THE BREZHNEV DOCTRINE

Utterly convinced of an impending NATO assault on the Warsaw Pact, Premier Leonid Brezhnev pushes back by expanding the Soviet nuclear arsenal. Moscow’s influence spreads as far as Central America. All this is done at the cost of long-term economic stagnation.

In the last dozen years of his Soviet premiership Brezhnev diverts vast resources to communist proxies such as Fidel Castro’s Cuba