ABSTRACT
The new foreign policy pursued towards the West in the late 1960’s culminated in the sweeping and offensive “Peace Program” that contained a number of realistic, though ambitious proposals. The genuineness of Soviet foreign policy as represented by the “Peace Program” must primarily be explained in terms of the domestic situation and priorities. This chapter deals with an analysis of the “Peace Program” as presented by Brezhnev in his address to the XXIV Party Congress. Soviet foreign policy was inert and purposeless, repeating without much fervour proposals that were mostly as old as the days of Khrushchev. Brezhnev’s presentation of the “Peace Program” must be seen in the context of his speech as a whole. His title for this program of “struggle for peace and international cooperation and for the freedom and independence of the peoples” might very well convey the order of foreign priorities in Brezhnev’s mind.
