Brezhnev Doctrine

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The Brezhnev Doctrine was a Soviet Cold War policy asserting the right of the USSR to intervene in other socialist countries to preserve communist rule and prevent deviation from Moscow’s model.

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Statements (48)

Predicate Object
instanceOf Cold War policy
foreign policy doctrine
abandonedBy Mikhail Gorbachev
abandonmentDate late 1980s
alsoKnownAs doctrine of limited sovereignty
announcedIn Brezhnev speech to the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party
announcementDate 1968-11-13
appliesTo Warsaw Pact
surface form: Warsaw Pact states

socialist countries
consequence international criticism of Soviet imperialism
limitation of political reforms in Eastern Europe
reinforcement of Soviet control over Eastern Bloc
coreIdea defense of socialism against internal and external threats
limited sovereignty of socialist states
prevention of deviation from the Soviet model of socialism
right of the USSR to intervene in socialist countries
countryOfOrigin Soviet Union
field Soviet foreign policy
international relations
formulatedBy Leonid Brezhnev
geopoliticalBloc Eastern Bloc
historicalContext Cold War
Soviet–Eastern Bloc relations
ideology Marxism–Leninism
influenced Soviet interventions in allied socialist states
inForceDuring 1970s
early 1980s
late 1960s
languageOfFormulation Russian
legalStatus unwritten policy
namedAfter Leonid Brezhnev
opposedBy United States of America
surface form: United States

Western European countries
reformist movements in Eastern Europe
politicalAlignment communist
principle interests of world socialism take precedence over national sovereignty of socialist states
no socialist country may change its communist party’s leading role
no socialist country may leave the socialist camp
region Eastern Europe
relatedConcept Prague Spring
Sinatra Doctrine
Warsaw Pact
limited sovereignty
replacedBy Sinatra Doctrine
timePeriod 1968–1980s
usedToJustify Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979
Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968
suppression of the Prague Spring

Referenced by (4)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.