Such problems would be intimidating for any government;
they were particularly so for the elderly generation
of party leaders surrounding Leonid Brezhnev, many of
whom were cautious to a fault. While some undoubtedly
recognized the need for reform and innovation, they were
paralyzed by the fear of instability and change. The problem
worsened during the late 1970s, when Brezhnev’s
health began to deteriorate.
Brezhnev died in November 1982 and was succeeded
by Yuri Andropov (1914 –1984), a party veteran and
head of the Soviet secret services. During his brief tenure
as party chief, Andropov was a vocal advocate of reform,
but most of his initiatives were limited to the familiar
nostrums of punishment for wrongdoers and moral
exhortations to Soviet citizens to work harder. At the
same time, material incentives were still officially discouraged
and generally ineffective. Andropov had been
ailing when he was selected to succeed Brezhnev as party
chief, and when he died after only a few months in office,
little had been done to change the system. He was succeeded,
in turn, by a mediocre party stalwart, the elderly
Konstantin Chernenko (1911–1985). With the Soviet
system in crisis, Moscow seemed stuck in a time warp. As
one concerned observer told an American journalist, “I
had a sense of foreboding, like before a storm. That there
was something brewing in people and there would be a
time when they would say, ‘That’s it. We can’t go on living
like this. We can’t. We need to redo everything.’ ”
World History
