Brezhnev & Stability, 1964–82 (Edexcel A Level History): Revision Note

Summary

• This note will examine the extent to which Brezhnev brought stability to the USSR

• Khrushchev was removed in 1964 due to:

  • Policy failures

  • Erratic leadership

  • Loss of Party confidence

• Leonid Brezhnev stabilised government by:

  • Restoring collective leadership

  • Reversing radical reforms

  • Promoting loyalty over innovation

• His policies brought stability but also created stagnation and corruption

• Historians debate whether Brezhnev’s stability was necessary to preserve the system or whether it fatally weakened the USSR in the long run

What caused Khrushchev's downfall?

• By the early 1960s, Khrushchev faced growing criticism from within the Communist Party

Policy failures

• Agricultural reforms, especially the Virgin Lands Scheme, initially succeeded but later failed

  • This led to food shortages

Foreign policy disasters

• The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) damaged Khrushchev’s reputation abroad and at home

Erratic leadership style

• Khrushchev's impulsive behaviour and abrupt policy changes alienated colleagues

• Many Party officials resented:

  • His attacks on Stalin

  • His attempts to decentralise power

    • Party members frequently were demoted or lost their jobs, leading to resentment

How was Khrushchev removed from power?

• In October 1964, Leonid Brezhnev and other senior figures summoned Khrushchev to a meeting

  • They criticised Khrushchev for:

    • His economic policies

    • His mishandling of the economy

    • Creating his own cult of personality

  • The Central Committee voted to remove Khrushchev from power

    • They allowed Khrushchev to retire with a pension

    • He lived under armed guard for the rest of his life

    • The Soviet media reported that Khrushchev stepped down due to ill health

How did Brezhnev stabilise the government?

Collective leadership

• In 1964, Brezhnev ruled with Alexei Kosygin

  • Brezhnev led the Party as General Secretary

  • Kosygin became Premier, the most senior state job

• This arrangement avoided Khrushchev’s personalised, unpredictable style of leadership

• The collective rule of Kosygin and Brezhnev lasted until 1970

  • Kosygin lost his position as Premier

Recentralisation of power

• The government reversed Khrushchev's most unpopular policies

  • He removed the time limit restriction on Party positions

  • Brezhnev restored the state minister positions that Khrushchev had removed

  • He stopped de-Stalinisation and Khrushchev's economic policies

The Party over the state

• The 1977 Constitution stated that the Party had power over Soviet society

  • This re-confirmed Stalin's view that the Party was more powerful than the state

Status quo

• Brezhnev wanted no more economic or political reforms

  • He believed that, by 1930, the Party had revolutionised the Soviet society enough

  • He wanted to continue on the path set out by Lenin and Stalin

• Brezhnev wanted everything to stay the same within the Party

  • The 'stability of cadres' policy discouraged promotion and demotion within the Party

How successful were Brezhnev's measures to stabilise the USSR?

Historians debate whether Brezhnev’s stabilisation policies saved or undermined the Soviet system

Stability as strength

• Some historians argue that Brezhnev’s leadership style reassured Party officials, who felt secure in their positions

• For many citizens, Brezhnev’s era brought predictability and security

  • It is sometimes called the “Years of Stability”

Key historians

"By the end of the 1960s, Politburo members were united in their broad approach. They did not abandon Khrushchev's basic policies; but they erased his eccentricities and pencilled in what they thought to be sound alternatives. Stalin had been too brutal, Khrushchev too erratic. They did not want to revert to the bloody fixities of the post-war years; they were glad that the unsettling reorganizations after 1953 had been terminated. It was their assumption that such an approach would affect a successful stabilization of the Soviet order. They acted out of optimism and still believed in the superiority of communism over its competitors. They could point to the military security and economic advance achieved since 1964. They were confident about having checked the rise of dissent and having brought the intelligentsia and the working class under control. They were not entirely hostile to experimentation in their measures at home and in Eastern Europe." - Robert Service, A History of Modern Russia from Nicholas II to Vladimir Putin (2005)

"The Brezhnev era (1964–1982) has been characterised as one of stagnation, and with some obvious justification... This does not, however, do justice to the many changes that were going on below the level of the top leadership... Instances of large-scale unrest were rare, with the economy maintaining (by global standards) reasonable but not spectacular growth rates until the late 1980s. Although economic growth eventually lagged behind that of the major western economies and the limitations of the planned economy were already apparent, technological improvements and rising oil prices allowed for a greater emphasis on consumer goods, with many families now able to own refrigerators and televisions for the first time...Social stability was also underlined by the urbanisation of most of the country and universally high levels of education." - Jeremy Smith, Stability and national development: the Brezhnev years, 1964–1982 (2014)

Stability as stagnation

• Others argue Brezhnev’s measures created long-term weakness:

  • The system became increasingly corrupt, with patronage and nepotism widespread

  • Economic decline accelerated in the 1970s, undermining the long-term survival of the USSR

Key historians

"The average age of the Politburo rose from sixty in 1964 to over seventy in 1982. This was a gerontocracy whose only ideology was to make things stay the same. Brezhnev gave a name to this conservative idea, 'Mature Socialism', the absurd doctrine that a socialist society had been successfully created and that all that was now needed was to consolidate its gains, which he invoked when he introduced the 1977 'Brezhnev Constitution', the third and last of the Soviet regime. But at sixty years Soviet socialism was older than mature. It was at retirement age." - Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy (1996)

"There were ample grounds for dissatisfaction with the Soviet status quo... Whatever nostalgia may have been felt in post-Soviet Russia, especially in the first decade after the end of Communism, for the Brezhnev years, that era was a time of great hypocrisy. If public criticism and overt social conflict were rare during this period, that was largely because of the strictness of the censorship, the sophisticated system of rewards for conformist political behaviour, and the hierarchy of sanctions for deviation from that norm." - Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (2009)