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11 - The Brezhnev era

from Part I - Russia and the Soviet Union: The Story through Time

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Stephen Hanson
Edited by
Ronald Grigor Suny
Ronald Grigor Suny
Affiliation:
University of Chicago and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Summary

The nature of Soviet politics and society during Leonid Brezhnev’s tenure as General Secretary of the CPSU from 1964 to 1982 has until recently remained a comparatively unexplored scholarly topic. Among historians, the turn towards social history ‘from below’ that has so greatly enriched our understanding of the Soviet regime under Lenin and Stalin has yet to inspire a parallel re-examination of everyday life in the Brezhnev era. Meanwhile, political scientists, with few exceptions, have given up study of the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union to focus on more contemporary themes. Compounding these gaps within history and political science are continuing problems of documentation. Although the records of Central Committee plenums and many materials from the CPSU General Department archive from the period are now available, and important archival materials are also accessible in many of the former Soviet republics, other key historical archives from the period – in particular, the so-called Presidential Archive containing documentation of meetings of the CPSU Politburo and Secretariat, as well as the KGB, military and foreign intelligence archives – remain largely closed to independent scholars. Post- 1991 memoirs by Soviet high officials and their relatives – although many do cover the Brezhnev era – have tended to emphasise developments during the Gorbachev period. And despite the presence of millions of eyewitnesses still living in the former Soviet Union today, transcriptions of oral histories of the period are practically non-existent. Finally, scholars also lack a consensual analytical framework for making sense of Brezhnevism as a regime type.

Keywords

Nikita KhrushchevSoviet politicsBrezhnevismBrezhnev eraBolshevik revolutionStalinist system
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Russia , pp. 292 - 315
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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