I always wondered, why didn't the Soviet leadership have similar generation changes like Chinese had later with Deng Xiao Ping?
Only Gorbachev could get the leadership as second-generation communist and we can say by his time Soviet Union already had several problems. Before him Andropov and Chernenko took power for a short while, but they clearly belonged to the old style communists, they were both old.
What factors made the Communist Party of the Soviet Union a "club of elderly people"? Did they have some specific problems with giving the leadership to younger generation?