Leonid Brezhnev: The World Revolutionary Movement

Leonid Brezhnev: The World Revolutionary Movement

After the Second World War, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev served his country and people with edifying devotion first as second Secretary and later First Secretary of the Party in Kazakhstan. It was in 1960 that he was elected Chairman of the Supreme Soviet and four years later in 1964, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). His courage, determination and firm devotion to all assignments was so phenomenal, as he emphasised a policy of consolidating the alliance of the Soviet Union and peoples fighting for national liberation and social emancipation.

Accordingly, Brezhnev became an advocate, a champion of the World Revolutionary Movement. In his speech celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Brezhnev maintained that: “Soviet People are constant in their support of the Asian and African peoples’ freedom struggle against imperialism, and colonial and racial oppression … we constantly support the struggles of the peoples of Africa to eliminate the colonial and racialist regimes.”

Brezhnev’s governance improved the Soviet Union’s international standing while stabilising the position of its ruling party at home. While pushing for détente between the United States, he greatly increased the Soviet nuclear arsenal and strengthened Moscow’s dominion over Central and Eastern Europe. Under Khrushchev, the Soviet Union initially supported North Vietnam out of “fraternal solidarity”. However, as the war escalated, Khrushchev urged the North Vietnamese leadership to give up the quest of liberating South Vietnam.

After Khrushchev’s ousting, Brezhnev resumed aiding the national liberation struggle in Vietnam. Over the course of the war, Brezhnev’s regime would ultimately ship $450 million worth of arms annually to North Vietnam. Ultimately, years of Soviet military aid to North Vietnam finally bore fruit when collapsing morale among the United States’ forces compelled their complete withdrawal from South Vietnam by 1973, thereby making way for the country’s unification under the leadership of the revolutionary forces two years later.

Furthermore, the massive arms buildup and widespread military interventionism under Brezhnev’s leadership, a military veteran and political Commissar of the Second World (Great Patriotic) War, substantially expanded Soviet influence abroad, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. By the mid-1970s, numerous observers argued that the Soviet Union had surpassed the United States to become the world’s strongest military power.

During Brezhnev’s leadership, the Soviet Union firmly supported “wars of national liberation” in developing countries through the provision of military and other aid to revolutionary movements and governments. He became globally recognised as the unflinching Champion of the World Revolutionary Process.

Sources:
L. I. Brezhnev, “Fifty Years of Great Achievements of Socialism”, Novosti Press Agency, 1967.
Dawn Columnist, “Brezhnev – A Great Revolutionary and Fighter for Peace”, Dawn – Monthly Journal of Umkhonto we Sizwe, Vol. 6, October/November/December 1982.
Central Committee of the South African Communist Party, “Letter: Death of Leonid Brezhnev”, The African Communist, No. 92, First Quarter 1983.

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