Choosing Stagnation. The Kosygin Reforms and the Rise of Brezhnev’s Stagnationary Coalition

This essay seeks to restore stagnation as a category of analysis to understand late-Soviet socialism. It argues that the conservative politics of the Brezhnev period and its tepid economic growth were the results of a choice by Soviet elites to prioritise political stability over a consumerist reconfiguration of the Soviet growth model. This choice was undertaken in the context of the Kosygin reforms, measures aimed at arresting the looming stagflation of the late Khrushchev era. The defeat of the reforms marked a political caesura at which stagnation became an acceptable risk for the party elite.