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The Promise and Failure of ‘Developed Socialism’: The Soviet ‘Thaw’ and the Crucible of the Prague Spring, 1964–1972

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2006

JEREMI SURI
JEREMI SURI
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Wisconsin, 3211 Humanities Building, 455 North Park Street, Madison, WI 53706, United States; suri@wisc.edu.
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Abstract

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This article examines the international history of the early Brezhnev era, 1964–72, when the Soviet Union simultaneously became more politically stable and socially stagnant. Evidence from a variety of sources indicates that, contrary to the presumptions of many observers, Brezhnev had a serious programme (‘developed socialism’) for revitalising the Soviet system. This programme included a number of international and domestic measures to improve Soviet technology and consumer economy within a strictly managed political framework of authority. Improved relations with the United States and Western Europe (‘détente’) were crucial to this programme. Continued Cold War competition gave ‘developed socialism’ a necessary source of legitimacy. Brezhnev succeeded in selling this programme to other Cold War leaders, but he confronted debilitating resistance at home. Rising domestic expectations within the Soviet empire, the maturation of the post-Stalin generation of citizens, and pervasive social unrest exposed the hypocrisy and shallowness of ‘developed socialism’. Although Brezhnev's programme sought to give the Soviet system a new start, by the late 1960s it contributed to a deepening rot.

Type
Research Article
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , May 2006 , pp. 133 - 158
Copyright
Cambridge University Press 2006

Footnotes

The author would like to thank David Holloway, Amir Weiner and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments.
Jeremi Suri is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente (2003) and the editor of The Global Revolutions of 1968 (2006). He is presently completing a study of Henry Kissinger's career, focusing on its meanings for the transformation of international politics, society and culture in the twentieth century.