Khrushchev vs. Brezhnev

In internal affairs he declared that the USSR had achieved "developed socialism," a category which signified that socialism was no longer a transitional stage between capitalism and communism, but in itself a whole historical stage. This was necessitated due to the obvious inability of the USSR to reach "Communism" by 1980, as Khrushchev had demagogically promised the Soviet people. Otherwise the revisionism of Khrushchev carried on over into Brezhnev: Stalin continued to be denounced (although the Soviet revisionists stopped any further "destalinization" since it had run its course for those in charge), "peaceful coexistence" Ã* la Khrushchev continued to be upheld, etc.

In foreign affairs Brezhnev took on a more "hardline" posture. To quote MIM:

Because he ousted Khruschev and adopted a "neutral" policy toward Stalin, the Western imperialist press reviled him as harboring Stalinists. Although he replaced Khruschev, he kept the Soviet Union on a course to the right of Mao Zedong in China. Indeed, under Brezhnev, the phony Soviet Union actually carried out a border war against China and asked Nixon for permission to drop nuclear weapons on China.

Brezhnev's rule was known as a time of superpower contention with the United $tates. He pushed detente, but he also provided "aid" to Third World liberation struggles willing to adopt his party's revisionist theses. At the same time, people like Yeltsin and Gorbachev thrived under Brezhnev's rule and later came to criticize it for "stagnationism."

The same as under Khrushchev: it had "fulfilled its historical role" and gave way under socialism to the "state of the whole people."

When the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia there was some talk of this being an expression of the "international dictatorship of the proletariat," which was in line with the theory of "limited sovereignty" promoted by Brezhnev, wherein the interests of the "world socialist system" (i.e. USSR) permitted violations of sovereignty in other, ostensibly member-countries.