Changes

==General Secretary==

==General Secretary==

[[File:Ted and Brezhnev.jpeg|right|300px|thumb|Sen. [[Ted Kennedy]] [[colluding]] with Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev to interfere in the [[1984 Presidential election]].<ref>https://spectator.org/the-kremlins-dupe-ted-kennedys-russia-romance/</ref>]]

[[File:Ted and Brezhnev.jpeg|right|300px|thumb|Sen. [[Ted Kennedy]] [[colluding]] with Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev to interfere in the [[1984 Presidential election]].<ref>https://spectator.org/the-kremlins-dupe-ted-kennedys-russia-romance/</ref>]]

Brezhnev initially continued Khruschev's policy of peaceful co-existence and joined with U.S. President [[Richard Nixon]] in [[detente]] while continuing active support for armed [[national liberation movement]]s around the world. In 1980 the Soviet [[Politburo]] presided over by Brezhnev initiated the [[Soviet-Afghan War]] in an effort to create a Soviet Socialist Republic of Afghanistan along [[Atheism|atheist]] and [[secular]] models, subservient to the Soviet Union as another satellite-client state.

Brezhnev was the original author and planner of the nuclear freeze movement which became quite popular and fashionable in the West among [[liberal]]s such as [[Ted Kennedy]] and [[Barack Obama]] because of its anti-[[NATO]], anti-U.S. military spending and pro-socialist welfare stance.

Brezhnev was the original author and planner of the nuclear freeze movement which became quite popular and fashionable in the West among [[liberal]]s such as [[Ted Kennedy]] and [[Barack Obama]] because of its anti-[[NATO]], anti-U.S. military spending and pro-socialist welfare stance.

===Brezhnev Doctrine===

In 1968 elements of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia rapidly began to reform their rule, loosen censorship, and strengthen Western ties. In response, Soviet and other [[Warsaw Pact]] troops entered Czechoslovakia and installed a new regime.  Brezhnev announced, "Now the situation in brotherly Czechoslovakia is completely [[Psychological_warfare#Normalization|normalized]]."  Out of these events arose the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine, which warned that the Soviet Union would act to maintain its hegemony in Eastern Europe. Soviet suppression of the reform movement reduced blatant gestures of defiance on the part of Romania and served as a threatening example to the Polish Solidarity trade union movement in 1980. But it also helped disillusion communist parties in Western Europe to the extent that by 1977 most of the leading parties embraced Eurocommunism, which freed them to pursue political programs independent of Moscow's dictates.

==Later years and death==

==Later years and death==