Brezhnev and 'Stagnation'?

‘[Brezhnev] restored the rural district committees and the original role of regional Party committees. … It was a well-tried Stalinist policy. Under Stalin it was sustained by a system of repression, whereas under Brezhnev it became a ‘social contract’ of sorts between the exponents of power.’

When Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in April 1985, for some, a ‘new era began.’  Fedor Burlatsky clarifies this:

‘We were happy to have lived to see this moment and immediately got down to work, trying to build a bridge from Khrushchëv’s Thaw to the new and inspiring prospects of structural, economic and political reform.’

And with this propagandistic vinculum of Gorbachev’s accession to that of Khrushchëv ’s in the early 1960s, the interceding ‘age’ of Brezhnevschina developed a modern congruence to a pseudo-Petrarchian ‘Dark Age’.  Gorbachev’s portrayal of Brezhnev as ‘neo-Stalinist’ says more about the uses of ‘Stalin’ in the final years of the Soviet Union as it does about the Brezhnev years of power.   Beginning in 1986, glasnost produced an intellectual effect on Soviet society that encouraged increasing criticism of Stalin and Stalinism within a general reconsideration of the Soviet past.  The Georgian film, Pokayanie (Repentance), was released for mass showing and became accepted as the most significant event of this ‘thaw’.   Gorbachev’s castigation of the Brezhnev era as reverting to Stalinism therefore carries the weight of contemporary significance and thus requires further validation.

Nonetheless, it does remain that much of the criticism levelled at the Brezhnev regime does have a degree of veracity.  In fact, looking at the Brezhnev regime – and Brezhnev the man in particular – makes it rather difficult to repudiate the image of neo-Stalinism and stagnation.  Certainly, Leonid Brezhnev’s character remains reasonably analogous of the character of the Soviet State during the regime.  He seems to have had, by numerous accounts, a rather stagnant personality – he was the archetypal apparatchik.  For instance, his diary notes for 16 May 1976 that he ‘[went] nowhere – rang no one, likewise no one me – haircut, shaved and washed hair’.  Likewise, on 7 August 1976, he dutifully notes that he used a ‘children’s soap’ for washing his hair that day.   His position of power, as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982, evolved slowly from the central cog in a consensual collective leadership to that of (almost) apotheosised symbol of a steadfast and firmly entrenched regime.  Yet, it would be unfair to analogise the seeming insularity displayed in Brezhnev’s diary to that of the regime.  Although it is plausible to assert that ‘the technological revolution that had begun in the rest of the world passed [the Soviet Union] by’,  it remains notable that the Brezhnev regime attempted to enact a bold foreign policy that, although leading to disappointment at almost every turn, was anything but isolated or parochial.   Yet boldness of style and dynamic leadership were most certainly not the reasons for Brezhnev’s almost unanimously supported rise to leadership. After the ‘dynamism’, unpredictability and popular appeal of Khrushchëv’s reign, Brezhnev’s nomination to the leadership (largely collective though it initially was) was a response to the desires within the highest echelon of the CPSU for a measure of stability and a restoration of material privileges to the leadership.   This reaction against popular desires was as much a response to the end of Joseph Stalin’s leadership than it was to Khrushchëv’s which would then suggest that it would indeed be meaningful to describe the Brezhnev regime as ‘neo-Stalinist’.

Yet, this assertion will be called to question, as there are reasonable grounds for denying such a charge.  An audit of the nature of Brezhnev’s power-base will demonstrate that within the early years of the regime, caution and re-assurance of his colleagues were essential considerations.  A brief examination of Brezhnev’s political policies will demonstrate a desire for reforms that in many ways were not entirely dissimilar (in some cases) from those of Khrushchëv.  Finally, if the Brezhnev regime can indeed be cast as neo-Stalinist, then the ideology of the regime, that of ‘Developed Socialism’, befits the phlegmatic nature of the regime.  The regime showed itself unwilling to rise to the Khrushchëvian utopianism that aimed to arrive at a state of Communism by the 1980s.  In recanting this, the regime cast Khrushchëv’s ‘Thaw’ as merely an interlude, insinuating a continuation of Stalinism.  This also requires examination.

