The stagnation in the leadership of the country, the emerging cult of Brezhnev, along with the termination of the process of de-Stalinization of Soviet society could not but cause a certain negative reaction of the public. On the eve of the XXIII Congress of the CPSU, 25 eminent figures of culture and science (academicians P. L. Kapitsa, I. E. Tamm, M. A. Leontovich, writers V. P. Kataev, K. G. Paustovsky, K. I. Chukovsky, personalities Art M. M. Plisetskaya, O. N. Efremov, I. M. Smoktunovsky and others) addressed a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU, which spoke about the danger of Stalin’s partial rehabilitation.

Also, the intelligentsia was disturbed by a departure from critical positions in works of art that covered the past and present of the USSR. In his report at the 23rd Congress (1966), L.I. Brezhnev formally spoke out against two extremes: “blackening” and “lacquering reality”. In addition to this, a critic of A. I. Solzhenitsyn's works, including his insight “One Day by Ivan Denisovich,” was openly voiced at the congress.

On February 10-14, 1966, a trial was held in the Moscow Regional Court over the writer A. Sinyavsky and the poet-translator Y. Daniel. They were blamed for agitation and propaganda in order to subvert and weaken Soviet power in the works that they published under pseudonyms abroad. Sinyavsky was sentenced to 7 years, Daniel to 5 years in prison. Increased censorship, the practice of banning publications and demonstration of works took place in the future. In 1970, A. T. Tvardovsky was removed from the post of editor-in-chief of the magazine New World.

In the cinema, theater, and literature, the regulated thematic repertoire, which guaranteed the authors high incomes, but narrowed down the possibilities of creative search, was clunky. In the USSR, there was a distinction between official and underground culture. A certain part of the intelligentsia was forced to leave the USSR (A. Tarkovsky, A. Ga-lich, Yu. Lyubimov, E. Neizvestny, M. Rostropovich, V. Nekrasov, and others). Thus, in the USSR and abroad in the late 60s - early 70s. there was a spiritual opposition.

Along with the outlined opposition of the intelligentsia and the authorities in the Soviet society in the late 60s. markedly increased dissident movement. In 1964, for criticizing the policy of the CPSU in the national question (especially with regard to the Crimean Tatars), the general Pyotr Grigorenko was placed in a psychotic hospital for 1.5 years, who was later arrested for dissident activities. The impetus to activating the opposition was the suppression of political reforms in Czechoslovakia with the help of Soviet troops (1968). The opposition movement, sparse and poorly organized, tried to oppose the political realities of Brezhnev’s rule. On August 25, 1968, a sit-in demonstration of 8 people was held against Red Square in the Red Square.

The demonstrators (L. Bogoraz-Brukhman, wife of Daniel, P. M. Litvinov, and others) were sentenced to different terms of imprisonment. Those who opposed the Soviet regime were sent to a psychiatric examination at the Institute. Serbian, placed in medical institutions and prisons. The total number of political prisoners who were simultaneously in prison was not less than 600 people. Famous dissidents included A. Sakharov, V. Bukovsky, A. Marchenko, V. Krasin, J. Medvedev, L. Ubozhko and others.

The contradictions of the era of stagnation, expressed in the gap between proclaimed and real rights, between the standard of living of the elite and the lower classes, in the refusal of reforms in the early 70s. naturally led to an increase in discontent with the existing order, the rule of Brezhnev. On November 9, 1975, Captain 3rd Rank V. Sablin led a large anti-submarine ship, the Watchdog, into the waters of the Baltic Sea and demanded that the country's leadership provide air to present their views on the internal political situation in the USSR. The ship was stopped 21 miles from the maritime state border of the USSR, Sablin was arrested and later after the trial was shot for treason. The very case of the exit from obedience of a large ship (on the 70th anniversary of the uprising of Leyntanta Schmidt) was thoroughly hushed up.

The movement in the national republics, especially in the Baltic States, was quite powerful in the period under review. According to KGB estimates, up to 50 thousand people participated in various protest actions, and according to the calculations of the dissidents themselves - ten times more. Not to notice this movement, especially considering the support of the West, it was already impossible, and the Soviet leadership in the early 70s. made some concessions in the rules for traveling abroad (including people of Jewish nationality), in some reduction of censorship control.