Abstract <p>The article presents a panorama of the development of the Soviet Union and the world in the so-called “long seventies.” The Soviet project is viewed as a variation of modern society, and the concept of the “long seventies” allows the development of the Brezhnev-era Soviet Union to be embedded in the process of global transformations in the world in the late 1960s and early 1980s. It is noted that, as a result of internal development mechanisms and under the pressure of circumstances, a transition from an industrial to a postindustrial economic and technological order occurred in a number of developed countries. The Soviet Union was part of the global order and had a certain potential for such a transition, but due to the specific nature of its system, aimed at reproducing the industrial model, it did not make it. The Soviet Union increasingly became an object rather than a subject of change, losing its position in the world. The crisis of the Soviet Union should be seen as the crisis of a “superpower” that was in a state of global competition, but was less and less able to withstand this competition. The country’s ruling elite generally understood the severity of the problem, which made radical reforms in the 1980s inevitable.</p>