The Brezhnev Doctrine and Communist Ideology

Abstract

Announcement of the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine by Soviet spokesmen in 1968 has been widely regarded in the West as a development marking a new epoch in the evolution of the world communist system. The Doctrine has been commonly viewed as a Soviet response to the exigencies of Great Power politics in circumstances of continuing loss of revolutionary dynamism or as a reaction to the threat to Soviet hegemony in its inner bloc posed by uncontained polycentrism, or both. Much attention has been devoted to the concept of “limited sovereignty,” with this concept being treated as the heart of the Doctrine and as evidence of a major new departure in the Soviet approach to world politics. This assessment, interestingly enough, is generally favored both by Western analysts and by anti-Soviet spokesmen within the world communist system.

Changing the Rules: A Speech Act Analysis of the End of the Cold War

“…To Western analysts, the doctrine appeared to diminish the sovereignty of states in the Soviet orbit. Although they considered Soviet intervention in the domestic affairs of Eastern European states—or “limited sovereignty”—a major departure from past Soviet practices, it was arguably mainstream Leninism (Mitchell 1972).…”

“…Because socialist doctrine also included as a “scientific” law of socialist development the proposition that the socialist states would develop toward communism simultaneously and in unilinear fashion, any “counter‐revolutionary” liberalizing move in any socialist state was taken as prima facie evidence of the imperialist camp’s subversion of socialism. It was thus seen in such circumstances as the duty of all socialists to come to the aid of the revolution (Jones 1990, 78–95; Mitchell 1972, 191–95; Ouimet 2003, 66–72; Rubin 1982, 650–53).…”