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Sources of the Brezhnev Doctrine of Limited Sovereignty and Intervention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2016

Leon Romaniecki
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1. Claim to the Right of Intervention in the Defence of Socialism: The Brezhnev Doctrine asserts the Soviet Union's right to intervene in the internal affairs of the states comprising the Socialist Bloc. The source of this Doctrine is Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko's declaration at the June 27, 1968, session of the Supreme Soviet, when he announced that the Socialist commonwealth would not tolerate the withdrawal of any of its constituent parts, should it be attempted.

This statement formed the basis of what is called the “Brezhnev Doctrine”, as formulated in an article appearing in Pravda on September 26, 1968. The Doctrine is designed to affirm the “limited sovereignty” of every Socialist State and to justify the military intervention of members of the Warsaw Pact in Czechoslovakia.

The Pravda article asserted that Czechoslovakia's self-determination impaired the essential interests of the Socialist commonwealth and required the “Soviet Union and the other Socialist countries…to take actions…in the fulfillment of their international obligations towards the Czechoslovak nation and in the defence of their Socialist achievements”.

The Soviet Union's special role within the Socialist commonwealth and its right to intervene in its name was justified as follows:

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Articles
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Israel Law Review , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , October 1970 , pp. 527 - 541
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1970

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References

1 See Pravda, June 28, 1968.

2 See Kovaliev, “Sovereignty and the International Obligations of the Socialist Countries”, Ibid., September 26, 1968.

3 Ibid.

4 United Nations, General Assembly, 23rd Session, Meeting 1679.

5 Izvestia, October 13, 1968.

6 The concept “counter-revolutionary” as a normative concept was introduced into the Soviet Criminal Code in 1922. In the new Criminal Code of the Soviet Union (1960–62) the concept “counter-revolutionary crime” was replaced by the concept of “an especially dangerous crime”. See Entsiklopedicheskii Slovar' Pravovykh Znanii (Moscow, 1965), pp. 366, 480.

7 Lenin, , Sochineniia, vol. 24 (3rd ed.; Moscow, 1935), p. 26Google Scholar; see also Korey, W., “The Comintern and the Geneology of the Brezhnev Doctrine”, Problems of Communism (May-June, 1969), pp. 52–2.Google Scholar

8 Degras, J., ed., The Communist International, 1919–1943: Documents, vol. I (London, 1935), p. 5.Google Scholar

9 Zinoviev, , Protokoly, VIII s'ezda RKP (B), p. 138.Google Scholar

10 Zinoviev, , Sochineniia, vol. VII (1), pp. 214–15Google Scholar; W. Korey, op. cit., p. 55.

11 Zinoviev, , Die Weltrevolution und die III Kommunistische Internationale (Hamburg, 1920), p. 47.Google Scholar

12 As cited in: Carr, E.H., The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1923, vol. 1 (London, 1950), p. 105Google Scholar, n. 3 and p. 263, n. 2.

13 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 263, n. 5.

14 Stalin, , Sochineniia, vol. V (1921–1923), (Moscow, 1953), p. 265.Google Scholar

15 Pravda, September 26, 1968.

16 Levin, D.B., Kaliuzhnania, G.P., eds., Mezhdunarodnoe Pravo (Moscow, 1964), p. 115.Google Scholar

17 U.N. Doc. A/RES/2131 (XX)/Rev. 1, January 14, 1966.

18 Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Rumania, USSR—Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, signed at Warsaw, May 14, 1955. Text in (1955) 49 A.J.I.L. Supp., 195–97.

19 Lenin, , Sochineniia, vol. 25. (3rd ed., Moscow, 1953), p. 512.Google Scholar

20 In the first meeting of the Genoa Conference in April, 1922, Chicherin, the Commissar for Foreign Affairs, spoke of “parallel existence” (paralel'noe sosushchestvovanie). In 1925, Stalin spoke of a cooperative life in peace (mir‘noesozhitel’stvo) and in 1927 he spoke for the first time of coexistence (sosushchestvovanie). Sochineniia, vol. VII, p. 261; vol X, p. 288.

21 Malenkov announced the new line in his speech to the meeting of the Supreme Soviet on August 8, 1953.

22 See Romaniecki, L., “The Soviet Outlook on International Law”, (1969) 25 HaPraklit 656.Google Scholar

23 Korovin, E., in Kozevnikov, , ed. Mezhdunarodnoie Pravo (Moscow, 1957), pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

24 See Khrushchev's Report to the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party, Pravda, February 2, 1956.

25 As cited in: Ostprobleme, No. 32 (1956), p. 1089.

26 Pravda, February 11, 1955.

27 Shurshalov, V., Osnovnye Voprosy Teorii Mezhdunarodnogo Dogovora (Fundamental Problems of the Theory of International Treaties), (Moscow, 1959). p. 97.Google Scholar

28 Tunkin, G. I., XXI S'ezd KPSS i Mezhdunarodnoe Pravo, Sovetskoe Gosudarstvo i Pravo, (1959) (21st Congress of the Communist Party and International Law), No. 6, p. 48Google Scholar; Printsip Mir'nogo Sosushchestvovaniia General'naia Liniia Vneshne Poloticheskoi Deiatel'nosti KPSS i Sovetskogo Gosudarstva (1963) (The Principle of Peaceful Coexistence—the Main Line of the Foreign Policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet State), no. 7, pp. 26–37.

29 Cho, M. Y., Japans asiatische Verantwortung, Aussenpolitik (1965), pp. 342–344.Google Scholar

30 Schmitt, Carl, “Volkerrechtliche Grossraumordnung mit Interventionsverbot fur raumfremde Mächte—Ein Beitrag zum Reichsbegriff”, Volkerrecht (3rd ed.; Berlin, Leipzig and Vienna, 1941).Google Scholar

31 Ibid., pp. 19, 51.

32 See Krakau, Knud, Missionsbewusstsein und Volkerrechtsdoktrin der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (Frankfurt-on-Main and Berlin, 1967), p. 431.Google Scholar

33 (1968) 17 Kommunist, 99.

34 United Nations, General Assembly, 23rd Session, General Debate, Meeting 1679.

35 U.N. Doc. A/AC.125/L.65, September 30, 1968.

36 Text in (1955) 49 A.J.I.L. Supp., 195.

37 See: L. Romaniecki, op. cit.

38 See: Pashukanis, E., Ocherki po Mezhdunarodnomu Pravu (Essays on International Law), 1935.Google Scholar

39 Kozevnikov, F. I. and Blishchenko, I. P., “Sotsializm i Sovremennoie Mezhdunarodnoe Pravo” (Socialism and Contemporary International Law), (1970) 4 Sovetskoe Gosudarstvo i Pravo, 88.Google Scholar

40 See: Vyshinsky, A. J., The Law of the Soviet State (English Translation) (New York, 1951).Google Scholar

41 Kozevnikov and Blishchenko, op. cit., p. 91.

42 See: Sharmazanashvili, G., “Poniatie Samopomoshchi v Mezhdunarodonom Prave” (The Notion of Self-Defence in International Law), Sovietski Ezhegodnik Mezhdunarodnogo Prava (Moscow, 1960), p. 309.Google Scholar

43 See: S. Kovalev's article in Pravda, September 26, 1968.

44 Ibid. See also the article by Kozevnikov and Blishchenko, “Socialism and Contemporary International Law”, op. cit.

45 Pravda, October 29, 1969.