fascism. [177]
In sum, Brezhnevian stability, by the end of the 1970s, had degenerated into a 'neo-traditional' form of rule in which Marxism-Leninism became a set of quasi-religious rituals, party bureaucracy was corrupted by pervasive patron-client networks and covert resistance to formal Soviet priorities spread throughout society.38 Social pathologies such as alcoholism and worker absenteeism became overwhelming problems; even among Soviet emigres, who might have been expected to come predominantly from better-managed enterprises, nearly 40 per cent of those from blue-collar backgrounds surveyed reported that alcoholism and absenteeism had been problems at their place of work 'nearly all the time' or 'often'.[178]
Along with these growing signs of internal crisis, the Brezhnev elite at the turn of the decade faced a whole series of new challenges on the international arena: the turmoil caused by revolution and civil war in Afghanistan, the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland, and the election of the staunch anti-Communists Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States. Taken together, these challenges simultaneously undermined the USSR's international prestige in the Third World, in Europe and in the United States, at a time when the CPSU leadership as a whole was far too old and sick to respond with any vigour or creativity.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 was the single most disastrous decision of the Brezhnev leadership. The origins of this intervention lay in Afghanistan's April 1978 Communist revolution by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) against the dictator Mohammad Daoud - with whom the USSR had previously had quite good relations. By the summer, the Khalq faction ofNur Mohammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin had manoeuvred to defeat the rival, more moderate Parcham faction, led by Babrak Karmal, and instituted a radical programme to achieve socialism in Afghanistan in short order. Agricultural collectivisation was initiated, Islamic religious leaders were attacked and women were unveiled and brought into schools and universities. In response, mass resistance broke out in much of the country. With the success of Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution in Iran in February 1979, the civil war in Afghanistan appeared even more threatening to the USSR, with the potential to provoke Islamic uprisings throughout Soviet Central Asia and into the Russian heartland itself. In March, several dozen Soviet advisers and their families were killed during anti-Communist uprisings in Herat; Taraki and Aminbegan to request direct Soviet military support. Still, at this stage, the Soviet leadership remained opposed to direct military intervention in Afghanistan. Then, in September, immediately after a trip to Moscow to meet with Brezhnev, Taraki was killed in a gunfight with Amin's forces, and was replaced by Amin as PDPA leader. With the unpredictable Amin now in charge of Afghanistan, and reports that Chinese, Pakistani, Iranian and
Saudi Arabian arms were flowing to support the mujahedeen forces, pressure on the Soviet Union to intervene increased. Finally, on 12 December 1979, a group of just four Politburo members - Ustinov, Andropov, Gromyko and Brezhnev himself, who was in such poor health that he was barely able to sign his name to the intervention order - made the decision to send 40,000 Soviet troops into Afghanistan.
The results were catastrophic. The Soviet military presence only further inspired the diverse anti-communist forces in Afghanistan to rally against the foreign invader. The USSR's reputation in the post-colonial world as a supporter of'national liberation movements' was fatally undermined; the US and the USSR now seemed to be two equally imperialistic superpowers. President Jimmy Carter, who had previously tried to sustain the momentum of detente, despite increasing public criticism of the Soviet human rights record and growing scepticism about Soviet intentions in the Third World - in particular, through efforts to convince the US Senate to sign the unratified SALT II treaty - now broke with Brezhnev completely. Carter announced an embargo on further US grain sales to the USSR, the cancellation of American participation in the Moscow Olympic Games of 1980 and a rapid increase in US defence spending. As the Soviet presence in Afghanistan dragged on, morale in the Red Army plummeted. Soviet soldiers, told that they would be fighting American and Chinese troops to defend socialism in Afghanistan, instead found themselves shooting at ordinary Afghan citizens waging a determined guerrilla struggle. Returning Afghan veterans suffered problems ofpsycholog- ical adjustment and drug addiction, contributing to the general social malaise of the late Brezhnev era.
Meanwhile, an equally serious challenge to Soviet legitimacy emerged in Poland with the rise of the Solidarity trade union movement, led by electrician Lech Walesa. Poland had long been one of the most restive countries in the Soviet bloc, and due to Soviet compromises with Gomulka made after the uprisings of 1956, it still maintained a private agricultural sector and an independent Catholic Church. The Workers' Defence Committee (KOR), formed in 1976 in the wake of the signing of the Helsinki Accords and party leader Gierek's announced price rises, marked an important advance in the co-ordination of intellectual and working-class opposition to Polish Communism. The election in 1978 of the Polish Pope John Paul II, and his subsequent
1979 visit to greet millions of supporters in Poland, further galvanised social resistance to the regime. When Gierek announced additional price hikes in
1980 in response to the growing economic crisis brought about by severe
Polish indebtedness, the stage was set for a genuinely revolutionary uprising. Strikes in the Lenin Shipyards of Gdansk soon led to an anti-Communist protest movement that quickly spread through every sector of the Polish population.
The rise of Solidarity confronted the Brezhnev elite with a severe ideological dilemma. How could one make Marxist-Leninist sense of a true workers' revolution - directed against the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP)? Were the Soviet Union to intervene militarily to crush the Solidarity movement, the notion that Communism represented the fruits of a workers' revolution would appear utterly farcical. Moreover, the last chances for detente with the West would surely disappear, and the resulting burden on the Red Army (already engaged in bloody battles in Afghanistan) might be overwhelming. While the Brezhnev Politburo debated, Walesa and Solidarity fought courageously to wrest political and economic power away from the PUWP. The ailing Gierek was replaced as party leader by Stanislaw Kania in September 1980; Kania, unable to stem the tide of Polish opposition, was in turn replaced by General Wojciech Jaruzelski, head of the Polish army, in October 1981. On 13 December, with full Soviet support, Jaruzelski declared martial law in Poland and immediately arrested the Solidarity leadership. Over 10,000 Solidarity activists and supporters were jailed in the following months.[179] Jaruzelski's repression of Solidarity in Poland, while temporarily successful in quelling the direct threat of anti-Communist revolution, was nonetheless another major international defeat for the USSR. The need to rely on armed force to run the Polish party-state exposed the naked coercion underlying Soviet rule in Eastern Europe. Nor did there seem to be any long-term solution to the growing economic burden of the failing East European economies on the Soviet Union. Solidarity itself continued its activities underground, and Communist control over Poland remained tenuous.
178
Paul Gregory, 'Productivity Slack, and Time Theft in the Soviet Economy', in James Millar (ed.),
179
MarkKramer, 'Jaruzelski, the Soviet Union, and the Imposition ofMartial Law in Poland: New Light on the Mystery of December 1981',