A period of economic and political stagnation. How valid is this assessment of the Brezhnev years?

by peterealdoc (student)

‘A period of economic and political stagnation’. How valid is this assessment of the Brezhnev years?

‘Only the fourth Soviet leader in half a century, heir to the brilliant Lenin, the tyrant Stalin and the buffoon Khrushchev. What style of leadership would he adopt?’ McCauley’s question here is rhetorical, as there was no doubt that Leonid Brezhnev would lead his country into an era characterised by gradualism and a cautious pace, slowly making some selected changes to ensure his own survival, but stopping short of any real progress. Through his ascent to power and reversion of his predecessor’s administration, his economic policies and actions to silence dissidents, Brezhnev was attempting to preserve a Stalinist regime, but without its two vital components of the cult of personality and fear. His consequent reliance on bribery and excessive bureaucracy to compensate for this resulted in an epidemic of complacency developing across the Soviet Union as the Brezhnev years did indeed become a period of economic and political stagnation.

It was specifically for his low key approach and moderatist stance that Brezhnev was chosen to be among the collective leadership following the fall of Khrushchev, as Russia was looking for a period of stability. Rather than performing heroics in the 1917 Revolution in the manner of the first Soviet leaders, Brezhnev instead gained his reputation in WWII, through his work relocating factories and serving as a political commissar, to end the war with a well respected rank of major general. A lot like both his predecessor and Stalin in terms of administrative ability, yet lacking their strength of personality, Brezhnev nonetheless had an innate political skill allowing him to eliminate rivals by patience and stealth rather than anything obtrusive or untoward. It was this that enabled him to remain close to Khrushchev in the political spectre but distance himself from his leader’s policies, as well as overcome rivals Podgorny and Kosygin, despite the latter passing important economic reforms. In his early years, Brezhnev appeared an understated character with an ability to accomplish his goals and the ideal remedy to ‘the terror of Stalin’s reign and the chaos of Khrushchev’s’ according to Hughes and Welfare. Yet the goals set during the Brezhnev years were ones designed not to benefit the Soviet Union as a whole, but rather the nomenklatura and those privileged in society, a far cry from traditional Marxism, with this alternative philosophy doing little to improve the quality of life for anyone else and setting a steady decline for the era into torpidity.

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Once securely in power, Brezhnev’s actions to bring about stability in politics indicated, rather than a progression into the modern world, a regression to the systems and values of Stalinism. Following his support of the dismissal of Khrushchev, Brezhnev went on to undermine all of his predecessor’s changes, through reintroducing the KGB and decelerating the de-Stalinisation process. Further to this, he reverted to the Stalinist title of General Secretary of the Party rather than Khrushchev’s First Secretary, and the presidium once again became the politburo. He believed the cadres in state organisations should be permanent appointments, yet at the same time knew how to manipulate the party machine to his advantage and promoted his own supporters to important positions. As a result of these regressions Brezhnev stifled the emerging talent of young politicians by denying them any hopes for promotion without someone dying first, to the extent that the politburo was at one stage exclusively full of men over sixty years old, and with this legitimised and encouraged an injurious political stagnation.

In economic terms, however, the Brezhnev years marked not stagnation but a decline in agriculture and industry, as the rate of economic growth continued to fall and black markets accounted for 25% of the GDP. Although agriculture remained a priority to Brezhnev as it did Khrushchev, the former was able to back his programs with massive investments; by 1980, 25% of state investment was in agriculture. The quality of life of peasants also slightly improved as in 1967 they were given state pensions and a minimum wage standard, yet this was not nearly effective enough as 30% of peasants lived below the poverty line. Although the supply of livestock increased 300% and an increase in tractors reached 65% in 1965, which was later to fall to little over 6% just ten years later, the underlying problems in agriculture were left unresolved; a shortage of skilled labour, an emphasis on quantity over quality, and unsuitable roads, machinery and state quotas so that grain still had to be imported from countries like the USA and Argentina as late into the Brezhnev years as 1980. Brezhnev’s mismanagement of agriculture also created environmental problems that proved to be economically devastating; in the case of Lake Baikal, drained for irrigation, natural resources were abused to the extent that the entire area’s fishing industry collapsed.

