Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (, December 19, 1906 – November 10, 1982) led the
Soviet Union during the
Cold War. He served as the fourth
First Secretary of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982, and as
Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, from 1960 to 1964 and 1977 to 1982.
Brezhnev was born in Kamenskoe (now
Dniprodzerzhynsk,
Ukraine) in 1906. He was employed as a metalworker in his youth; he joined
Komsomol in 1922 and the Communist Party in 1931. From 1935–36 he was drafted into the army for obligatory service. In June 1941,
Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and he—like many other middle-ranked party officials—was immediately drafted. In 1946, Brezhnev left the army with the rank of
Major General. When he returned to national politics, he became a deputy member of the
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.
After Khrushchev's party colleagues removed him from power in 1964, he was replaced by Brezhnev as General Secretary of the Communist Party. Brezhnev reversed many of Khrushchev's reforms when he took office. Under Brezhnev's leadership, the Soviet Union reached its political and strategic peak in relations to the United States and
Western Europe. Brezhnev's last years as leader were marked by a growing
personality cult, which had not been seen since the
reign of
Joseph Stalin. Brezhnev used major parts of the economic budget of the Soviet Union on the military.
He presided over the Soviet Union when the country was stagnating, a period commonly known as the
Brezhnev Stagnation, a period when economic problems were overlooked and corruption ignored. Another decision he is well-known for was the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which undermined his international stance both at home and abroad. Brezhnev died in 1982 and was followed by
Yuri Andropov.
Early life and career
Early years
Brezhnev was born in Kamenskoe (now
Dniprodzerzhynsk in Ukraine), to
metalworker Ilya Yakovlevich Brezhnev and his wife Natalia Denisovna.Bacon and Sandle 2002, pp. 6. At different times during his life, Brezhnev specified his ethnic origin alternately as either Ukrainian or Russian.Edwin Bacon and Mark Sandle,
Brezhnev reconsidered. Palgrave, 2002, ISBN 033379463X; p. 6 Like many youths in the years after the
Russian Revolution of 1917, he received a
technical education, at first in
land management where he started as a
land surveyor and then in
metallurgy. He graduated from the Dniprodzerzhynsk Metallurgical
Technicum and became a metallurgical engineer in the iron and steel industries of eastern Ukraine. He joined the
Communist Party youth organization, the
Komsomol in 1923 and the Party itself in 1929.
At different times he would describe himself as Ukrainian, or later on as he moved through party lines as a Russian. During his rule there was
Russification in
Belarus, Ukraine, and
Moldavia:Bacon and Sandle 2002, pp. 72. the percentage of children taught their native languages in those countries dropped, native-language media was restricted and nationalists were jailed.Bacon and Sandle 2002, pp. 73.
In 1935–36, Brezhnev was drafted for compulsory military service, and after taking courses at a tank school, he served as a
political commissar in a tank factory. Later in 1936, he became director of the Dniprodzerzhynsk Metallurgical Technicum (technical college). In 1936, he was transferred to the regional center of
Dnipropetrovsk and, in 1939, he became Party Secretary in Dnipropetrovsk, in charge of the city's important defense industries. By the time Brezhnev joined the party,
Joseph Stalin was its undisputed leader. Those who survived Stalin's
Great Purge of 1937–39 could gain rapid promotions, since the purges opened up many positions in the senior and middle ranks of the Party and state.
In June 1941,
Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and, like most middle-ranking Party officials, Brezhnev was immediately drafted. He worked to evacuate Dnipropetrovsk's industries to the east of the Soviet Union before the city fell to the Germans on 26 August and then was assigned as a
political commissar. In October, Brezhnev was made deputy of political administration for the
Southern Front, with the rank of Brigade-Commissar.
In 1942, when Ukraine was occupied by the Germans, Brezhnev was sent to the
Caucasus as deputy head of political administration of the
Transcaucasian Front. In April 1943, he became head of the Political Department of the 18th Army. Later that year, the 18th Army became part of the
1st Ukrainian Front, as the Red Army regained the initiative and advanced westwards through Ukraine.
The Front's senior political commissar was
Nikita Khrushchev, who became an important patron of Brezhnev's career. At the end of the war in Europe Brezhnev was chief political commissar of the
4th Ukrainian Front which entered
Prague after the German surrender.
