Brezhnev's decline froze Soviet policy into bureaucratic inertia

Brezhnev was charismatic and active early on—invading Czechoslovakia and achieving detente with Nixon—but declined sharply after 1974, and incapacitated leadership let bureaucratic interests (military, party international department, foreign ministry) each run their own agendas, producing conservative inertia that blocked innovative policy until Gorbachev arrived too late.