In addition, they tried to accelerate economic growth, which had slowed significantly in Khrushchev’s last years as ruler. After initial success in creating economic growth, unyielding individuals within the party stopped reforms, fearing that they would weaken the party’s prestige and power. The reforms themselves have never been officially abolished, they are simply marginalized and have no effect. No other radical economic reforms were implemented during the Brezhnev era, and economic growth began to stagnate in the early and mid-1970s.
Brezhnev, after taking power, began to help the communist resistance in Vietnam again. In February 1965, Kosygin traveled to Hanoi with dozens of Soviet Air Force generals and economic experts. During the Soviet visit, President Lyndon B. Johnson had allowed US bombing of North Vietnamese soil in retaliation for the recent attack on Pleiku Air Base by the Viet Cong.
Compared to countries with a comparable GDP per capita in 1928, the Soviet Union experienced significant growth. Resources were made available for rapid industrialization, significantly increasing Soviet capacity in heavy industry and capital goods in the 1930s. The main motivation for industrialization was the preparation for war, mainly because of the mistrust of the external capitalist world. The Soviet Union adopted a commando economy, centralizing and directing the production and distribution of goods by the government.
It was at this time that support for the Bolsheviks grew and one of the most important figures, Leon Trotsky, was elected President of the Petrograd Soviet, who had full control over the defense of the city, especially the military power of the city . On October 24, in the early days of the October Revolution, the Provisional Government went against the Bolsheviks, arrested activists, and destroyed pro-communist propaganda. The Bolsheviks were able to portray this as an attack on the People’s Soviet and received support for the Petrograd Red Guard to take over the Provisional Government. Administrative offices and government buildings were taken with little opposition or bloodshed. The generally accepted end of this revolutionary transition period, which will lead to the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, lies in the attack and conquest of the poorly defended Winter Palace on the night of October 26, 1917.
Elections were held throughout the USSR in March and April 1989 for the new Congress of People’s Deputies. Gorbachev, as Secretary General of the Communist Party, could be forced to resign at any time if the communist elite were not satisfied with it. At the same time, Article 6 of the Constitution was amended to deprive CPSU of a monopoly on political power. Soviet production stagnated due to years of military accumulation of the Soviet Union at the expense of internal development and complex systemic problems in the supply economy. Failed attempts at reform, a stagnating economy and the success of the American powers against the troops of the Soviet Union in the war in Afghanistan led to a general sense of discontent, especially in the Baltic republics and Eastern Europe.
This reform was also not fully implemented and when Kosygin died in 1980, it was practically abandoned by his successor, Nikolai Tikhonov. Tikhonov told the Soviet people at the 26th party congress that the reform would Soviet collectibles be implemented, or at least parts of it, during the eleventh five-year plan (1981–85). Several Soviet scientists see the reform as the last major pre-perestroika reform initiative presented by the Soviet government.
In another speech, this time in Tashkent, RSS of Uzbekistan in 1982, Brezhnev warned the First World powers that they would use the Sino-Soviet division against the Soviet Union and said it would provoke “stress and mistrust”. Brezhnev had offered China a non-aggression pact, but the conditions include a waiver of China’s territorial claims, and would have defenseless China against threats from the USSR. In 1972, The President of the United States, Richard Nixon, visited Beijing to restore relations with the PRC, that only seemed to confirm the Soviet fear of Chinese-American collusion. Relations between Moscow and Beijing remained extremely hostile during the 1970s, and the latter decided that “social” imperialism was a greater danger than capitalist imperialism, and even after Mao Zedong’s death it showed no signs. By then, the Soviet Union had defended an Asian collective security treaty defending each country from a possible attack by China, but when the latter had involved Vietnam in a border war in early 1979, Moscow was satisfied with verbal protests.
Several ambitious extraction projects have been launched that aimed to supply raw materials for both military and consumer goods. The need for fuel in the Soviet Union declined from the 1970s to the 1980s, both due to rubles in gross social product and rubles in industrial product. Initially, this decline grew very rapidly, but gradually slowed between 1970 and 1975. David Wilson, historian, believed that by the end of the century, the gas industry would represent 40% of Soviet fuel production. The USSR is said to have 2-2.5% economic growth in theory from the Soviet energy fields in the 1990s. However, the energy sector had many difficulties, including the country’s high military spending and hostile relations with the First World.