Brezhnev stagnation

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Leonid Brezhnev.

Brezhnev stagnation (Russian: застой, zastoy; also known as Brezhnevian Stagnation, the Stagnation Period, or the Era of Stagnation) refers to a period of crisis in the history of the Soviet Union that started during Leonid Brezhnev's time as chairman of the Communist Party. The beginning of this stagnation may be tentatively marked by the mid-1970s.

Ironically, Brezhnev himself declared his time as the period of the Developed Socialism, proclaimed constructed in the 1977 Soviet Constitution: The developed Socialist society (развитое социалистическое общество) is a natural, logical stage on the road to Communism.

Stagnation was observed both in the economy and in the social life of the country.

In the economy, a sharp reduction of economic growth was observed, both by Soviet and Western statistics. The Soviet Union's foreign trade and imports, once a small part of the economy, was now of great importance, which made detente a top priority.

In social life, on the one hand, this period was characterised by domestic peace, social stability and stable (although mostly moderate) incomes for the population of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Soviet society became static. Post-Stalinist reforms initiated under Nikita Khrushchev were discontinued.

It was also the time in which social ills like crime and soaring alcohol and drug abuse began to take shape, and also the time in which dissidents within the country began to surface, symbolised by men like Shcharansky and Sakharov.

The stagnation effectively continued under Brezhnev's successors, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, until the Perestroika social reform programme was initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985.

Miscellanea

There was an ironical joke that panegyrists overlooked the fact that Brezhnev's expression "развитое общество" ("razvitoye obshchestvo" "developed society") enriched the Russian language. Until Brazhnev there were two versions of the adjective "развитое" in use: the one with the stress on the first syllable is a derivation of the verb "to develop" and the one with the stress on the second syllable is a derivation of the verb "to unweave". Brezhnev pronounced (and everyone else followed him) "razvitOye (obshchestvo)", with the stress on the third syllable, leaving room for mocking guesses what the word might mean. (Compare with "nucular" of American presidents.)

An oversized and inefficient bureaucratic apparatus headed by a club of geriatric Party leaders became the symbol of the stagnation period, and the target of political jokes. One popular joke went like this:

Brezhnev stagnation

Miscellanea

See also