Brezhnev Doctrine
[2] The policy was first and most clearly outlined by Sergei Kovalev in a September 26, 1968 Pravda article entitled "Sovereignty and the International Obligations of Socialist Countries".
Following the announcement of the Brezhnev Doctrine, numerous treaties were signed between the Soviet Union and its satellite states to reassert these points and to further ensure inter-state cooperation.
[5] Mikhail Gorbachev refused to use military force when Poland held free elections in 1989 and Solidarity defeated the Polish United Workers' Party.
Police power was reduced, collectivized farms were split up and being returned to individual peasants, industry and food production shifted and religious tolerance was becoming more prominent.
Shortly after this coup, Khrushchev signed the Belgrade Declaration which stated "separate paths to socialism were permissible within the Soviet Bloc.
A chaotic and bloody suppression of revolutionary forces lasted from October 24 until November 7, ending with thousands of Hungarians murdered and many more fleeing the country.
When the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was suppressed, the Soviets adopted the mindset that governments supporting both communism and capitalism must coexist, and more importantly, build relations.
However, once the Stalinist President Antonín Novotný resigned as head of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in January 1968, the Prague Spring began to take shape.
In an effort to establish what Dubček called "developed socialism", he instituted changes in Czechoslovakia to create a much more free and liberal version of the socialist state.
[13] Aspects of a market economy were implemented, travel restrictions were eased for citizens, state censorship loosened, the power of the StB secret police was limited, and steps were taken to improve relations with the west.
Soviet panic compounded in March 1968 when student protests erupted in Poland and Antonín Novotný resigned as the Czechoslovak president.
[16] "Economic integration, political consolidation, a return to ideological orthodoxy, and inter-Party cooperation became the new watchwords of Soviet bloc relations.
Brezhnev's statement at the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers Party effectively classified the issue of sovereignty as less important than the preservation of Soviet-style socialism.
[19] Any instance which caused the USSR to question whether or not a country was becoming a "risk to international socialism", the use of military intervention was, in Soviet eyes, not only justified, but necessary.
[20] The Soviet government's desire to link its foreign policy to the Brezhnev Doctrine was evoked again when it ordered a military intervention in Afghanistan in 1979.
In April 1978, a coup in Kabul brought the Afghan Communist Party to power with Nur Muhammad Taraki being installed as the second president of Afghanistan.
[21] The previous regime had maintained a pro-Soviet foreign policy as Daoud Khan was a Pashtun who rejected the Durand Line as the frontier with Pakistan.
The Parcham was the more moderate of the two factions, arguing that Afghanistan was not ready for socialism, requiring more gradual process while the ultra-Communist Khalq favored a more radical approach.
Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders falsely portrayed the United States as the one behind the jihad in Afghanistan,[22] and the rebellion in Afghanistan was seen in Moscow not so much in the context of Afghan politics with an unpopular government pursuing policies that much of the population rejected (such as the collectivisation of agriculture), but rather in the context of the Cold War, being seen as the first stage of an alleged American plot to instigate a jihad in Soviet Central Asia where the majority of the population was Muslim.
[23] Following a split in the Communist Party, the leader of the Khalq faction, Hafizullah Amin, overthrew President Nur Muhammad Taraki and had him murdered on 8 October 1979.
Soviet diplomats in Kabul had a low opinion of Taraki's ability to handle the rebellion, and an even lower one of Amin, who was regarded as a fanatic, but incompetent leader who lost control of the situation.
It was this coordination that led to both Soviet soldiers and airborne units organizing a coup against the Amin-led Afghanistan government, during which Amin was assassinated.
