ABSTRACT
Leonid Brezhnev gave his name to the doctrine applied in 1968 in the suppression of reform Communism in Czechoslovakia, a theory of the limited sovereignty of socialist states. The decay of the world Communist movement in its traditionally structured Moscovite form accelerated, however, during the Brezhnev era; the movement continued to retreat from stewardship of common revolutionary tasks toward a championing of Soviet state interests and superpower ambitions. In many Communist parties--from the Chinese traditionalists to the gradualist Italocommunists--the Brezhnev doctrine was decisively rejected, and contributed much to accelerate the process of decay in the world Communist movement. Both ruling and nonruling parties unite in the spirit of proletarian internationalism against imperialism as the vanguard of the working class, with common action, aid, and solidarity. Socialist internationalism takes into account “respect for the special situations as well as for the specific interests” of the individual Warsaw Pact states.
