Brandt and Kiesinger paved the way for a new social-democratic Ostpolitik in the late 1960s, even though there was strong resentment on the Eastern side, also linked to the new dominant policy and Soviet attitude to the other Republics. After the invasion of Czechoslovakia, at the Polish Communist Party Congress on 12 November 1968, the Soviet party chief Leonid Brezhnev enunciated the so-called “Brezhnev Doctrine”, which affirmed Moscow’s right to intervene in the affairs of Socialist countries in order to strengthen Marxist-Leninist principles.1 Brezhnev’s discourse had a destructive impact on Western perceptions of the Soviet political order and its reliability.