74 Facts About Leonid Brezhnev

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was a Soviet politician who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982 and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet between 1960 and 1964 and again between 1977 and 1982.

Leonid Brezhnev was born to a working-class family in Kamenskoye within the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire.

Whereas Khrushchev often enacted policies without consulting the rest of the Politburo, Leonid Brezhnev was careful to minimize dissent among the party leadership by reaching decisions through consensus as he restored the collective leadership in the USSR.

Leonid Brezhnev died on 10 November 1982 and was succeeded as general secretary by Yuri Andropov.

Leonid Brezhnev was born on 19 December 1906 in Kamenskoye within the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire, to metalworker Ilya Yakovlevich Leonid Brezhnev and his wife, Natalia Denisovna Mazalova.

Leonid Brezhnev's parents lived in Brezhnevo before moving to Kamenskoe.

Leonid Brezhnev's ethnicity was given as Ukrainian in some documents, including his passport, and Russian in others.

Leonid Brezhnev graduated from the Kamenskoye Metallurgical Technicum in 1935 and became a metallurgical engineer in the iron and steel industries of eastern Ukraine.

Leonid Brezhnev joined the Communist Party youth organisation, the Komsomol, in 1923, and the Party itself in 1929.

When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, Leonid Brezhnev was, like most middle-ranking Party officials, immediately drafted.

Leonid Brezhnev had met Khrushchev in 1931, shortly after joining the Party, and as he continued his rise through the ranks, he became Khrushchev's protege.

Leonid Brezhnev temporarily left the Soviet Army with the rank of Major General in August 1946.

Leonid Brezhnev had spent the entire war as a political commissar rather than a military commander.

In 1950 Leonid Brezhnev became a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union's highest legislative body.

Konstantin Chernenko, a loyal addition to the "mafia", was working in Moldova as head of the agitprop department, and one of the officials Leonid Brezhnev brought with him from Dnipropetrovsk was the future USSR Minister of the Interior, Nikolai Shchelokov.

Stalin died in March 1953 and, in the reorganization that followed, Leonid Brezhnev was demoted to first deputy head of the political directorate of the Army and Navy.

Leonid Brezhnev sided with Khrushchev against Malenkov, but only for several years.

In reality, Leonid Brezhnev became involved in the development of the Soviet missile and nuclear arms programs, including the Baykonur Cosmodrome.

In February 1956 Leonid Brezhnev returned to Moscow and was made candidate member of the Politburo assigned in control of the defence industry, the space program including the Baykonur Cosmodrome, heavy industry, and capital construction.

Leonid Brezhnev was now a senior member of Khrushchev's entourage, and in June 1957 he backed Khrushchev in his struggle with Malenkov's Stalinist old guard in the Party leadership, the so-called "Anti-Party Group".

Leonid Brezhnev remained outwardly loyal to Khrushchev, but became involved in a 1963 plot to remove him from power, possibly playing a leading role.

Also in 1963, Leonid Brezhnev succeeded Frol Kozlov, another Khrushchev protege, as Secretary of the Central Committee, positioning him as Khrushchev's likely successor.

Some members of the Central Committee wanted him to undergo punishment of some kind, but Leonid Brezhnev, who had already been assured the office of the General Secretary, saw little reason to punish Khrushchev further.

Leonid Brezhnev was appointed First Secretary on the same day, but at the time was believed to be a transitional leader, who would only "keep the shop" until another leader was appointed.

Leonid Brezhnev argues they took different routes to build legitimate authority, depending on their personalities and the state of public opinion.

Khrushchev worked to decentralize the government system and empower local leadership, which had been wholly subservient; Leonid Brezhnev sought to centralize authority, going so far as to weaken the roles of the other members of the Central Committee and the Politburo.

In 1969, Leonid Brezhnev further expanded his authority following a clash with Second Secretary Mikhail Suslov who thereafter never challenged his supremacy within the Politburo.

Leonid Brezhnev was adept at politics within the Soviet power structure.

Leonid Brezhnev was a team player and never acted rashly or hastily.

However, Leonid Brezhnev refrained from the all-out violence seen under Stalin's rule.

Leonid Brezhnev was able to defer economic collapse by trading with Western Europe and the Arab World.

Leonid Brezhnev attempted to address these issues by increasing state investment and allowing privately owned plots to be larger.

When Leonid Brezhnev had difficulties sealing commercial trade agreements with the United States, he went elsewhere, such as to Argentina.

Leonid Brezhnev's argument was that the larger the work force, the less responsible they felt.

Voronov was unsuccessful; Leonid Brezhnev turned him down, and in 1973 he was removed from the Politburo.

The standard of living in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic had fallen behind that of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic under Leonid Brezhnev; this led many Russians to believe that the policies of the Soviet Government were hurting the Russian population.

