ABSTRACT
Soviet society was undergoing major socio-economic and demographic changes under Leonid Brezhnev, changes that would to a great extent determine the political and economic dilemmas his successors would face. The modernisation of Soviet society that the regime itself had engineered came to maturity against a backdrop of political sclerosis and declining economic performance. Social policy was largely dictated by the requirements of the tacit social contract identified by Peter Hauslohner and Linda Cook, under which the state provided material security in return for political quiescence and compliance. The Brezhnev leadership took a number of early steps to reverse Nikita Khrushchev's decentralisation of economic management, and the practice of placing ethnic Russians in important but less visible posts in the republics was continued. The Brezhnev leadership quickly backed away from the provocatively assimilationist official rhetoric of the late Khrushchev years and turned a blind eye to the corruption and incompetence of many local elites.
