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.

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.

When Khrushchev was overthrown in October 1964, Leonid Brezhnev was the leading candidate to survive the hazards of Soviet politics and come to dominate the leadership. Although some observers grouped him with President Nikolai Podgorny and Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin in a new triumvirate, Brezhnev was in the advantageous position of Party leader. Other contenders along the way-Alexander Shelepin and Pyotr Shelest, the Ukrainian Party leader-were eventually removed; and even his supposed old comrade Podgorny was roughly pushed aside in 1977 so that Brezhnev could acquire the unique position of government and Party leader. But much earlier, perhaps by 1970, Brezhnev was clearly in a commanding position. And he seems to have succeeded on a program that might be called conservative or orthodox.

What Brezhnev has achieved has been a restoration of the status quo ante Khrushchev: he has strengthened the conservative elements in the power structure; the Party bureaucracy has been stabilized; and the military and the security organs have gained in authority. He has carefully avoided the experimentation of structural reforms in the economy despite pressure to adopt new approaches. Economic performance has not been impressive but nevertheless has been satisfactory in meeting the regime's priority of military growth.

His foreign policies have lacked the flamboyance of Khrushchev's and this has tended to soften Soviet defeats (e.g., Egypt). The overall theme has been one of persistence: building Soviet power in the Far East to counter China, playing the card of détente with Europe and the United States. Taking advantage of a decade and a half of turmoil and upheavals in the West, Brezhnev has relentlessly invested in Soviet military growth and in recent years has reached out for new strategic advantages in Africa and Southeast Asia. He will pass on a stronger legacy than he inherited: the U.S.S.R. is truly a global superpower, with near-term opportunities and significant geopolitical strengths.

II

Most of the characteristics of the Brezhnev regime emerged during the first few years after the coup against Khrushchev in 1964. In a fundamental sense, any anti-Khrushchev cabal-with or without Brezhnev-was bound to react against the Khrushchevian policies and, in particular, against what seemed to be his excesses. He had kept the Soviet Party and government in a state of turmoil for the seven years after his impressive defeat of the Molotov-Malenkov "anti-Party" group in 1957. Sputnik diplomacy, threats against Berlin, the split with China, the Berlin wall, the Cuban crisis followed in dizzying succession; simultaneously, the First Secretary railed against Stalin, insisted on reducing the size of the army, reorganized the economy, split the Party into industrial and agricultural sections and proclaimed a Party of the "whole people," offered a new Party program, removed Stalin from the mausoleum and insisted that he would build "communism" by 1980.

The period cried out for retrenchment. But there were also major dilemmas. Khrushchev unleashed political forces that could not be easily checked: a greater liberalization in the arts, some leeway for ideas on economic reform, a threat to the traditional priority for heavy industry, and, most fundamentally, a pervasive anti-Stalinism. The new regime could not simply put all of these genies back into the bottle. Moreover, anti-Khrushchevism bound together a small coalition in 1964, but it did not guarantee a consensus on an alternative program. There were diverse interests in the coalition; some could be reconciled; others required confrontation. The balance between conciliation and confrontation ultimately reflected the policy choices of the party leader, for if there was one overarching element it was the desire to reestablish a central authority and discipline. In the Soviet system no institution other than the Party could fill the role.

Thus, it was not surprising that the revival of the Party's primacy became a hallmark of the Brezhnev era. The potentially explosive division of the Party into contending agricultural and industrial factions was quickly ended. Khrushchev's projected rapid turnover of Party leaders at all levels was put aside and then reversed so that the older comrades could take some comfort in their tenure and job security. The Party of the "whole people" was quietly forgotten. Power was drawn gradually back toward the Moscow center. And the trend was symbolized by a revival of the terminology of the old days: Politburo for Presidium, General Secretary for First Secretary. The Party apparatus was making a comeback and Brezhnev was leading it.

Since bureaucracy thrives on defined hierarchies, orderly procedures and a commitment to the status quo, there is little room for ideological innovation. Indeed, innovation is the plague itself. Thus, it was to be expected that little new would be added to the treasure house of Marxism-Leninism. The participants in the XXIII Party Congress (1966) would find the proceedings of the XXV Party Congress (1976) quite familiar; they could speak in the same idiom, from the same vantage point; indeed, they were, to a great extent, the same people.

If there was a symbolism in the early years of the Brezhnev period, it was the fact that in February 1966, on the eve of the XXIII Party Congress, a significant anniversary went almost unnoticed: the tenth anniversary of the XX Congress and Khrushchev's "secret" speech denouncing Stalin. It was given a passing reference here and there but evoked no ringing reconfirmation. In fact, the same XXIII Party Congress in effect settled the issue of Stalin: he was neither the total villain of the Khrushchevian period nor the putative hero of the brief rehabilitation of 1964-65. In what came to be the typical style of the new regime, a middle ground was found that left the issue ambiguous. One might cite Stalin's leadership during the war. But one could still criticize the "cult of personality," as long as the indictment was not broadened to criticize the "period"-which, of course, would raise questions about the legitimacy of the very people who had risen to positions of power during those years. (Brezhnev had been a candidate member of Stalin's last Politburo.)