ABSTRACT
Leonid Brezhnev was leader of the Soviet Union from 1964-1982, a longer period than any other Soviet leader apart from Stalin. During Brezhnev’s time Soviet power seemed at its height and increasing. Living standards were rising, the Soviet Union was a nuclear power and successful in its space missions, and the Soviet Union's influence reached into all part of the world. Yet, as this book, which provides a comprehensive overview and reassessment of Brezhnev’s life, early political career and career as leader, shows, the seeds of decline were sown in Brezhnev's time. There was a huge over-commitment of resources to the Soviet industrial-military complex and to massively expensive foreign policy overstretch. At the same time there was a failure to deliver on citizens' rising expectations, and an overconfident ignoring of dissidents and their demands. The book will be of great interest to Russian specialists, and also to scholars of international relations and world history.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |76 pages
Introduction
chapter |31 pages
The Ukrainian crucible
chapter |20 pages
Brezhnev and World War II
chapter |23 pages
The death of Stalin and the rise of Khrushchev
part |41 pages
Brezhnev's domestic politics
chapter |9 pages
Brezhnev's life at the top
chapter |13 pages
Confronting the military industrial complex
chapter |17 pages
Dissidence and human rights
part |84 pages
International politics
chapter |16 pages
The Soviet Bloc, the Brezhnev doctrine and Ostpolitik
chapter |12 pages
US Presidents and the nuclear arms race
chapter |10 pages
The mixed blessings brought by Brezhnev's new German friendship
chapter |27 pages
Brezhnev's blind spot: Africa and the Middle East
chapter |10 pages
South and Central Asia: challenges that Brezhnev could not ignore
chapter |7 pages
Brezhnev's confrontation with China
part |10 pages
Brezhnev and the fall of the Soviet state