectivisation was necessary to prevent Soviet agriculture from collapsing. On the other hand, leading Soviet politicians withheld from such drastic measures due to individual ideological and political interests. The underlying problems were the growing shortage of skilled labourers, a wrecked rural culture, the payment of workers in proportion to the quantity and not the quality of their work performance, too large farm machinery for the small collective farms and the roadless countryside. In the face of this, Brezhnev could only propose schemes such as large reclamation and irrigation projects, or of course, radical reform.

Economic stagnation

With the GNP growth of the Soviet economy drastically decreasing from the level it held in the 1950s and 1960s, the country began to lag behind Western Europe and the United States. The GNP's growth was slowing down to 1 to 2% each year, and with the technology falling farther and farther behind that of the West, the Soviet Union was facing economic stagnation by the early 1980s. During Brezhnev's last years of reign, the CIA monitored the Soviet Union's economic growth, and reported that the Soviet economy peaked in the 1970s, calculating that it had reached 57% of the American GNP. However, the development gap between the two nations widened, with the United States growing an average of one percent over the Soviet Union.

The last significant reform undertaken by the Kosygin government, and some believe the pre-''perestroika'' era, was a joint decision of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers named; "Improving planning and reinforcing the effects of the economic mechanism on raising the effectiveness in production and improving the quality of work", or more commonly known as the 1979 reform. The reform, in contrast to the 1965 reform, wanted to increase the central government's economic involvement by enhancing the duties and responsibilities of the ministries. Due to Kosygin's death in 1980, and due to his successor, Nikolai Tikhonov, conservative approach to economics, very little of the reform was actually carried out.

The Eleventh Five-Year Plan of the Soviet Union delivered a disappointing result: a change in growth from 4 to 5%. During the earlier Tenth Five-Year Plan, they had tried to meet the target of 6.1% of growth but failed. Brezhnev was able to defer the economic collapse by trading with Western Europe and the Arab World. However, the Soviet Union out-produced the United States in heavy industry during the Brezhnev era. One more galling result of Brezhnev's rule was that some of the Eastern Bloc economies were more advanced than the Soviet Union.

Soviet society

Early changes

The period of 'stagnation'

While some areas improved during the Brezhnev era, the majority of civilian services deteriorated, with the physical environment for the common Soviet citizen falling apart rapidly. Diseases were on the rise because of the decaying healthcare system. The living space remained rather small by First World standards, with the common Soviet person living on 13.4 square metres. At the same time thousands of Moscow inhabitants were homeless, most of them living in shacks, doorways and parked trams. Nutrition ceased to improve in the late 1970s, while rationing of staple food products returned to Sverdlovsk for instance. The state provided daily recreation and annual holidays for hard-working citizens. Soviet trade unions rewarded hard-working members and their families with beach vacations in Crimea and Georgia.

Social "rigidification" became a common feature in Soviet society. During the Stalin era in the 1930s and 1940s, a common labourer could expect promotion to a white-collar job if they studied and obeyed Soviet authorities. In Brezhnev's Soviet Union this was not the case. Holders of attractive offices clung to them as long as possible; mere incompetence was not seen as a good reason to dismiss anyone. In this way, too, the Soviet society Brezhnev passed on had become "static".

Foreign and defence policies

Soviet–US relations

In the 1970s, the Soviet Union reached the peak of its political and strategic power in relation to the United States. The first SALT Treaty effectively established parity in nuclear weapons between the two superpowers, the Helsinki Treaty legitimised Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe, and the United States defeat in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal weakened the prestige of the United States. The Soviet Union extended its diplomatic and political influence in the Middle East and Africa.

The Vietnam War

In the aftermath of the Sino–Soviet border conflict, the Chinese continued to aid the North Vietnamese regime, but with the death of Minh in 1969, China's strongest link to Vietnam had died. In the meantime, Richard Nixon had been elected President of the United States. While having been known for his anti-communist rhetoric, Nixon said in 1971 that the US "''must'' have relations with Communist China". His plan was for a slow withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, and still retain the capitalist dictatorship of South Vietnam. The only way he thought possible was to improve relations with both Communist China and the USSR. He later made a visit to Moscow to negotiate a treaty on arms control and the Vietnam war, but on Vietnam nothing could be agreed. On his visit to Moscow, Nixon and Brezhnev signed the SALT I, marking the beginning of the "détente" era.

Sino–Soviet relations

Later in 1969, Chinese forces started the Sino–Soviet border conflict. The Sino–Soviet split had chagrined Premier Alexei Kosygin a great deal, and for a while refused to accept its irrevocability; he briefly visited Beijing in 1969 due to the increase of tension between the USSR and China. By the early 1980s, both the Chinese and the Soviets were issuing statements calling for a normalisation of relations between the two states. The conditions given to the Soviets by the Chinese were the reduction of Soviet military presence in the Sino–Soviet border and the withdrawal of Soviets troops in Afghanistan and Mongolia and to support for the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. Brezhnev responded in his March 1982 speech in Tashkent were he called for the normalisation of relations. Full Sino–Soviet normalisations of relations would prove to take years, until the last Soviet ruler, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power.

