Brezhnev dies

November 10, 1982

After eighteen years in power, Leonid Brezhnev died at the age of seventy-five. His gerontocratic regime had presided over economic stagnation and a bloated military apparatus. His successor, Yuri Andropov, would die within fifteen months. The Soviet Union entered a period of what Russians called the funeral years before Gorbachev arrived in 1985.