Finally, consistent with the neo-Stalinist ideological tendencies cited above, the Brezhnev Politburo sharply curtailed the tentative moves towards free cultural expression that had been permitted as part of Khrushchev's 'Thaw'. De-Stalinisation came to a halt, although the major party newspapers continued to avoid positive references to Stalin himself; in more conservative publications, however, a return to hagiographic treatments of Stalin's leadership became increasingly common.[159] The works of openly critical writers such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - who had already run afoul of Khrushchev after the publication of his Gulag memoir One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - were now entirely suppressed. In August 1965, authors Andrei Siniavskii and Iulii Daniel', whose samizdat writings had been smuggled out ofthe USSR and published in the West, were arrested, and in February 1966 both were sentenced to years of forced labour. A petition signed by prominent cultural figures such as Solzhenitsyn and Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov on behalf of Siniavskii and Daniel' led only to greater repression of the emerging dissident movement, with new articles inserted into the Soviet Criminal Code in December 1966 to outlaw the dissemination of 'anti-Soviet slander' in any form. Dissent on issues of nationality and ethnicity was also dealt with ruthlessly; activists bold enough to fight publicly for such causes were arrested or committed to mental asylums.[160] The power of the KGB, placed under the leadership of hard-liner Iurii Andropov in 1967, grew precipitously.
In sum, the new collective leadership of the CPSU had, within a few years, undone all of the major reforms of the Khrushchev period - except, of course, for his decision to abandon mass terror as an instrument of rule. But there were still significant divisions of opinion within the Politburo concerning precisely how to manage future socialist economic development, both in the USSR and in the Soviet bloc. Inparticular, Prime Minister Kosygin, who had been a textile factory manager in the 1920s and whose entire career had involved work in light industry, began to articulate a strategy for economic change with striking similarities to that promoted by Prime Minister Georgii Malenkov in the early post-Stalin period. Like Malenkov, Kosygin declared that so-called 'Group B' industries - those producing consumer goods - should receive greater priority relative to 'Group A' heavy industries. Under Kosygin's sponsorship, Soviet economists began to argue for a more decentralised style of management, in which enterprise directors would orient themselves towards attaining profits rather than simply trying to meet and exceed gross output targets set by Gos- plan. Innovations such as the 'Shchekino experiment' - in which factories capable of achieving planning targets with fewer personnel were allowed to shed excess labour and split the total wage funds among the remaining workers - were introduced, albeit only on a small scale. At the same time, Kosygin argued for lower levels of investment in unproductive collective farms in order to finance the expansion of light industry.[161]
The greater leeway in the Soviet academic press given to arguments for economic decentralisation inspired similar calls for reform in the East European Soviet bloc states, whose economies had never fully recovered from the ravages of the Stalinist occupation. In Hungary, where the 'goulash communism' of janos Kadar had already reversed much of the hypercentralisation of the Stalin period, the 'New Economic Mechanism' formally adopted on 1 January 1968 successfully enacted most of the Kosygin reform programme. In Czechoslovakia, however, similar arguments for reform eventually sparked an escalating rebellion against Leninist rule, especially after the removal of the hard-line Stalinist party leader Antonin Novotny and his replacement by Alexander Dubcek in February 1968. The resulting 'Prague Spring' saw censorship abolished, restrictions on freedom of assembly lifted and clear moves towards a multi-party system. Ukrainian party leader Petro Shelest' began to warn of the potential spread of secessionist sentiment from Ukrainian populations in Czechoslovakia to theUSSRitself. By the summer, the entire Soviet Politburo - including Kosygin himself - became convinced that the Prague Spring represented a grave threat to socialism.[162] On 20 August 1968, the Soviet Union, along with Warsaw Pact allies Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and East Germany, sent 500,000 troops to crush the Czechoslovak rebellion (see Plate 19). Within the USSR, the 'Kosygin reforms' were largely dropped from public discussion.