A similar outcome was the result of Brezhnev’s industrial policies, where a primary focus was put on producing consumer goods in the eighth, ninth and tenth Five Year Plans, in line with Brezhnev’s own penchant for creature comforts. The number of cars in Russia increased from 201,200 in 1965 to 1,327,000 in 1985, yet this was only a third of the number in Britain, a country with a comparably minute population. Any beneficial measures were met with limited success in practice due to massive arms expenditure, the apathy of managers already content with their lot, and huge amounts of red tape preventing much progress, to the extent that production at its highest was only a third of that in Western Europe and the goods of very poor quality. Described in the Pravda as the introduction of ‘plan, profit and bonuses’, the General Secretary abolished Khrushchev’s regional councils and moved away from ‘Communism in Twenty Years’ in favour of ‘Developed Socialism’ which focused on what had already been achieved. This industrial policy, which marked for traditional Marxists a move back to Capitalism and to the rest of Soviet society a definite and distinctly un-Communist class divide, resulted in the nomenklatura gaining more power and privilege in addition to the job security they already possessed and thus they became exceedingly complacent.

Bribery was something Brezhnev made no apology for, stating that ‘nobody lives on just his own wages’, and given their leader’s recognition and acceptance of this, as he himself was ‘vain, and enjoyed the trappings of office and ostentatious presents’ according to McCauley, corruption spread from the government to all across society. Homemade brewing of vodka duly increased to avoid taxes, and with this came the social impact of alcoholism. Nepotism was also condoned, Brezhnev himself being one of the worst culprits of this, and ‘himself outdid Khrushchev in the nepotism he had criticised him for’ according to Service, through employing his son as a senior official in the foreign ministry while his infamous son-in-law gained rapid promotion in the army despite being a known embezzler with many links to the criminal underworld. Any economic progress made by the state was reduced by the cost of bribery and extensive bureaucracy, so that it was constantly losing ground to the thriving black markets and declined as a result.

The Brezhnev years marked not only political and economic stagnation and decline, but also a threat to social and cultural freedom to which dissidents responded. Brezhnev employed a largely Stalinist way of dealing with them, but updated the former General Secretary’s methods to include imprisonment in mental asylums as well as transportation to labour camps. Under the easing of Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation policy, Roy Medvedev’s book on the Great Terror was banned from the press, and previously acclaimed writer Solzhenitsyn had two more books refused publishing due to Brezhnev’s wish to ‘tighten the screws...where culture is concerned’. Instead authors resorted to samizdat and tamizdat to publish their works which further contributed to the development of a black market world outside of state control. This censorship caused international embarrassment, especially over cases like the trial of Andrei Sakharov, which prompted a new constitution in 1977. Brezhnev’s new constitution was very similar to Stalin’s of 1936, which promised much in terms of civil rights, but produced little and did nothing to prevent the unsympathetic treatment of dissidents, to the extent that by the mid-seventies there were over ten thousand political and religious prisoners across the Soviet Union as a result of the state’s social policies.

According to one dissident, Andrei Sinyavsky, ‘during Brezhnev’s time two more backwards steps were taken, and history wavered on the edge of returning to full Stalinism...but stopped short’. This was a recurrent theme of the Brezhnev years, which stopped short of any real success and could not even achieve a full regression to Stalinism. Despite Brezhnev’s ability as a leader, he led his country to what can be described at best as a period of economic and political stagnation, and at worst the period that made certain the decline of Communism. Brezhnev did not share the fervent belief of some party members, including Khrushchev, that traditional Communism was the best political system, as evidenced by his acceptance and encouragement of a corrupt and divided society through bribery, wage brackets and nepotism. Neither did he do anything to inspire this belief in their political system to the people of Russia. Volkogonov asserted that ‘to enliven the moribund ideology of Communism...was quite beyond Brezhnev’ and goes on to state that his image ‘was not only as the harbinger of the collapse of the system, but also as the symbol of the decline of Bolshevik power, towards which the people had long become indifferent’. Although his initial gradualism and caution was merited, Brezhnev’s mistake was to allow it to descend into an economic, social and political stagnation, a corrupt complacency, and socialism, albeit slowly, fell apart.

Ciara Lally

06.09.2010