Brezhnev Doctrine

From dKosopedia

Category: Soviet Union

In the Brezhnev Doctrine, Premier Leonid Brezhnev made it the official policy of the Soviet Union to militarily interfere with the internal affairs of other communist nations.

When forces that are hostile to socialism and try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries.

The Brezhnev Doctrine was delivered in a November 13, 1968 speech to the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party in an effort to justify the August 20 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact nations. In the spring and summer of 1968 ("Prague Spring"), Czechoslovakia had experimented with political liberalization, to the chagrin of the other Soviet Bloc governments.