The Soviet Withdrawal – The

End of Communism in
Eastern Europe

Lecture 19 - HTST383 – The Cold War

 Brezhnev and Stagnation

 Soviet Union –
Increasingly educated
society, but
stagnated economic
and technical
development
Leonid Brezhnev –
increasingly
Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, symbolic of state of
addresses the Soviet people, New
Year 1979
the Soviet Union
Agriculture and
industry

 Agricultural
investment (% of
total):

1961-5: 19.6%,
1966-70: 23.2%,
1971-5: 26.2%
(Source: Nove
(1992), p.379)
 Source: Narod. Khoz. za 70 let (1987), pp.640-43

Import Export
(1960/1980) (1960/1980)
Grain (millions 0.2/27.8 6.8/1.7
tons)

Oil (unrefined) 17.8/119

(millions tons)

Oil (% production) 12.1/19.7

Electro-technical 44.2/556 14.8/130

equipment
(millions Roubles)
 Détente and Soviet Foreign
Policy
Right: Brezhnev and
Fidel Castro, Cuba,
1974

Below: Brezhnev and

Nixon, Moscow, 1972

Soviet foreign policy – balancing act-

maintaining cordial relations with
Washington whilst not letting down
allies and losing mantle of vanguard
revolutionary power (to China)
 Defence
spending
Some estimates –
defence spending up
to 25% of Soviet
state expenditure by
the early 1980s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j
m2UvE1aLh8

 Above right –
“Kuznetsov” –
commissioned 1991
(launched 1985)
 Right – Soviet troops
fighting in
Afghanistan late in
the Soviet war there
 Major Soviet
defence
projects –
started
BEFORE
Reagan
administration
Big Earners – Oil and
Vodka
Source: Narod. khoz. za 70 let (1987)
pp.373 and 468

1960 1980

Light vehicle 62,000 1,193,000

sales (USSR)

Television 1,488,000 6,523,000

sales (USSR)

Population (1959) 208.8 (1979) 262.4

(USSR)
(millions)
Challenges in
Eastern Europe
Top left -
Hungary, 1956;
centre –
Czechoslovakia,
1968; below –
Poland, 1980
Andropov,
Chernenko,
Gorbachev
The Afghan Wound
 “Regional conflicts
are bleeding
wounds which can
result in
gangrenous Soviet troops leave
Afghanistan (1989)

growth on the
body of mankind”.
(Gorbachev, Feb.
1988)
 ‘Uskorenie’ or ‘acceleration’
 Policies tried by predecessors in one form
or another, e.g. anti-alcohol drive

Soviet anti-alcohol
posters of the
Gorbachev period.
Left: ‘Alcohol brings
…laziness, degeneracy,
crime…’
Right: ‘The new label
suits me…’ [the bottle
changes its label from
beer to fruit juice]
Perestroika I
and Glasnost’
 Perestroika =
‘restructuring’
 Glasnost’ =
‘openness’

 Chernobyl
nuclear accident
– first major test
for ‘openness’
Perestroika I – Economic
Reform
 19 November 1986 –
law on individual
labour activity
 June 1987 – Law on
State Enterprise
 Costs for Chernobyl
(1986) cleanup and
aftermath of
Armenian earthquake
(1988)
 Perestroika I and
Demokratizatsiia – Soviet style
Demokratizatsiia –
Soviet meaning =
‘participation’

 Gorbachev hope that Glasnost’ (openness

about problems) + Demokratizatsiia
(popular participation in change) =
Perestroika I (change to existing system)
 Gorbachev and the West
 Greater engagement

Why more engagement

with the West?

•Cut Soviet costs

relating to Superpower
rivalry
•Moral imperative –
safer world etc

Reagan and Gorbachev,

Reykjavik, 1986
 The Soviet Union and its Allies
in Asia, Africa & Latin America
 No more blank
cheques Gorbachev and
Castro, Havana,
1989
 Increasing
expectations
of morally
acceptable
policies if to
receive Soviet
aid
 The End of Soviet Power and
Communism in Eastern Europe
 Gorbachev - Warsaw Pact nations to choose their own paths…
 Kurt Hager (East Germany), to West German weekly Stern in
April 1987, 'If your neighbour changes his wallpaper in his flat,
would you feel obliged to do the same?'