The foundations of Brezhnev’s power-base can be found in the euphemistically titled ‘October Plenum’ of 1964 that ignominiously terminated Khrushchëv’s presence within the CPSU and inaugurated Brezhnev’s dominance. It is significant in that it ended the Khrushchëv regime ‘not with a bang but with a whimper’.  The ‘coup’ is also significant in that the chief plotters are considered by many to have been motivated, not by Brezhnev himself (only having been consulted late in the scheming), but by the neo-Stalinist orientated Aleksandr Shelepin and Mikhail Suslov.  This is, in light of new evidence, questionable; Brezhnev’s role is now considered by many to have been of far greater importance.   The manner in which Brezhnev came to power, on the back of reactionary ideology, was pertinent to the remainder of his tenure.  As ‘Khrushchëv’ and ‘Khrushchëvism’ replaced ‘Stalin’ and ‘Stalinism’ in the role of ‘other’,  the new regime presented the image of a majority consensus that belied many of the different interests at work in the Politburo.   Brezhnev’s role as part of a ‘collective leadership’ began as a balancing of opposing ideologies: conservatism, which had installed him in power, and liberalism, of which he also had supporters (such as Alexei Kosygin) believing that he would, and indeed could, continue many of Khrushchëv’s reforms – only in a more decorous manner. 

The conservative element in Brezhnev’s Politburo and the Secretariat of the Central Committee may be, on the whole, described as being divisible into two largely similar elements: moderate-conservative and neo-Stalinist.  Of the two, the neo-Stalinists were largely predominant.  They consisted not only of a ‘large part of the party and state apparatus, especially in the middle ranks’, but also in, as Roy Medvedev points out, ‘in the regional and city party committees and the ideological bureaucrats.’   If it seems remarkable that a strong neo-Stalinist ideology should have been so widespread and prevalent within the party, then it should be noted, as Archie Brown does, that neo-Stalinism was particularly appealing to party workers aged between forty-five and fifty-five; those who were too young to have experienced the purges of the party in the late 1930s,  and perhaps too old to have been heavily influenced by greater cultural and political liberalism in the early Khrushchëv years before 1961.  It is nonetheless plausible to note, as Peter Kenez does, that the Brezhnev leadership rose through the ranks of the Party ‘in the 1930s when there were many openings in the top leadership’; these men were ‘the beneficiaries of the terror.’   Yet, there is need of a basic defining of the term ‘neo-Stalinism’ for its relationship to Stalinism of the period 1930-53 is simply not one of straightforward imitation or restoration.  Neo-Stalinist or, more generally, conservative policies had changed throughout the duration of Khrushchëv’s reign.  By the late 1960s, Stalinism does not characterise Soviet conservatism as it had done in the early 1950s.

The moderate-conservative wing is more forbidding of definition.  They are identifiable merely as occupying the ground between the neo-Stalinists and the liberals and may have, at any given time, encompassed many members of those two ideological wings.   On most occasions, however, Brezhnev himself ostensibly sat within this grouping. 

The liberal wing of the Politburo and Secretariat of the Central Committee has been the least effectual.  Their composition was clearly identifiable, as was their progression in the early years of the regime – what might easily be characterised as the post-Khrushchëv years – until the floundering of reform after the Czechoslovakian crisis of 1968.  When the Czech First Secretary introduced measures for the reform of the economy – incentives, enterprise autonomy and other market mechanisms – the Soviet’s found ‘that economic liberalisation had extra-economic implications which posed a direct threat to the socialist system.’  The expeditious politicisation of the economic measures frightened the Politburo as they witnessed a move towards the democratisation of the Czech party and thus called for the liquidation of the measures.  The use of Soviet troops was sanctioned to ‘normalise’ Czech life.   The Czech crisis, as dramatically demonstrative of reactionary thinking within the regime as it was, was not the initial signifier of the weakness of the liberal wing – merely the ‘last straw’.  In 1965, the reform minded Kosygin had attempted, on one account ‘half-heartedly’,  on another ‘modestly’,  to modernise the Soviet economy through liberal and marginally democratic measures (such as managerial autonomy, production incentives, profit and quality).  These measures ran into a conservative wall and petered out as party control and supervision of the economy was reasserted.   The neo-Stalinist tendency to imitate the ‘command economy’ of the Stalin years, despite the differences between the two systems, should not be underestimated.

