* Correa, Gustavo, 1955, " El espiritu del mal en Guatemala " in Nativism and Syncretism, Middle American Research Institute Publications 19: 37 – 104, Tulane University.

‘ The espiritu del tiempo, the spirit of our age, is characterised by uncertainty, rapid change, realignment of power, upheaval and chaotic behaviour.

The letters cover the period from 1968 to 1991 ( Brezhnev stagnation ).

Despite Andropov's hard-line stance in Hungary and the numerous banishments and intrigues for which he was responsible during his long tenure as head of the KGB, he has become widely regarded by many commentators as a reformer, especially in comparison with the stagnation and corruption during the later years of his predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev.

This can be interpreted as a prediction of the Leonid Brezhnev so-called era of stagnation by Đilas.

Soviet spending on the arms race and other Cold War commitments both caused and exacerbated deep-seated structural problems in the Soviet system, which saw at least a decade of economic stagnation during the late Brezhnev years.

The Brezhnev era began a new state of stagnation, and saw a decline in both the quality and quantity of products in the Soviet Union.

Several Soviet professionals criticized the project of the Constitution of 1977, but such critiques were not taken into account and were not published in time ; during the Brezhnev stagnation, only publications in favor were allowed.

* Brezhnev stagnation

The Era of Stagnation ( often called the Period of Stagnation, Stagnation Period, Stagnation Era, the Brezhnevian Stagnation or the Brezhnev Stagnation ) was a period of economic, political and social stagnation in the Soviet Union, which began during the rule of Leonid Brezhnev and continued under Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko.

The term " Era of Stagnation " was coined by Mikhail Gorbachev to describe the economic difficulties that developed when Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982 although scholars disagree on when the stagnation started and the causes ( see Analyses section ).

The Brezhnev period ushered in an unparalleled period of stability in the party, a stability that ultimately led to stagnation.

Culminating during the Stalin era, it still existed during the " Khrushchev Thaw ", followed by increased persecution of Soviet dissidents during the Brezhnev stagnation, and didn't cease to exist during Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika.

The transition period that separated the Brezhnev and Gorbachev eras resembled the former much more than the latter, although hints of reform emerged as early as 1983.

The only exception was the Soviet Union, who initially refused to supply Iraq on the basis of neutrality in the conflict, although in his memoirs, Mikhail Gorbachev claimed that Leonid Brezhnev refused to aid Saddam over infuriation of Saddam's treatment of Iraqi communists.

" Leonid Brezhnev reiterated it in a speech at the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers ' Party on November 13, 1968, which stated:

The speaker at the Central Committee meeting which elected the Council of Ministers ( the Government ) and the Politburo was never listed during the Brezhnev era.

The nomenklatura system came under attack ; several delegates asked why the leading party members had rights to a better life, at least materially, and why the leadership was more-or-less untouchable, as they had been under Leonid Brezhnev, even if their incompetence was clear to everyone.

In the Brezhnev era, for instance, delegates at Party Congresses lost the power to vote in secret against candidates endorsed by the leadership.

Novotný then invited Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev to Prague that December, seeking support ; but Brezhnev was surprised at the extent of the opposition to Novotný and thus supported his removal as Czechoslovakia's leader.

File: BerlinWall01b. jpg | Mural on the Berlin Wall at the East Side Gallery featuring Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker riding together in a Trabant ( Spring 2002 ).

Leonid Brezhnev again recreated the All-Union Ministry for Securing the Public Order in July 1966 and later assigned Nikolay Shchyolokov as Minister ; the RSFSR Ministry was disbanded for the second time, the first being at the creation of the NKVD of the Soviet Union.

When the SALT II negotiations with the Soviet Union verged on success, an NSC working group, including a Department of State representative, formulated the subject areas for an agenda at the Vienna Summit of June 1979, at which Carter and Brezhnev signed the SALT II Treaty and discussed other bilateral and Third World issues.

Presidents have invited other world leaders to travel with them on Air Force One at times, including Nixon inviting Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev to travel with him to California from Washington, D. C. in June 1973, and George W. Bush traveled with Mexican President Vicente Fox to Toledo, Ohio on 6 September 2001 In March 2012, President Obama took the British Prime Minister David Cameron to a basketball game in Ohio aboard Air Force One.

The crew were to meet Leonid Brezhnev during a lavish ceremony at the Kremlin, but this was ruined by an attempted assassination of the Soviet leader.

According to the Cold War scholar John Lewis Gaddis in his book " The Cold War: A New History " ( 2005 ), " Leonid Brezhnev had looked forward, Anatoly Dobrynin recalls, to the ' publicity he would gain ... when the Soviet public learned of the final settlement of the postwar boundaries for which they had sacrificed so much '... ' the Helsinki Accords gradually became a manifesto of the dissident and liberal movement '... What this meant was that the people who lived under these systems — at least the more courageous — could claim official permission to say what they thought.

