Brezhnev Doctrine

Soviet doctrine of 1968 designed to justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia. It laid down for the USSR as a duty the direct maintenance of ‘correct’ socialism in countries within the Soviet sphere of influence. In 1979 it was extended, by the invasion of Afghanistan, to the direct establishment of ‘correct’ socialism in countries not already within its sphere. The doctrine was renounced by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989. Soviet troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan, and the satellite states of Eastern Europe were allowed to decide their own forms of government, under what was dubbed the ‘Sinatra doctrine’.