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Probably the least interesting and least talked about Soviet leader (not counting the ones who were only there for <2 years), I don’t really know much about him myself but I was feeling randomly curious so I skimmed NATOpedia to get a rough impression.

It seems like the Brezhnev-era would be the best time to be alive in the USSR, though that has to do more with external circumstances - he didn’t have to deal with a lack of industrialization or invasions either during the revolution or WWII. However, economic growth was slow, despite the government investing in basic necessities and in agricultural production. In terms of technology, during this time, the USSR made the poor decision to use IBM’s designs rather than investing in domestic computer development, which may have set them back and contributed to brain drain.

In terms of foreign policy, Brezhnev deviated from Khrushchev’s focus on missiles by focusing more on strengthening conventional military forces, increasing spending eightfold to 12% of GNP by the time of his death. He continued the policy of detente, and (perhaps because of the military investment) negotiated and signed the SALT treaties, reducing the past nuclear brinkmanship. At the same time, he resumed support for the Vietnamese communists who Khrushchev had abandoned due to their refusal to negotiate a partition. However, he also made the disastrous decision to invade Afghanistan. He also sent troops into Czechoslovakia to suppress what I assume was a color revolution.

Did his uninspiring leadership and failure to address economic stagnation contribute to Gorbachev’s dismantling of the USSR? Or perhaps that was already set in motion from Kruschev, (or caused afterward by Gorby), and the take is that he did a decent job steering the country through a relatively peaceful era, prioritizing human needs like housing over consumer goods?

For that matter, I’m kind of puzzled as to why his policies weren’t more effective, I would expect providing things like housing would stimulate the economy by providing more consumer consumption (though perhaps the problem was supply not keeping up with demand?), and the USSR still had to rely on food imports despite pretty substantial investments in agriculture. For a critical take on him, I’m not sure what he should’ve done differently.

However, I don’t really have a dog in the fight - if there is a fight. Do people have strong opinions about Brezhnev? I’m mostly just curious to hear people’s perspectives.

  • christian [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    When I was in sixth grade we had to choose a biography from our library to do a book report on one of our heroes, but because I was wicked underground none of my heroes had biographies available in our middle school library so I got frustrated and just pulled a book at random and got this guy.

    I don’t remember a single thing that was actually in the book, just that Leonid Brezhnev was officially my hero in sixth grade.

    edit: I thought his first name was Lenoid for well over two decades until checking just now because apparently I was terrible at reading back then.

    second edit: I never really took time to think about what a middle-school teacher would think about a kid that says their hero is Leonid Brezhnev.

    third edit: called him Lenoid again in the second edit

      • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Looking at a list of senators by age really drives home how bad the US gerontocracy is. Like, Elizabeth Warren is one year younger than Brezhnev was at the time of his death, and she doesn’t even register as being super old (at least to me), because the standard for “super old” has been distorted by actual fossils.

        If Brezhnev was a present-day US senator at the time of his death, there would be 11 senators older than him, and that’s honestly still pretty bad. Like if you’re, idk, 70, it’s probably time to pass the torch.

  • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I would expect providing things like housing would stimulate the economy by providing more consumer consumption

    This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Soviet economy stemming from applying neoliberal market concepts to a centralised, publicly-owned economy.

    Creating more housing, which the Soviet Union did extensively for most of its existence, didn’t “raise consumption” because housing prices weren’t determined by supply and demand. By the Brezhnev era, rent expenses represented an average of the 3% family income, housing simply wasn’t a concern in economic terms. Most people had access to extremely affordable housing through their union, which led to efficient allocation of people in proximity to their workplace instead of “affordable peripheral neighbourhoods”.

    The housing shortage that existed (as a necessary consequence of the non-industrialized economy of the tsarist empire becoming destroyed in WW1, civil war and WW2, with basically everyone in the country needing housing) simply meant that many people had to wait on a list to access housing. Of course, the wait times were much shorter than the modern “hidden waiting times” for housing in more developed and richer countries of the west, which instead of through a list, mean that young people live until 30 years old (if they’re lucky) not owning housing and renting from landlords or living at their parents’, trying to save enough for a mortgage entry payment.

    Furthermore, the Soviet economy didn’t need to, or intend to, “boost consumer consumption” in order to become more productive. Production of consumer goods was run in what we could call a “shortage economy”, in which you’d manufacture just under the demand for as many products as you could. The reason for this is that the USSR intended to be mostly self-sufficient and not rely on the exploitation of the global south or unreliable trading partnerships with western countries. All labour was utilised (there was no unemployment), and all resources available were exploited to the degree that labor and existing capital allowed. Producing more of one good, necessarily meant divesting labour and resources from another good. Therefore, overproducing certain goods would necessarily lead to other goods being underproduced. The decision made by the Soviet economic planning was to just about exactly cover the demand for every good they possibly could, in order to optimize labour and resources so that nothing was wasted. There are arguments for and against this, but shortages of some goods and waiting lists for the most part weren’t “failures of planning” or “the inefficiency of communism”: it was simply the logical consequence of trying to match the demand as closely as possible in order never to waste anything. It was a feature, not a bug.

    and the USSR still had to rely on food imports despite pretty substantial investments in agriculture

    I don’t think this is the case. It didn’t “rely” on food import. The meat production in the USSR was boosted heavily since Khruschyov, and meat requires big amounts of grain production to be sustained. The climate of many of the USSR grain-producing areas isn’t as stable as that of other grain-producing regions of the world, which leads to a higher variability in crop yield. Some particularly hard years, imports of grain were made in order to feed the cattle, but it’s not a lack of food for the population that happened, it’s just a political decision (that I actually disagree with) of increasing meat consumption for the sake of consumerism. Then again, 20th century standards I guess. Future communist experiments will be more aware of the problems with consumerism.

    If you want some good analysis on the period of economic stagnation in the 70s, I suggest that you read “Farm to Factory” by Robert C. Allen. It’s an excellent book covering the basics of the Soviet economy from before its inception to its end. “Is the Red Flag Flying” by Albert Szymanski also covers some interesting parts of the economy, as does another book of his “Human Rights in the Soviet Union”.