General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union | General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev with Komsomol leaders and prominent Soviet youth representatives ( from Brezhnev to right-Dmitry Nikolayevich Filippov | Dmitry Filippov, Evgeniy Tyazhelnikov, Suren Arutyuniyan, Boris Pastuhov, Gennady Yanayev ; at far left-Anatoly Karpov ), 1977

In September 1968, during a speech at the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers ' Party one month after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Brezhnev outlined the Brezhnev Doctrine, in which he claimed the right to violate the sovereignty of any country attempting to replace Marxism-Leninism with capitalism.

Brezhnev was at the time the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Meanwhile, in March 1982 in Tashkent, USSR Secretary Leonid Brezhnev gave a speech conciliatory towards the PRC, and Deng Xiaoping took advantage of Brezhnev ’ s proffered conciliation ; in autumn of 1982, Sino-Soviet relations resumed ( semi-annually ), at the vice-ministerial level.

Instead of introducing the ideologic concept of the Soviet Nation, Brezhnev at the 24th Party Congress talked about " a new historical community of people – the Soviet people ", and introduced the ideological tenant of Developed socialism, which postponed communism.

Brezhnev expressed great sadness at Suslov's passing.

Together with NI Krylov, he visited a missile division in Novosibirsk, and then at the invitation of Leonid Brezhnev participated in a demonstration missile launch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakh SSR.

From 1959 onward, Hall spent some time in Moscow each year and was one of the most widely known American politicians in the USSR, where he was received by high-level Soviet politicians such as Leonid Brezhnev.

They returned home disappointed when Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin said that they would repudiate some of Khrushchev's more eccentric policies, but that they had no intention of turning the clock back to the time of Stalin.

For example, Yuri Andropov, CPSU General Secretary for a brief time following Leonid Brezhnev, achieved political importance by means of the Komsomol organisation of Karelia.

The nomenklatura system, which existed throughout the life of the Soviet state and came to prominence in the time of Leonid Brezhnev is another notable example.

Starting with Leonid Brezhnev in 1977, the last four General Secretaries simultaneously served as Chairmen of the Supreme Soviet during their time in office.

Khrushchev was deposed by a joint Central Committee and Politburo plenum in October 1964 and succeeded by another collective leadership, this time led by Leonid Brezhnev, born in Ukraine, as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Chairman of the Council of Ministers.

" At home this unauthorized venture into the Western world bore no repercussions: by this time Soviet authorities were divided by the " Vysotsky controversy " up to the highest level ; while Suslov detested the bard, Brezhnev loved him to such an extent that once, while in hospital, was listening to his songs performed live into a telephone, in daughter Galina's home.

The Soviets nonetheless remained less supportive than China until after the Sino-Soviet split, during the time of Leonid Brezhnev when the Soviet Union became the key ally to communist Vietnam.

According to Edwin Bacon and Mark Sandle, authors of Brezhnev Reconsidered, the economy under Brezhnev was as dynamic as the economy presided over by Nikita Khrushchev, but this dynamism had stalled by the time Yuri Andropov, and subsequently Konstantin Chernenko, became General Secretary.

The date 1912 is often identified as the time of the formation of a distinct party, and the history since then can roughly be divided into the following periods ; the early years of the Bolshevik Party in clandestinity and exile, the period of the October Revolution, consolidation of the party as the governing force of the Soviet Union, the Great Purge of the 1930s, Khrushchev and Brezhnev periods, the Gorbachev era of reform which eventually led to the break-up of the party in 1991.

Though initially, the USSR was again under a collective leadership, this time with Brezhnev as General Secretary, Podgorny as Chairman of the Presidium and Alexei Kosygin as Premier of the Soviet Union.

Referred to by David Remnick as " the comic high-water mark of the Brezhnev era ", the poem was published for the first time in 1973 in Jerusalem immediately making Yerofeyev famous throughout the world.

In Russia, during the time of the Soviet Union ( 1917 – 1991 ), the state funerals of the most senior political and military leaders such as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko all followed the same basic outline.

First, the Soviet Union, now led by Leonid Brezhnev, made it clear that it would not tolerate political upheaval in Poland at a time when it was trying to deal with the crisis in Czechoslovakia.

But the Soviet alliance was at the heart of Gierek's problems: following Brezhnev Doctrine and because of Poland's strategic position between the Soviet Union and Germany, the Soviets would never allow Poland to drift out of its orbit, as Yugoslavia and Romania had by this time done.

According to him, in the early 1970s the General Secretary of the CPSU, Leonid Brezhnev, personally visited the main bunker, and, in 1974, awarded the Chairman of the KGB at the time, Yuri Andropov, the Gold Star Medal of the Hero of Socialist Labour.