Khrushchev's Dismissal and The End of Reforms
Both the cultural and the political thaws were effectively ended with the removal of Khrushchev as Soviet leader in October 1964, and the installment of Leonid Brezhnev as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1964. When Khrushchev was dismissed, Alexei Kosygin took over Khrushchev's position as Soviet Premier, but Kosygin's reforms was not successful and conservative communists led by Brezhnev blocked any motions for reforms after Kosygin's failed attempt.
Brezhnev begun his career as the General Secretary with the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial in 1965, which showed the establishment of an authoritarian ideology. After that, Brezhnev approved the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 (Prague Spring) and ended with the Soviet war in Afghanistan which continued after his death; he installed an authoritarian regime that lasted throughout his life and the lives of his two successors, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko.
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“Until politics are a branch of science we shall do well to regard political and social reforms as experiments rather than short-cuts to the millennium.”
—J.B.S. (John Burdon Sanderson)