Soviet stagnation

By the early 1980s the Soviet system was visibly stagnating. The economy grew slowly and the gap with the West widened. Consumer goods were poor or unavailable. The war in Afghanistan was a quagmire. Soviet leadership was elderly and uninspired. Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982; his two successors (Andropov and Chernenko) died within three years. In March 1985 the Politburo chose a younger and more dynamic leader: Mikhail Gorbachev.