Despite the appearances, specifically in the early years, of ideological division within the Politburo and Secretariat of the Central Committee, it remains that these divisions were only pertinent behind the high walls of the Kremlin and varied only gradually within the intermittent alterations to membership of the two separate, but imperceptibly intertwined groups.  The oligarchy that comprised the Brezhnev regime was the elite of the party and did not view themselves even as part of the broad elite; they were supreme to all and the distance between themselves and the rest ensured an altogether private world.  Although this may or may not have been candidly agreed upon at the outset of the regime, it remains one of the defining contrasts with the previous regime where political disagreement within the upper echelon of the party had often been allowed to veer into the public sphere.  As Harry Gelman points out, this concentrated privacy sustained the clannish nature of the Politburo and Secretariat and their decision-making, it shielded them from pressure from below as well as political manipulation from within.   We now need to examine those policies that the regime did aim to enact.

Despite the balancing of liberal and conservative wings within the upper echelons, Brezhnev was capable of initiating significant policy reforms of his own.  Whilst any attempt to explicitly continue the work of the now politically destitute Khrushchëv would have been venturesome, Brezhnev did seek to bring about reforms in agriculture, the production of highly desirable consumer goods and in foreign policy.  Yet, as a highly accomplished politician with keen survival instincts, he advanced these policies with caution, managing to balance his potential critics with concessions.  All major interest groups were convinced that their interests would be acknowledged.   He progressed with patience, appeasing rather than confronting.  In this way, Brezhnev’s reforms were always subordinated to internal party pressures.  As Gorbachev (not completely unreliable in his testament) noted:

‘His forte [consisted] in his ability to split rivals … He never forgot the slightest disloyalty … but he was shrewd enough to wait for an appropriate moment … never [resorting] to direct confrontation, proceeding cautiously, step by step, until he gained the upper hand.’

In this extremely cautious manner, Brezhnev’s reforms were, arguably perhaps, as far-reaching as those of Khrushchëv’s.

With the censuring of Kosygin’s economic reforms and foreign policy plans by 1968, and, one might add, his bid for political supremacy over the General Secretary, Brezhnev took up the mantle of reform – emboldened by his (albeit typically tacit) defeat of the Premier of the Soviet Union.   In the early 1970s, he propounded that reforming endeavours should be focussed on the creation of multi-enterprise associations.  Here, independent enterprises that fulfilled similar roles would become associated in order that the weaker enterprises might profit from the modernisation and research facilities of the stronger enterprises; essentially, an idea similar in many ways to that of western Corporations.  The associated enterprises were to grasp the initiative and lead the way in the introduction of new technologies and the streamlining of the workforce.   However, the problem within this implicitly sympathetic view is the failure to take account of the reality of the implementation of these ‘reforms’. 

The appearance within Brezhnev’s economic policies of a reformist spirit is misleading.  To be sure, the regime aimed at consumerism, higher agricultural output, social welfare, scientific and technological advancements equivalent or surpassing those of the United States, détentes in foreign policy, and the continued repudiation of Stalinist ‘excesses’.   For the most part, there is much of Khrushchëv within these ‘reforms’ – it is notable that Brezhnev was a significant part of the Khrushchëv regime – but they were stripped, made acceptable or palatable to the collective interests, of their key elements: decentralisation and the role of the market.   One might deduce from this that the primary motivation for these limited reforms were genuine in the need to address ever increasing problems, most specifically that of popular demand,  but they were also contingent upon the need to reinforce the status quo.   The reinforcing of the status quo, the ‘stability of cadres’, the constant tightrope act between liberal and conservative interests are the hallmarks of the Brezhnev regime.  Developed Socialism, as the adopted ideological centrepiece, legitimised this ‘stability’. 

