During the Brezhnev years, the Soviet Union’s
relationship with the outside world began to
change significantly. The Kremlin now accepted
that an armed clash with the West was unlikely,
provided the Soviet Union was strong enough to
ensure that war would prove suicidal for both
sides. It was paradoxically also an era of rapid
growth in nuclear-missile armaments.
Latitude was permitted to the Warsaw Pact
allies to develop their economies on less rigidly
state-planned lines. In János Kádár’s Hungary
limited private enterprise, various incentives and
Western loans turned a stagnant economy into
what was, for a time, a flourishing one, by the
previous standards of the people’s republics. But
Kádár knew where to draw the line and accepted
the diktat imposed by Soviet intervention in- The Polish economy, despite large Western
loans, failed to make much progress. The general
detente between East and West in the 1970s and
the recognition of Poland’s existing frontiers at
the Helsinki Conference in 1975 eased relations,
but popular criticism of the Communist Party’s
failure to improve living conditions led to recur-
rent crises. Nationalism was strong in Eastern
Europe, and anti-Russian feeling was kept barely
below the surface.
Communism appeared safest in the rigid hands
of the orthodox leadership of the German
Democratic Republic: the Protestant Church was
the only organisation left capable of any opposi-
tion, but it raised its voice mildly, while expressing
loyalty to the state. Romania, equally orthodox
under the Stalinist rule of Nicolae Ceaus ̧escu, fol-
lowed an uncomfortably nationalistic and inde-
pendent course. The Soviet Union did not
discourage the people’s republics from seeking
Western economic assistance or trade; their devel-
opment also assisted the Soviet Union, which
delivered oil at advantageous prices in return for
more advanced technological manufactures, for
example computer chips from the DDR. The US
and Western embargo on the sale of goods such as
advanced computers made this technical support
especially valuable. But Soviet troops were still sta-
tioned in Eastern Europe as members of the
Warsaw Pact and as ultimate guarantors of Soviet
dominance.
There were limitations to sovereignty. The
Soviet leadership imposed two conditions on the
Eastern European states within its security sphere:
that each should adhere to the Warsaw Pact
alliance and that the Communist Party should
exercise sole political power. The coalition part-
ners, the other small political parties to be found in
Poland and the German Democratic Republic,
were mere satellites, agreeing with whatever course
the Communist Party decided to follow. Their real
influence was non-existent. The Communist Party
with its nomenklatura– the network of appointees
occupying all key posts in administration, industry
and party – took its instructions from the Politburo
and derived its privileges and income from the
system. All this was in accordance with Lenin’s(^1) Chapter 67
THE SOVIET UNION AND THE WIDER
WORLD, THE BREZHNEV YEARS
CRUSHING THE PRAGUE SPRING AND THE
FAILURE OF REFORM