When Leonid Brezhnev authorized the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Carter, following the advice of his National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, denounced the intervention, describing it as the "most serious danger to peace since 1945".

Additionally, as a result of negotiations during the Helsinki Accords, Leonid Brezhnev succeeded in securing the legitimization of Soviet hegemony over Central and Eastern Europe.

Leonid Brezhnev continued by rejecting an offer of assistance made by the North Vietnamese government, and instead told them to enter negotiations in the United Nations Security Council.

Leonid Brezhnev was interested in this offer initially, but rejected the offer upon being told by Andrei Gromyko that the North Vietnamese were not interested in a diplomatic solution to the war.

Leonid Brezhnev's plan was for a slow withdrawal of US troops from South Vietnam, while still retaining the government of South Vietnam.

Leonid Brezhnev later made a visit to Moscow to negotiate a treaty on arms control and the Vietnam war, but on Vietnam nothing could be agreed.

When Leonid Brezhnev consolidated his power base in the 1960s, China was descending into crisis because of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, which led to the decimation of the Chinese Communist Party and other ruling offices.

However, Leonid Brezhnev had problems of his own in the form of Czechoslovakia whose sharp deviation from the Soviet model prompted him and the rest of the Warsaw Pact to invade their Eastern Bloc ally.

Leonid Brezhnev responded in his March 1982 speech in Tashkent where he called for the normalization of relations.

Contemporary researchers tend to believe that Leonid Brezhnev had been misinformed on the situation in Afghanistan.

Leonid Brezhnev's health had decayed, and proponents of direct military intervention took over the majority group in the Politburo by cheating and using falsified evidence.

Soviet ambassador to the US Anatoly Dobrynin believed that the real mastermind behind the invasion, who misinformed Leonid Brezhnev, was Mikhail Suslov.

The first crisis for Leonid Brezhnev's regime came in 1968, with the attempt by the Communist leadership in Czechoslovakia, under Alexander Dubcek, to liberalize the Communist system.

Archival evidence suggests that Leonid Brezhnev was one of the few who was looking for a temporary compromise with the reform-friendly Czechoslovak government when their dispute came to a head.

However, in the end, Leonid Brezhnev concluded that he would risk growing turmoil domestically and within the Eastern bloc if he abstained or voted against Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia.

Leonid Brezhnev reiterated the doctrine in a speech at the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party on 13 November 1968:.

Leonid Brezhnev eventually concluded on 10 December 1981 that it would be better to leave the domestic matters of Poland alone, reassuring the Polish delegates that the USSR would intervene only if asked to.

Leonid Brezhnev was loyal to his friends, vain in desiring ceremonial power, and refused to control corruption inside the party.

Especially in foreign affairs, Leonid Brezhnev increasingly took all major decisions into his own hands, without telling his colleagues in the Politburo.

Leonid Brezhnev deliberately presented a different persona to different people, culminating in the systematic glorification of his own career.

The last years of Leonid Brezhnev's rule were marked by a growing personality cult.

Leonid Brezhnev received the award, which came with the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star, three more times in celebration of his birthdays.

Leonid Brezhnev's vanity made him the target of many political jokes.

In keeping with traditional socialist greetings, Leonid Brezhnev kissed many politicians on the lips during his career.

Leonid Brezhnev had considered divorcing his wife and disowning his children many times but intervention from his extended family and the Politburo, fearing negative publicity, managed to dissuade him.

When receiving the Order of Lenin, Leonid Brezhnev walked shakily and fumbled his words.

In 1977, American intelligence officials publicly suggested that Leonid Brezhnev had been suffering from gout, leukemia and emphysema from decades of heavy smoking, as well as chronic bronchitis.

Leonid Brezhnev was reported to have been fitted with a pacemaker to control his heart rhythm abnormalities.

In March 1982 Leonid Brezhnev received a concussion and fractured his right clavicle while touring a factory in Tashkent, after a metal balustrade collapsed under the weight of a number of factory workers, falling on top of Leonid Brezhnev and his security detail.

Leonid Brezhnev was honored with a state funeral after a five-day period of nationwide mourning.

Leonid Brezhnev was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Red Square, in one of the twelve individual tombs located between the Lenin Mausoleum and the Kremlin wall.

Leonid Brezhnev was dressed for burial in his Marshal's uniform along with his medals.

Leonid Brezhnev presided over the Soviet Union for longer than any other person except Joseph Stalin.

Leonid Brezhnev is often criticised for the prolonged Era of Stagnation, in which fundamental economic problems were ignored and the Soviet political system was allowed to decline.

Leonid Brezhnev has fared well in opinion polls when compared to his successors and predecessors in Russia.

Leonid Brezhnev usually drove these between his dacha and the Kremlin with, according to historian Robert Service, flagrant disregard for public safety.

Leonid Brezhnev had a daughter, Galina, and a son, Yuri.

Leonid Brezhnev received several accolades and honours from his home country and foreign countries.