ABSTRACT
Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet leader from 1964 to 1982, presided over stagnation at home but made the European security conference his personal mission, defending it against his many critics at home as a means to promote communism, while in private drawing on his bitter memories of the war to explain his passionate desire to bring lasting peace to war-torn Europe. Unfortunately for him, his idea of peace was not shared by West Europeans, who resisted his attempts to freeze the status quo and manoeuvred the Helsinki talks into endorsing an agenda for change, a vision quietly shared by a rising generation among Soviet elites who hoped agreement would bring some liberalisation to their own country.
