The Brezhnev Doctrine and Communist Ideology
- 1 April 1972
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in The Review of Politics
- Vol. 34 (2), 190-209
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0034670500021045
Abstract
Announcement of the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine by Soviet spokesmen in 1968 has been widely regarded in the West as a development marking a new epoch in the evolution of the world communist system. The Doctrine has been commonly viewed as a Soviet response to the exigencies of Great Power politics in circumstances of continuing loss of revolutionary dynamism or as a reaction to the threat to Soviet hegemony in its inner bloc posed by uncontained polycentrism, or both. Much attention has been devoted to the concept of “limited sovereignty,” with this concept being treated as the heart of the Doctrine and as evidence of a major new departure in the Soviet approach to world politics. This assessment, interestingly enough, is generally favored both by Western analysts and by anti-Soviet spokesmen within the world communist system.Keywords
This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Brezhnev-Johnson two-world doctrineSociety, 1971
- The Soviet‐Czechoslovak TreatySurvival, 1970
- The Communist States and Western IntegrationInternational Organization, 1963
- The Organization of the Communist CampWorld Politics, 1961