Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (1906–1982), General Secretary of the CPSU (1964–1982), presided over the era of "stability of cadres" — the long plateau between Khrushchev's chaos and collapse.
Record
- Reversed Khrushchev's wildest schemes (sovnarkhoz fragmentation, corn mania); Kosygin reforms (1965) briefly experimented with profit indicators before being shelved after Prague 1968.
- Oil-boom economics: high energy prices financed grain imports and consumer goods while productivity stagnated — the "era of stagnation" (zastoi) in retrospect.
- Military parity achieved with the US; détente and Helsinki (1975); Afghanistan intervention (1979) as overextension began.
- Gerontocracy: the average Politburo age climbed past 70; corruption networks (the "era of lavish feasts") metastasized in Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Assessment
Brezhnevism is consolidation without renewal: the revolution's gains were defended administratively while its ideological life died. Infrared reads it as the necessary caution against confusing stability with health — a socialism that stops mobilizing the masses for class struggle is already losing it (see Husákism, Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov).