Civil-military relations in Soviet defensemaking from Brezhnev to Gorbachev

Abstract

This thesis aims to elaborate on Soviet defensemaking with special attention to the process of evolution that characterized civil-military relations from Leonid I. Brezhnev and his successors up to Mikhail S. Gorbachev inclusive. It attempts an account of how the two parties perceived and responded to the external threats -in particular from the ‘West’ (the U.S. and NATO)- faced by the Union since the mid- 1960s and how the military endeavored to prevail in intrabureaucratic discussions in order to have a major say in the formulation of Soviet foreign policy.