Developed Socialism described the (apparent) emergence of the USSR as a mature industrial system whose further development relied on the employment of scientific and technological development as a solution to economic and social problems.  The concept was not a cancellation of Khrushchëv’s goal of reaching Communism by the 1980’s, rather a statement of the present position and the postponement of Communism (for the time being).   Criticisms of Developed Socialism are unfortunate in their tendency to consider the concept as a statement of voluntary stagnation; but these are too often influenced by the impact of Gorbachev.  The contemporary view understood Socialism as a historical period in its own right; Developed Socialism had the central task of perfecting the system before the final transition to Communism.  

As the concept described the (apparently) mature industrial system whose further development (correctly) relied on the employment of scientific and technological development, the Party was expected to reform itself, adopt scientific and technological advisors, and then assist in the reform of other institutions.  Despite this rather bold housekeeping initiative, reform remained illusory.  The ‘modernised’ and ‘scientifically’ qualified CPSU failed to relinquish their pervading control of every institution.  They failed to break away from heavy industrial output.  They failed to liberalise.  For instance, the protection and expansion of the prerogatives of the Party were legitimised by Developed Socialism but the price to the Party was demands for increased performance.  Party committees were to assume greater control of the economy and the running of the government.  This increased intervention was to be founded on its own technological and managerial sophistication and a newfound ability to reconcile narrow departmental interests within the broader perspective.  Developed Socialism allowed Party intervention with increasing force.

The entrenchment of the neo-Stalinist centralisation of government and the resulting control of the economic sphere gave rise to the most spectacular of all Soviet idiosyncrasies: what has become appropriately titled the ‘shadow economy’.  Burlatsky, in his overtly critical and anecdotal manner, outlines this view of the ‘shadow economy’ from the top down by quoting Brezhnev himself as alleging that

‘[nobody] lives on their wages. I remember in my youth … we earned extra money unloading freight trains … Three bags or containers would go to them and one to us.  That’s how everyone lives in this country.’ 

From this Burlatsky, perhaps rightly, acknowledges that Brezhnev ‘regarded the shadow economy as normal.’    The very dysfunctionality of the ‘command economy’, and its arithmetical manner,  ensured that capital goods (which should never have been marketed) had to be bartered for and exchanged and obtained through all manner of unorthodox means.  Networks distinct in legality from official channels soon evolved that were essential routes of procurement even for the essentials and officially apportioned resources for industrial output.  This ‘third economy’, or blat, existed and often overlapped both the official economy and the illegal black-market.   In addition to the inherent conservatism of the regime, the ‘shadow economy’ was a major obstacle to economic reform. 

Yet, this was not an obstacle that might have been overcome within the Soviet experiment; the shadow economy was an inherent contradiction within the experiment.  The absence of property actually generated corruption.  Despite frequently high wages (and thus many a person with large amounts of surplus roubles), the dearth of purchasable goods ensured that position and privilege could not be bought through legitimate means; only through corruption.  Sycophancy triumphed and was rewarded with security, stability and wage increases that further served to entrench the need to purchase privilege and power.   The overriding consequence of this system was a pseudo-feudal situation whereby patronage and clientelism undermined the lofty socialist ideals of the Party.  The most significant and detracting result was a deep cynicism with socialist way.  

Despite the dangers of post-Glasnost influences such as Gorbachev, it remains clear that the Brezhnev regime failed at every turn to modernise the country.  Castigation of the era as ‘stagnant’ hold cogency even in the face of the reforms that Brezhnev instituted.  Questions surrounding the effectiveness of implementation of these reforms were addressed prior to Gorbachev’s time.  ‘The Institute of Sociological Research of the USSR Academy of Sciences conducted a study on the effectiveness of decisions taken by the USSR Council of Ministers.  The results were staggering: barely more than one in ten decisions were implemented.’   The rejection of liberalism, de-centralisation, and the role of the market were essentially conservative prerogatives.  The Party’s increasing intervention did bear striking similarities to the command style dictatorship of the 1930s.  The suggestion that it is in someway meaningful to describe the Brezhnev regime as being essentially ‘neo-Stalinist’ sustains a degree of cogency, even after examination of the regime’s attempt at reforms.  Yet, a caveat should here be ascribed to ‘neo-Stalinist’; the Stalinism of the Brezhnev years was a ‘developed Stalinism’, it was a Stalinism that had accepted the weight of Khrushchëvschina and progressed itself beyond imitation.

