Yuri Andropov in the context of "Mohammed Najibullah"

Collective leadership (Russian: коллективное руководство, kollektivnoye rukovodstvo), or collectivity of leadership (Russian: коллективность руководства, kollektivnost rukovodstva), became - alongside doctrine such as democratic centralism - official dogma for governance in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and other socialist states espousing communism.In the Soviet Union itself, the collective leadership concept operated by distributing powers and functions among members of the Politburo and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as well as the Council of Ministers, to hinder any attempts to create a one-man dominance over the Soviet political system by a Soviet leader, such as that seen under Joseph Stalin's rule between the late 1920s and 1953. On the national level, the heart of the collective leadership was officially the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Collective leadership was characterised by limiting the powers of the General Secretary and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers as related to other offices by enhancing the powers of collective bodies, such as the Politburo.

Collective leadership became institutionalised in the upper levels of control in the Soviet Union following Stalin's death in March 1953, and subsequent Soviet Communist Party leaders ruled as part of a collective. First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev criticized Stalin's dictatorial rule at the 20th Party Congress in 1956, but Khrushchev's own increasingly erratic decisions led to his ouster in 1964. The Party replaced Khrushchev in his posts with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and with Alexei Kosygin as Premier. Though Brezhnev gained more and more prominence over his colleagues, he retained the Politburo's support by consulting its members on all policies. Collective leadership continued under Yuri Andropov (General Secretary from 1982 to 1984) and Konstantin Chernenko (General Secretary from 1984 to 1985). Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms espoused open discussion from about 1986, leading to members of the leadership openly disagreeing on how little or how much reform was needed to rejuvenate the Soviet system.

The "Era of Stagnation" (Russian: Пери́од засто́я, romanized: Períod zastóya, or Эпо́ха засто́я Epókha zastóya) is a term coined by Mikhail Gorbachev in order to describe the negative way in which he viewed the economic, political, and social policies of the Soviet Union that began during the rule of Leonid Brezhnev (1964–1982) and continued under Yuri Andropov (1982–1984) and Konstantin Chernenko (1984–1985). It is sometimes called the "Brezhnevian Stagnation" in English.

Gennady Ivanovich Yanayev (Russian: Геннадий Иванович Янаев; 26 August 1937 – 24 September 2010) was a Soviet politician and disputed President of the Soviet Union for three days. Yanayev's political career spanned the rules of Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko and culminated during the Mikhail Gorbachev years. Yanayev was born in Perevoz, Gorky Oblast. After years in local politics, he rose to prominence as Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, but he also held other lesser posts such as deputy of the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries.

Due to his chairmanship of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, in 1990 he gained a seat in the 28th Politburo and Secretary of the Central Committee. Later that year, on 27 December, with the help of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yanayev was elected the first, and only, Vice President of the Soviet Union. Having growing doubts about where Gorbachev's reforms were leading, Yanayev started working with, and eventually formally leading, the State Committee on the State of Emergency, the group which deposed Gorbachev during the August 1991 coup d'état attempt. After three days, the coup collapsed. During its brief grip of power, Yanayev was made Acting President of the Soviet Union. He was then arrested for his role in the coup, but in 1994 he was pardoned. He spent the rest of his life working in the Russian tourism administration until his death on 24 September 2010.

Developed socialism (Russian: Развито́й социали́зм), formally developed socialist society, is according to Marxism–Leninism a stage in the socialist mode of production that the Soviet Union claimed to have reached in 1961. No other communist state has claimed to have reached this stage. The class system of developed socialism is the socialist state of the whole people, which emerges during this stage of development.

According to Soviet party ideologue and member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Aleksei Rumyantsev, this stage was "characterised by the advanced, dynamic maturity of socialism as an integral social system, the complete realisation of its objective laws and advantages, and its progress towards the higher phase of communism." This concept began to be questioned after Leonid Brezhnev's death in 1982 when his successor Yuri Andropov made it clear that the Soviet Union had only reached the beginning of a "long historical stage" of developed socialism and the task remained to "perfect" it." The term was used sparingly under Mikhail Gorbachev, and the CPSU programme adopted by the 27th Congress in 1986 only noted that the Soviet Union "had entered the stage of developed socialism" in 1961. At the 27th Congress, Gorbachev revealed that many wanted to discard the concept altogether while others wanted a more extensive exploration of it. The adopted programme was, in this sense, a compromise, stating that the Soviet Union had entered the stage of developed socialism and not that it was a developed socialist society.

Vasily Vasilyevich Kuznetsov (Russian: Васи́лий Васи́льевич Кузнецо́в; 13 February [O.S. 31 January] 1901 – 5 June 1990) was a Russian Soviet politician who acted as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union from 1982 to 1983 (after the death of Brezhnev), for a second time in 1984 (after the death of Andropov), and for a third time in 1985 (after the death of Chernenko). He was one of the oldest members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union was formally the highest state post. During the term of office, Kuznetsov was 81–82, 82–83, and 84 years old, respectively. He is the oldest head of the Soviet and Russian state in history (he was older than all three predecessors in this post).

Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai (Pashto; Dari: محمد نجيب الله احمدزی, 6 August 1947 – 27 September 1996) was an Afghan military officer and politician who served as the fifth president of Afghanistan from 1987 until his resignation in April 1992, shortly after the Afghan mujahideen's takeover of Kabul. He was also the General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) from 1986 to 1992. After a failed attempt to flee to India, Najibullah remained in Kabul, and lived in the United Nations headquarters until his assassination during the Taliban's first capture of Kabul in 1996.

A graduate of Kabul University, Najibullah held different careers under the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). Following the Saur Revolution and the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, Najibullah was a low-profile bureaucrat. He was sent into exile as Ambassador to Iran during Hafizullah Amin's rise to power. He returned to Afghanistan following the Soviet intervention which toppled Amin's rule and placed Babrak Karmal as head of the state, the party and the government. During Karmal's rule, Najibullah became head of the KHAD, the Afghan equivalent of the Soviet KGB. He was a member of the Parcham faction led by Karmal. During Najibullah's tenure as KHAD head, it became one of the most brutally efficient governmental organs. Because of this, he gained the attention of several leading Soviet officials, such as Yuri Andropov, Dmitriy Ustinov and Boris Ponomarev. In 1981, Najibullah was appointed to the PDPA Politburo. In 1985, Najibullah stepped down as the state security minister to focus on PDPA politics; he had been appointed to the PDPA Secretariat. Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, also the last Soviet leader, was able to get Karmal to step down as PDPA General Secretary in 1986, and replace him with Najibullah. For a number of months, Najibullah was locked in a power struggle against Karmal, who still retained his post of Chairman of the Revolutionary Council. Najibullah accused Karmal of trying to wreck his policy of National Reconciliation, a series of efforts by Najibullah to end the conflict.

Heydar Alirza oghlu Aliyev (10 May 1923 – 12 December 2003) was an Azerbaijani politician who was a Soviet party boss in the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic from 1969 to 1982, and the third president of Azerbaijan from 1993 to 2003.

He was a high-ranking official in the KGB of the Azerbaijan SSR, serving for 28 years in Soviet state security organs (1941–1969). He governed Soviet Azerbaijan from 1969 to 1982 as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan. He held the post of First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union from 1982 to 1987. He rose through the ranks due to his close associations with Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov.