April 27 — as part of the first major shake-up in the Soviet leadership since 1964, Andrei Gromyko and Yuri Andropov were brought into the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee.
June 24 — during an official visit to the United States, Leonid Brezhnev stated that the Cold War was over.
September 1 — a terrorist threw a bomb in the Mausoleum (the sarcophagus was not damaged; several visitors were killed).
September 29 — at the demand of Arab terrorists, Austria closes transit camps for Jews leaving the USSR.
December 28 — publication of Solzhenitsyn’s documentary novel The Gulag Archipelago.