Gorbachev and the end of the Brezhnev doctrine

Why did Gorbachev abandon the Brezhnev doc­trine? Doubtless there were many reasons, but the chief one was probably the recognition that suppres­sion of change in Eastern Europe would have been totally inconsistent with his domestic reforms in the Soviet Union. His credibility at home, which was fragile enough once the economy began to fail, required that he endorse similar policies in the Soviet Union's 'internal empire', though it is doubt­ful that he foresaw the radically destabilizing effect which such changes would have on the govern­ments of Eastern Europe. If reform in the Soviet Union was led from the top, at least initially, in East­ern Europe it had a popular base which immediately threatened the communist leaderships and created a revolutionary situation.

A further reason for Gorbachev's reluctance to enforce the Brezhnev doctrine was that he had made much in his speeches and writings of his vision of a common European home which would bring to an end the division of Europe. Again one wonders whether he foresaw that this would entail the end of communism; it is more likely that he envisaged a reformed and reinvigorated communist system pur­suing moderate policies of genuinely peaceful coexistence with the West, expanded trade, and greatly increased contacts across the board. In any event, the logic of his non-interventionist position was to preclude direct Soviet control over the processes of change in Eastern Europe.

There were foreign policy considerations too in the policy of laissez-faire towards Eastern Europe. Retrenchment, in the form of withdrawal from the costly, increasingly unpopular, and futile interven­tion in Afghanistan (1979), was the order of the day rather than new ventures. Revision of military policy in line with new thinking in foreign policy gener­ally (treated below in greater detail) ruled out the kind of aggressive and interventionist policies which had characterized the later Brezhnev years. Finally, Gorbachev could hardly expect to maintain good relations with the West, achieve arms agreements and improved trade terms if he was seen to be engaging in the suppression of freedom in Eastern Europe.

It was in these circumstances that governmental authority decayed in Poland and Hungary during the early months of 1989 and finally collapsed in all of Eastern Europe by the end of the year. Collapse was initiated by the removal of the security fence between Austria and Hungary, allowing thousands of East Germans to pass over the border and through to West Germany during September. Suddenly, with Hungary's connivance in this flight from East to West, the illusion of communism, which had been sustained by the Iron Curtain, evaporated. Efforts to check the process of collapse in East Germany, then Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, by bringing in new leaders proved futile. Changes of personnel only delayed the inevitable briefly. The Berlin Wall was breached by demonstrators in November, opening up the possibility, which had been unthinkable for close to a generation, of German unification. In Czechoslovakia, in the face of massive popular pro­test, the government fell in November and Vaclav Havel, playwright and dissident, was elected Presi­dent. Only in Romania did violence take place, as President Ceausescu's security police undertook a savage and short-lived attempt to defend his rule and destroy the popular opposition. By the end of December Ceausescu and his wife had been captured and executed. Only in Albania did communism lin­ger on, but there too during 1990 the old leadership fell to the inexorable logic of events.

The manner of communist collapse in Eastern Europe suggested that their systems were both rigid and brittle and that they had relied on the ultimate threat of Soviet force to maintain their shapes. With that threat removed, the stimulus to change which had always been present was able to express itself.