Brezhnev and Beyond

William G. Hyland

From Foreign Affairs, Fall 1979

Summary:  The Brezhnev era is clearly ending. This October he will mark his fifteenth year as the head of the Party, a span at least four years longer than Nikita Khrushchev's official term. In December, he will be 73 and next spring he will, if he holds on, pass Stalin as the oldest Soviet leader ever to hold the top Party position. He has already established the precedent of being both chief of state and Party leader; he has matched Stalin in being promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union. By almost any standard, the past 15 years have to be regarded as his "era." Now the advancing age and physical infirmities of the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party suggest that a presuccession period is under way and that the process of summing up the Brezhnev period can begin.

William G. Hyland is a Senior Fellow at the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University. He was a member of the National Security Council Staff from 1969 to 1977, serving as Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs, 1975-77.

III

What can be said of the balance sheet? It could be argued that the period has been a disastrous one. The Soviet Union's most talented artists have been forced out. A generation of political leaders has been lost. Little has been done to prepare for the coming economic stagnation; the Soviet Union falls further behind the industrialized countries; the temporary political stability will be paid for in the currency of upheavals and struggles in the next period. Russia is encircled by enemies.

A better case can be made for the proposition that the Brezhnev era has been a highly successful one. The political situation has been stabilized on a middle ground between the various excesses of previous periods. The rise in the general standard of living has been impressive, especially by "socialist" standards. Internal political dissent has been relentlessly suppressed. And, above all, Russia has at last emerged as a great power of global proportions, at least the military equal of its principal adversary in the West.

A balance sheet of Soviet foreign policy is also a mixed one, but Brezhnev can point to some solid achievements. Khrushchev ran a gigantic strategic bluff and failed in Cuba in 1962. Brezhnev then set about accumulating real military power, carefully but constantly. And in the process he reshaped Soviet foreign policy. Khrushchev's monument was the break with Mao. He forced it at every turn, challenging Chinese interests, disparaging Mao's philosophy and policy, refusing to run risks for China (in the Taiwan Straits), quarreling over politics and ideology, and finally pulling out the Soviet economic technicians and stopping military assistance. With Khrushchev gone, it was not surprising that Chou En-lai embarked for Moscow in November 1964 on a reconnaissance which, however, only confirmed that Khrushchev had articulated the fears of his comrades. A reconciliation was not to come from the new Soviet leaders. They eschewed Khrushchev's rantings, but gave the basic policy the real muscle of a military buildup along the frontier. Eventually, Soviet forces in Asia came to outnumber the Red Army garrisons in Eastern Europe.

The war in Vietnam might have been a cause worth bridging the differences for; but in practice it greatly aggravated the conflict between Moscow and Peking. Against this background the Czech crisis and the new doctrine that appeared in 1968 under Brezhnev's name suggested a Soviet right to intervene in China. A war scare in the spring and summer of 1969 dissolved into negotiations without Chinese preconditions-an initial Soviet coup; but in time the Chinese outmaneuvered the Russians and the talks stagnated. Brezhnev and his comrades then found themselves waiting for Mao to pass on. For a time in early 1977 they tested his successors, but without result. In the fall of 1978, the Soviets began to cement their ties to Vietnam and thus to apply new pressure on China. By early 1979 the relationship was slightly ambivalent; some signs of tactical flexibility appeared in Peking after the clash with Vietnam and the two sides are now groping for a new negotiation. But the basic fact is China's determination to rise to the ranks of a great power by the end of the century-the last thing a Soviet leadership can abide.

If the Soviet Union has failed to solve its eastern problem, it has made progress in the West. For years, Stalin, Molotov and Khrushchev insisted that the status quo in Europe had to be accepted and recorded in at least a symbolic act. This was the "fact" created by the Second World War. Stalin thought it had all been arranged; Khrushchev tried to force it through a crisis in Berlin. Brezhnev and company sought to achieve it by "détente," first in the treaty with West German Chancellor Willy Brandt in August 1970, and then in the "Final Act" at Helsinki in 1975.

The irony was that even this ratification in the Finnish capital came at a time when the strict division of Europe was of less practical significance than the pan-European links that were appearing here and there. Rather than discouraging and weakening Soviet adversaries by nailing down the status quo, Helsinki began a process of change in Europe in which the Soviet Union held some high cards, but was by no means in command.

Soviet predominance in Eastern Europe continues and severe challenges do not appear likely. Yet there is a malaise in the relationship. The more liberal regimes-Poland and Hungary-continue to move gradually into positions that elude strict Soviet discipline. And all of the East European governments are forced by economic necessity to look increasingly westward. And, finally, in the more orthodox regimes-East Germany and Czechoslovakia-internal divisions seem to be always just below the surface. Overall, a modus vivendi seems to have been achieved since 1968, but it is an uneasy one.

The elusive nature of Soviet policy, however, is best demonstrated by the fluctuations in their relations with the United States. In 1964, when Khrushchev departed, there was still something of a "détente"; the atmospheric test ban of 1963 was supposed to be an opening move in a broader development of "peaceful coexistence." Brezhnev might have pursued it, but Vietnam intervened. The U.S.S.R. could scarcely proceed with serious negotiations while U.S. Marines were landing in South Vietnam. But by carefully containing its support for Hanoi and keeping lines open to Washington (e.g., at the Glassboro summit in 1967), Moscow managed to support Vietnam without paying any serious price in relations with the United States. Indeed, it was able to use the period to invest in a major arms buildup without provoking an American reaction. Nevertheless, in 1968 both Washington and Moscow were able to sign the Nonproliferation Treaty and plan for a summit, only to see it collapse as Soviet tanks rolled into Prague. But Vietnam also enabled Brezhnev to avoid paying a price for his Czech policy or his new "doctrine." Within a year, the old themes-a summit, arms control, European security-were revived. Indeed, in 1969 it was Nixon, not Brezhnev, who was criticized for stalling.

The détente that finally emerged, however, was rooted first in a rapprochement between Bonn and Moscow. The appearance in the fall of 1969 of the first Social Democratic government in Germany in 40 years was a watershed. At a time when tensions with China were growing, the offer by Willy Brandt to initiate a new Eastern policy was a major opportunity no Soviet regime could pass up. Initially the détente was limited to Europe, and tensions with the United States persisted. There were sharp clashes over the Middle East and Cuba, and not until after the Polish riots in December 1970 did the Soviets begin to move toward a more broadly based détente. The Brezhnev "peace program" was unveiled at the XXIV Party Congress in March 1971, which committed Brezhnev personally to a new line. The SALT deadlock was broken in May 1971, and after the secret Kissinger trip to China, the Berlin negotiations were quickly settled in late August, and a summit with Nixon was agreed upon and announced.