Brezhnev Doctrine

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The Brezhnev Doctrine was a model of Soviet foreign policy, first and most clearly outlined by S. Kovalev in a September 26, 1968 Pravda article, entitled “Sovereignty and the International Obligations of Socialist Countries.” Leonid Brezhnev reiterated it in a speech at the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party on November 13, 1968, which stated:

"When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries."

In practice, this meant that "limited sovereignty" of communist parties was allowed, but no country would be allowed to leave the Warsaw Pact, disturb a nation's communist party's monopoly on power, or in any way compromise the strength of the Eastern bloc. Implicit in this doctrine was that the leadership of the Soviet Union reserved, for itself, the right to define "socialism" and "capitalism". The doctrine was used to justify the invasions of Czechoslovakia that terminated the Prague Spring in 1968 and of the non-Warsaw Pact nation of Afghanistan in 1979. The Brezhnev Doctrine was superseded by the facetiously named Sinatra Doctrine in 1988.

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