Intervention in Afghanistan

Eastern Europe

Brezhnev was not the one pushing hardest for the use of military force when discussing the situation in Czechoslovakia with the Politburo. Brezhnev was aware of the dire situation he was in, and if he had abstained or voted against Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia he may have been faced with growing turmoil — domestically and in the Eastern Bloc. Archival evidence suggests that Brezhnev was one of the few who was looking for a temporary compromise with the reform-friendly Czechoslovak government when their relationship was at its brinking point. Significant voices in the Soviet leadership demanded the re-installation of a so-called 'revolutionary government'. After the military intervention in 1968, Brezhnev met with Czechoslovak reformer Bohumil Simon, then a member of the Politburo of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, and said; "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".

In the early 1980s a political crisis emerged in Poland with the emergence of the Solidarity mass movement. By the end of October Solidarity had 3 million members, and by December 9 million. In a public opinion poll done by the Polish government, 89% of the respondents supported Solidarity. With the Polish leadership split on what to do, the majority of did not want to impose martial law, as suggested by Wojciech Jaruzelski. The Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc was unsure 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 measure to control the escalating problems in Poland. A CIA report suggested the Soviet military were mobilising for an invasion.

In 1980 representatives from the Eastern Bloc nations met at the Kremlin to discuss the Polish situation. Brezhnev eventually concluded that it would be better to leave the domestic matters of Poland alone for the time being, re-assuring the Polish delegates that the USSR would intervene only if asked to. With domestic matters escalating out of control in Poland, Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed state of war, the Polish version of martial law, on 12 December 1981.

Personality cult

Brezhnev's personality cult was growing outrageously fast at a time when his health was in decline. His physical condition was deteriorating; he had become addicted to sleeping pills and began drinking an excessive amount of alcohol, smoked heavily and had over the years become overweight. From 1973 until his death Brezhnev's central nervous system underwent chronic deterioration and he had several minor strokes. When receiving the Order of Lenin, Brezhnev walked shakily and fumbled his words. The Chief of Fourth Directorate of the Ministry of Health Yevgeniy Chazov had to keep doctors by Brezhnev's side at all times, with Brezhnev being brought back from limbo on several occasions. At this time, most senior officers of the CPSU wanted to keep him alive, even if such men as Mikhail Suslov, Dmitriy Ustinov and Andrei Gromyko among others were growing increasingly frustrated with Brezhnev's policies. However they did not want to risk a new period of domestic turmoil caused by his death. It was about this time First World commentators started guessing Brezhnev's heirs apparent, the most notable competitors being Suslov and Andrei Kirilenko were both older than he was, while Fyodor Kulakov and Konstantin Chernenko were younger than Brezhnev; Kulakov died of natural causes in 1978.

Last years and death

Brezhnev rarely appeared in public during the spring, summer and the autumn of 1982. The official explanation by the Soviet government was that Brezhnev was not seriously ill, while at the same time doctors were surrounding him. He suffered a severe stroke in May 1982, but refused to relinquish office. Brezhnev died on 10 November 1982 after suffering a heart attack. He was honoured with a state funeral which was followed with a five-day period of nationwide mourning. He was buried in the Kremlin in Red Square. National and international statesmen from around the globe attended his funeral. His wife and family attended, with his daughter Galina Brezhneva outraging spectators by not showing up in a sombre garb. Brezhnev on the other hand was dressed for burial in his Marshal's uniform along with all his medals.

Legacy

Brezhnev has fared well in opinion polls when compared to his successors and predecessors in Russia. However in the West he is most commonly remembered for starting the economic stagnation which triggered the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In an opinion poll by VTsIOM in 2007 the majority of Russians wanted to live during the Brezhnev's era rather than any other period of Soviet-Russian history during the 20th century.

Personality traits and family

Brezhnev was well known for his passion for awards and decorations. He was Hero of Socialist Labour, four times Hero of the Soviet Union, three times Hero of Czech Republic, three times Hero of Republic of Bulgaria, etc. Having spent the Great Patriotic War as a political commissar and having never been a military commander, he, nevertheless, was promoted to the highest military rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. Brezhnev's vanity undermined the authority of Soviet power and contributed to the general corruption of the regime. It was made fun of in numerous anecdotes.

Brezhnev lived at 26 Kutuzovsky Prospekt, Moscow. During vacations, he lived in his Gosdacha in Zavidovo. He was married to Viktoria Petrovna (1912–1995). During her final four years she lived virtually alone, abandoned by everybody. She had suffered for a long time from diabetes and was nearly blind in her last years. He had a daughter, Galina, and a son, Yuri. Galina in her later life became an alcoholic who together with a circus director started a gold-bullion fraud gang in the later years of the Soviet Union.

Offices held

Notes

Bibliography

External links

Leonid Brezhnev Category:1906 births Category:1982 deaths Category:Attempted assassination survivors Category:Cold War leaders Category:First Secretaries of the Communist Party of Moldova Category:Heads of state of the Soviet Union Category:Heads of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Category:Heroes of Socialist Labour Category:Heroes of the Soviet Union Category:Marshals of the Soviet Union Category:People buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis Category:People from Dniprodzerzhynsk Category:People of the Soviet war in Afghanistan Category:People of the Vietnam War Category:Politicians of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic Category:Quadruple Heroes of the Soviet Union Category:Lenin Peace Prize recipients Category:Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Category:Soviet politicians Category:Recipients of the Order of the October Revolution Category:Communist Party of Kazakhstan politicians Leonid Category:Recipients of the Order of the White Lion