ABSTRACT
Brezhnev died on 10 November 1982, shortly after watching the traditional Bolshevik Revolution parade. During his time in power, the Soviet economy stagnated and the much-needed reforms had to wait until after his death. Years of heavy spending on the defence and aerospace industries, undertaken at the expense of agriculture and other sectors of the economy, had taken their toll, leaving ordinary Soviet citizens to wait in long lines to get basic necessities and sending economic productivity and the Soviet standard of living into a slow but steady decline.
