Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: Détente Ends

Brezhnev's foreign policy during the 1970s supported Marxist revolutionary governments in Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, Somalia, Ethiopia, Grenada, Nicaragua, and South Yemen, but it stumbled in applying the Brezhnev doctrine to Afghanistan. A 10-year occupation of that country (1979–89) pitted the forces of the USSR against the same sort of indigenous, nationalistic guerrilla army that the United States had faced in Vietnam. The United States' response to the invasion was swift; it shelved the second SALT agreement, suspended grain shipments, and led a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The U.S. and European governments, despite domestic opposition, placed new intermediate range Pershing II missiles in Europe, and a staunch anti-Communist, Ronald Reagan, was elected President of the United States. Détente was over.

Almost in synchrony with the breakdown in international relations, the Stalin-era leadership began to fail. Kosygin resigned and died in 1980. Brezhnev grew ill. His declining health slowed the Soviet response to the 1980–82 challenge posed by Poland's Solidarity union. Soviet economists, who had been secretly relying on doctored economic figures and raw material exports to gloss over the economy's deficiencies, could not disguise the USSR's failure to meet its Five-Year Plan goals. Fortuitous increases in gold and oil prices in the 1970s had camouflaged the decay, but the USSR possessed few manufacturing exports, the lifeblood of all developing economies. Life expectancy for men began to decline due to alcohol abuse, a fact so embarrassing to the government that it stopped issuing life expectancy figures.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Dissolution of the Union
• Glasnost and Perestroika
• The Gorbachev Era
• Détente Ends
• The Era of Détente
• Foreign Relations under Brezhnev
• Domestic Policy under Brezhnev
• The Brezhnev Era
• The Cuban Missile Crisis
• Foreign Relations under Khrushchev
• Domestic Policy under Khrushchev
• The Khrushchev Era
• The Cold War
• World War II
• Pre–World War II Foreign Relations
• Conservatism and Purges
• The First Five-Year Plan
• The Stalin Era
• Early Years
• Bibliography

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