Further reading:-
Edwin Bacon & Mark Sandle (eds.), Brezhnev Reconsidered, (London, 2002).
George W. Breslauer, Khrushchëv and Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics, (London, 1982).
George Breslauer, ‘Reformism and Conservatism’, Discussion, Slavic Review, Vol. 38, No. 2. (Jun., 1979), pp. 216-219.
Archie Brown & Michael Kaser, The Soviet Union since the Fall of Khrushchëv, 2nd edition,  (London, 1978).
Fedor Burlatsky, trs. Daphne Skillen, Khrushchëv and the First Russian Spring, (London, 1991).
Stephen F. Cohen, ‘The Friends and Foes of Change: Reformism and Conservatism in the Soviet Union’, Discussion, Slavic Review, Vol. 38, No. 2. (Jun., 1979), pp. 187-202.
R.W. Davies, Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution, (Basingstoke, 1989).
Michael Ellman & Vladimir Kontorovich, ‘The Collapse of the Soviet System and the Memoir Literature’, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 49, No. 2. (Mar., 1997), pp. 259-279.
Harvey Fireside, ‘Dissident Visions of the USSR: Medvedev, Sakharov & Solzhenitsyn’, Polity, Vol. 22, No. 2. (Winter, 1989), pp. 213-229.
W. Fletcher ‘Religious Dissent in the Soviet Union in the 1960s’, Slavic Review, Vol.30, No.2. (1971), pp. 298-316.
Harry Gelman, The Brezhnev Politburo and the Decline of Détente, (Cornell, 1984).
John Gooding, Socialism in Russia. Lenin and his Legacy, 1890-1991, (London, 2002).
Mikhail Gorbachev, tr. Georges Peronansky and Tatjana Varsavsky, Memoirs, (London, 1995).
Ken Jowitt, ‘Soviet Neotraditionalism: The Political Corruption of a Leninist Regime’, Soviet Studies, Vol. 35, No. 3. (Jul., 1983), pp. 275-297.
Donald R. Kelley, Soviet Politics from Brezhnev to Gorbachev, (New York, 1987).
Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, 2nd edition, (Cambridge, 2006).
Moshe Lewin, Political Undercurrents in Soviet Economic Debates. From Bukharin to the Modern Reformers, (London, 1975).
Catherine Merridale, ‘Redesigning History in Contemporary Russia’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 38, No. 1, Redesigning the Past. (Jan., 2003), pp. 13-28.
James R. Millar, ‘The Little Deal: Brezhnev’s Contribution to Acquisitive Socialism’, Slavic Review, Vol.44, No.4 (1985), pp. 694-706.
Joel C. Moses, ‘Regionalism in Soviet Politics: Continuity as a Source of Change, 1953-1982’, Soviet Studies, Vol. 37, No. 2. (Apr., 1985), pp. 184-211.
James G. Richter, Khrushchëv ’s Double Bind. International Pressures and Domestic Coalition Politics, (Baltimore, 1994)
Abraham Rothberg, The Heirs of Stalin: Dissidence and the Soviet Regime, 1953-1970, (London, 1972).
Robert Service, A History of Twentieth-Century Russia, (London, 1997)
Hedrick Smith, The Russians, (London, 1976).
Jonathan Steele, World Power: Soviet Foreign Policy under Brezhnev and Andropov, (London, 1983).
Ronald Grigor Suny (ed.), The Structure of Soviet History: Essays and Documents, (Oxford, 2003).
William Taubman, Khrushchëv: The Man and his Era, (London: Free Press, 2005).
William J. Tompson, The Soviet Union under Brezhnev, (London, 2003).
William J. Tompson, ‘The Fall of Nikita Khrushchëv’, Soviet Studies, Vol. 43, No. 6. (1991), pp. 1101-1121.