The crushing of the Prague Spring marked the full consolidation of Brezh- nevian orthodoxy: a reassertion of Leninist principles of hierarchical authority and obedience, Stalinist principles of central planning and a neo-Stalinist cultural policy based upon an insistence on fidelity to ideological dogma and severe repression ofall forms ofdissent. The Politburo's public announcement that 'socialist internationalism' required Soviet armed intervention wherever a threat of 'capitalist restoration' appeared in the Soviet bloc - the 'Brezhnev Doctrine', as it later became known both in the USSR and in the West - made Brezhnevian orthodoxy mandatory for Eastern Europe as well. By and large, the 'little Brezhnevs' in the Soviet satellite states enforced this 'really existing socialism' for the rest of the Brezhnev era.
Brezhnev's social contract
By 1969, Brezhnev had clearly emerged as the primus interpares in the Politburo. The tentative experimentation with economic decentralisation sponsored by Kosygin gave way to a renewed emphasis on the authority of the planners and industrial ministries in overseeing production. Although increased consumer goods production remained a formal priority for Soviet planners, the military- industrial complex received the lion's share of investment.[163] In agriculture, tentative efforts to improve productivity through new incentive systems were halted, replaced by Brezhnev's preferred policy of investing massively in new farm equipment and fertiliser while increasing agricultural subsidies. In 1967, Kosygin could still represent the USSR at the Glassboro summit meeting with
United States President Lyndon Johnson; by 1969, Brezhnev had taken full personal control over Soviet foreign policy as well. When the Twenty-Fourth Party Congress of the CPSU in 1971 ratified the expansion of the Central Committee to include forty-six new Brezhnev appointees, and Brezhnev allies Dinmukhamed Kunaev, Viktor Grishin, Fedor Kulakov and Vladimir Shcher- bitskii (replacing Shelest') were subsequently added to the Politburo, the General Secretary's dominance over the Soviet political system was complete.
The political and social stability of the Brezhnev regime at its height has led numerous scholars to conclude that it rested on a sort of 'social contract' between the party and the Soviet population.[164] This terminology has its weaknesses, overemphasising the degree of social consensus underlying the Soviet dictatorship; Ken Jowitt, for example, has argued that Brezhnevism operated more like a 'protection racket' than a social contract.[165] Still, as widespread post-Soviet nostalgia for the Brezhnev era suggests, important features of Brezhnevian stability really did appeal to broad strata within Soviet society. Moreover, the unravelling of the Brezhnev social contract under Gorbachev played an important role in delegitimating the Soviet regime altogether.
The Brezhnev social contract consisted of five key elements: job security, low prices for basic goods, the de facto toleration of a thriving 'second economy', a limited form of social mobility and the creation of tightly controlled spheres for the expression of non-Russian national identities.[166] The first of these elements, job security, had been an implicit component of the Stalinist economic system ever since its foundation in the 1930s; the declaration that the capitalist problem of unemployment had been 'solved' by socialism was an important and perennial Soviet propaganda theme. But such 'security' was undercut under Stalin by constant blood purges affecting all ranks of society, and under Khrushchev by general institutional turbulence. After the roll-back of the Kosygin reforms, however, politically loyal Soviet citizens in every occupational category could expect to keep their positions - except in cases of extreme incompetence or insubordination - until retirement or death. The Stalinist system's emphasis on plan target fulfilment as the sole criterion of success meant that enterprise managers had every incentive to hoard labour, and no incentive at all to use it efficiently. Wage funds were set in proportion to an enterprise's workforce, so it made sense for enterprise managers to hire hundreds ofotherwise superfluous workers to use in periods of'storm- ing' to fulfil the plan. Typical industrial enterprises were thus absurdly overstaffed by comparison with their Western competitors. Brezhnev's agricultural subsidies, meanwhile, perpetuated a system ofinefficient collective farms supporting millions of unproductive farmers. Meanwhile, due to the 'trust in cadres' policy, party and state bureaucrats themselves no longer had to worry about being replaced either.
160
Lyudmilla Alexseyeva,
161
Alec Nove,
162
Mark Kramer, 'The Czechoslovak Crisis and the Brezhnev Doctrine', in Carole Fink, Philipp Gassert and Detlef Junker (eds.),
163
Clifford Gaddy
164
Linda J. Cook,