Brezhnev Doctrine

The Soviet policy asserting a right to intervene in socialist countries when their communist governments or socialist systems were threatened. It justified maintaining the Eastern Bloc under Soviet influence.

Prague Spring: A 1968 Czechoslovak reform movement that sought to create “socialism with a human face.” Its suppression prompted the doctrine’s clearest public justification.
Sovereignty: The authority of a state to govern itself without external control. The doctrine explicitly constrained the sovereignty of allied socialist states.
Eastern Bloc: The Soviet-aligned communist states of Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. The doctrine defined the limits of political change across this bloc.
Sinatra Doctrine: A name for Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy allowing Eastern European states to choose their own political paths. It reversed the Brezhnev Doctrine’s restriction on socialist states’ autonomy.
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia: The August 1968 military intervention that ended the Prague Spring. The invasion became the action the doctrine was used to defend.
Limited sovereignty: A condition in which a state’s authority over its affairs is restricted by another power. This principle captures the doctrine’s practical limit on allied independence.
Hungarian Revolution of 1956: A nationwide uprising in Hungary that Soviet forces crushed in 1956. It was an earlier intervention that foreshadowed the doctrine’s logic.
Gorbachev's reforms: The political and economic changes Mikhail Gorbachev introduced in the Soviet Union during the 1980s. They accompanied Moscow’s retreat from enforcing the doctrine.
Leonid Brezhnev: The leader of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982. His 1968 speech articulated the policy later named after him.
Socialism with a human face: The reform program associated with the Prague Spring, combining political liberalization with continued socialism. Soviet leaders treated its reforms as a threat to the socialist system.

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