Why Leonid Brezhnev’s tenure in power is often referred to as “The Freeze”?

Question by Marlon: Leonid Brezhnev’s tenure in power is often referred to as “The Freeze”, to contrast his rule with that of Khru?
Leonid Brezhnev’s tenure in power is often referred to as “The Freeze”, to contrast his rule with that of Khrushchev. What were the major elements of Brezhnev’s rule, and why was his reign so stagnant?

Answers and Views:

Answer by Spellbound
Khrushchev implemented many changes to the Soviet Union. He recognised that the system had ossified after WWII under Stalin and the public’s enthusiasm fr the communist experiment was ebbing away.
He split the party into industrial and agricultural wings, he moved many ministries out to provincial cities, in order to re-vitalise them, he began a the “virgin lands scheme” – the ploughing of millions of acres of the Siberian and Kazakh steppe and he tried to rein in the excesses of Stalinism.

Brezhnev, and his co-ruler Kosygin, thought that all Khrushchev achieved was chaos, they wanted to stabilise the country and to reverse nearly all the reforms of Khrushchev. Probably the worst thing, for the Soviet Union, that they did was the policy of “stability of cadres”. This policy was a response to Khrushchev’s policy of moving bureaucrats around and promoting and demoting people. It had the effect of creating an ageing political class, who sought only to maintain their position. By the late 1970s the country was a gerontocracy – a country ruled by the elderly.
This exasperated the conservative communist government’s hostility towards the youth, which, in turn, meant that when the regime was tottering they could not rely on the idealism of the young.
See:
Khrushchev Remembers – NS Khrushchev
The Soviet Union 1917 – 1991 – Martin McCauley

Read all the answers in the comments.

What do you think?