About the book: year / The phenomenon of “stagnation” cannot be understood without understanding what the period of Soviet history that preceded it was. The request for stability in the sphere of ideology was balanced between the desire of some groups of officials to strengthen it by rolling back to the recognition of the “greatness of Stalin” and the resumption of the practice of political repression - and the intention of other groups of officials to consolidate the achieved freedoms and, without any major breakthroughs, in the future still look for a path to “genuine Leninism." It meant a cautious movement from dictatorship to a model of an increasingly pluralistic society, a utopian “new NEP” without NEPmen, Trotskyists and Stalinists. However, the majority of apparatchiks simply wanted stability - quiet work, polite treatment from their superiors, a guaranteed, in modern language, “social package”, the absence of disturbing news in the media, a predictable foreign policy. It was possible to manage such an environment without terror and purges, operating only threat of dismissal, inclusion in the list of “not allowed to travel” or a ban on publication. Another question is that such cultural homogeneity turned out to be possible only among generations that grew up in conditions of terror and purges. After two decades of “stagnation”, three former heads of the propaganda department of the 1960s–1970s, and subsequently members of the Politburo - Ligachev, Medvedev and Yakovlev naturally outgrew “stability” and realized the need for new reforms and updating the personnel of the bureaucracy at all levels. But one of their most serious misconceptions was their firm belief that the “carrot” of Soviet propaganda could (re)form society on its own, without the “stick” of the KGB. Fortunately, they learned that this was not so too late. And having learned, to their credit, they did not turn back.