Foreign and Defence Policy

Abstract

Soviet Party Congresses do not provide a forum for real public debate about policy, but they are the stage from which authoritative statements of policy are made. At the XXIV Congress in 1971 Leonid Brezhnev outlined the Peace Programme that has been a central feature of Soviet detente policy over the last ten years. This Programme was further elaborated at the XXV Congress in 1976. But since then, and in particular since the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December 1979, East—West relations have taken a sharp turn for the worse. The XXVI Party Congress in February 1981 provided an opportunity for the Soviet leadership to make clear its attitude to the worsening climate of international relations. It was unlikely that Brezhnev would renounce the policy of detente with which he personally has been so closely associated (the XXIV Congress marked his emergence as the dominant figure in Soviet foreign policy). In the event, his report to the Congress attempted to breathe new life into the policy first advanced ten years before, and to portray the Soviet Union as the champion of peace in a troubled world.KeywordsForeign PolicyDefence PolicyWestern GovernmentSoviet LeaderSoviet PolicyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.