Normalization and Soviet Foreign Policy: Brezhnev to Gorbachev

The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 ended the optimum chance for a fundamental reform of a socialist regime and started the long process of the decay of communism that was to culminate in the Velvet Revolution just over two decades later. In foreign policy, the proposal to revitalize detente was an implicit recognition that the Soviet Union was intent on ending its isolation from the world economy and on ultimately availing itself of opportunities in world markets. By mid-1988, Gorbachev&s;s policy statements had indicated the shift toward a de facto abandonment of the last vestiges of the Brezhnev Doctrine.

The process of normalization introduced in 1969 was completed in its broad outlines by 1971. The only reform of 1968 to survive was federalization, by which both the Czech Lands and Slovakia assumed republican status and contributed to the appearance that the Slovaks had gained from the normalization.