1 - From Brezhnev to Gorbachev

Summary

In early 1982 Leonid Brezhnev was apparently at the height of his powers. General Secretary of the ruling Communist Party since October 1964 and, since 1977, chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet or head of state, he had presided over a steady rise in living standards at home and an expansion of Soviet influence throughout the wider world. Under Brezhnev's leadership gross social product had doubled between 1960 and 1970 and more than trebled by 1980. Industrial production had more than quadrupled. Agricultural production had increased much more modestly (in 1981 and 1982 the harvests were so poor that the figures were simply suppressed), but the real incomes of ordinary citizens had more than doubled over the two decades and the wages paid to collective farmers had increased more than four times. Nor was this simply statistics. There were about three times as many members of the society with higher education, for instance, as there had been on Brezhnev's accession. There were more hospital beds, more flats, more motor cars, more refrigerators, and very many more televisions. And despite the disappointments in agriculture, for which climatic conditions were at least partly responsible, there had been considerable improvements in the Soviet diet. The consumption of meat, fish and fruit per head of population was up by about half, while the consumption of potatoes and bread, the staples of earlier years, had fallen back considerably.