20 YEARS AFTER THE "STAGNATION"
MOSCOW, November 9, 2002. /RIA Novosti political analyst Yuri Filippov/. - 20 years ago, on November 10, 1982, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev died at the age of 76. He was General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet - the highest-ranking Soviet official, the major Soviet political and state figure.
When a person of such rank dies, his death affects everybody. However, only relatives and the closest friends experience the authentic grief and sympathy. For the rest of the people, such a death has a great significance primarily because it might affect their lives and well-being in a variety of ways.
Nevertheless, Brezhnev's death didn't really affect the situation in Russia either economically or politically. Life in the USSR continued according to the long-established routine. Even the official announcement appeared only three days after his death in order to avoid overshadowing the celebration of the 65th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. This delay was simply taken for granted.
However, the country was getting ready for change. Brezhnev's 18-year rule had not yet been called the "stagnation", although the need for changes was felt almost by everyone in Russia. Could his colleagues in the Politburo, who took over the rule for the next three years, chose a new direction for the country? Andropov made some attempts, but he didn't live long enough to make any significant changes. Besides, he acted in exactly the same way all his predecessors did - he simply strengthened and mended as much as he could the Soviet bureaucratic system of state control.
But society expected quite different things from the authorities. That's why, when in March 1985 Gorbachev appeared on the political horizon, young, enthusiastic, energetic, full of new ideas, the new General Secretary was welcomed as a national hero.
It seemed that then it was "the moment of truth" for the era of Brezhnev's rule. Old jokes "about Brezhnev", that were not too mean, but stressed the senile, sickly, "stagnant" style of the leadership in the 1970s-early 1980s, experienced a stormy renaissance. Against that background, Gorbachev and his democratic team looked as up-to-date, successful leaders who knew quite well how to give the "stagnant" USSR new impetuses of development.
The word "zastoi" (stagnation) turned into a synonym for "reaction", i.e. all that, which the reforming USSR had to turn down at any cost. Newly appearing political parties and movements eulogized "the re-read Lenin", the Communist opposition figures of the thirties, Western social democrats and European Communists. Even the orthodox Stalinists made an attempt to raise their heads after the 30-year-long silence. There was just no place for Brezhnev in that old new pantheon of political idols.
Meanwhile, paradoxical as it is, the mass social basis for the perestroika (reformation) was laid in the years of stagnation. And not in defiance of the policy being pursued, but thanks to it. It was under Brezhnev that the KPSS (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) finally turned down the idea to construct Communism by mobilization means and took up a course to modernize "the developed socialism." In the social aspect, it called for raising the population's living standards. Wages went up, people moved to new state-owned apartments, bought "Zhiguli" and "Volga" cars, acquired garden plots, built dachas (country-houses) and purchased expensive carpets and crystal. Certain lucky ones even went abroad and brought back the coveted western mass consumption goods.
It was under Brezhnev that the consumer society of a Soviet type formed. And when it sensed that the Soviet limits of consumption, established "from above", no longer suit it, society started searching for opportunities to express protest.
There were few who realized that the "stagnation" stability, no more welcomed by the population, was conditioned in many respects by external factors: detente in politics and high oil prices in economics. Plus the notorious, much criticized "socialistic egalitarianism". Doing nothing and getting decent wages for that was possible only in the Soviet Union. But many wanted to do nothing and get even more money for that! If not, then why on earth do we need such a "stagnation"?
This amazing way of thinking is almost gone now. In the Russia of today there's no person who does not know that every country has a limited number of quiet and stable years. Take the twentieth century in Russia: the Russo-Japanese war - the First revolution - WWI - the Second and Third revolutions - the Civil war - industrialization, collectivization - Stalinist repressions - WWII - the postwar restoration. And close to the perestroika, production decline and the Chechen war - twenty years of stagnation.
You can't step into the same river twice. The price for the stability and growing living standards in our times is lots higher than 30-40 years ago. For a new "stagnation", or, if you like, stability, everyone has to work hard. And then we must not stop at what we've achieved, because losing the foundations of stability has proved very easy.
As for the grudges against the political leaders of the stagnation era - well, time makes leaders at last. Quite possible that the final "moment of truth" for assessing their activities in history has not come yet.