In August 1946, Brezhnev left the Red Army with the rank of
Major General. He had spent the entire war as a commissar rather than a military commander. After working on reconstruction projects in Ukraine he again became First Secretary in Dnipropetrovsk. In 1950, he became a deputy of the
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union's highest legislative body. Later that year he was appointed Party First Secretary in
Moldavia. In 1952, he became a member of the Communist Party's
Central Committee and was introduced as a candidate member into the Presidium (formerly the
Politburo).Bacon and Sandle 2002, pp. 7.
Brezhnev and Khrushchev
Brezhnev met
Nikita Khrushchev in 1931, shortly after joining the party. Before long, he became Khrushchev's protégé as he continued his rise through the ranks.Childs 2000, pp. 84. Stalin died in March 1953, and in the reorganization that followed the Presidium was abolished and a smaller Politburo reconstituted. Although Brezhnev was not made a Politburo member, he was instead appointed head of the Political Directorate of the Army and the Navy, with rank of Lieutenant-General, a very senior position. This was probably due to the new power of his patron Khrushchev, who had succeeded Stalin as Party General Secretary. On 7 May 1955, he was made Party First Secretary of the
Communist Party of the
Kazakh SSR, also an important post.
In February 1956, Brezhnev was recalled to Moscow, promoted to candidate member of the Politburo and assigned control of the defense industry, the
space program, heavy industry, and capital construction. He was now a senior member of Khrushchev's entourage, and, in June 1957, he backed Khrushchev in his struggle with the Stalinist old guard in the Party leadership, the so-called "
Anti-Party Group" led by
Vyacheslav Molotov,
Georgy Malenkov,
Lazar Kaganovich as well as
Dmitri Shepilov. Following the defeat of the old guard, Brezhnev became a full member of the Politburo. In 1959, Brezhnev became Second Secretary of the Central Committee and, in May 1960, was promoted to the post of Chairman of the
Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, making him nominal head of state although real power resided with Khrushchev as Party Secretary. In 1962, Brezhnev became an honorary citizen of
Belgrade.
Until about 1962, Khrushchev's position as Party leader was secure, but as the leader aged he grew more erratic and his performance undermined the confidence of his fellow leaders. The Soviet Union's mounting economic problems also increased the pressure on Khrushchev's leadership. Outwardly, Brezhnev remained loyal to Khrushchev,Taubman 2003, pp. 615. but, in 1963, he became involved in the plot to remove the leader from power, possibly leading the plot by some accounts.
Alexey Kosygin,
Nikolay Podgorny,
Alexander Shelepin and some other high officials were also involved in the plan. In that year Brezhnev succeeded
Frol Kozlov, Khrushchev's protege, as Secretary of the
Central Committee, making him Khrushchev's likely successor.
On 14 October 1964, while Khrushchev was on holiday, the conspirators struck. Brezhnev and Podgorny appealed to the Central Committee, blaming Khrushchev for economic failures, and accusing him of
voluntarism and immodest behavior. Influenced by the Brezhnev allies, Politburo members voted to remove Khrushchev from office.Taubman 2003, pp. 5. Brezhnev was appointed Party First Secretary;
Aleksey Kosygin was appointed Prime Minister, and
Anastas Mikoyan became head of state.Taubman 2003, pp. 16.
Leader (1964–82)
During the Khrushchev years Brezhnev had supported the leader's denunciations of Stalin's arbitrary rule, the rehabilitation of many of the victims of Stalin's purges, and the cautious liberalization of Soviet intellectual and cultural policy. But as soon as he became leader, Brezhnev began to reverse this process, and developed an increasingly conservative and regressive attitude.Sakwa 1999, pp. 339. In a May 1965 speech commemorating the 20th anniversary of the victory over Germany, Brezhnev mentioned Stalin positively for the first time.
In April 1966, he took the title General Secretary, which had been Stalin's title until 1952. The trial of the writers
Yuri Daniel and
Andrei Sinyavsky in 1966—the first such trials since Stalin's day—marked the reversion to a repressive cultural policy. Under
Yuri Andropov the state security service (the
KGB) regained much of the power it had enjoyed under Stalin, although there was no return to the purges of the 1930s and 1940s, and Stalin's legacy remained largely discredited among the Soviet
intelligentsia.
The first crisis of Brezhnev's regime came in 1968, with the attempt by the Communist leadership in
Czechoslovakia, under
Alexander Dubček, to liberalize the Communist system (see
Prague Spring). In July, Brezhnev publicly criticized the Czech leadership as "
revisionist" and "anti-Soviet" and, in August, he orchestrated the
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the removal of the Dubček leadership. The invasion led to public protests by
dissidents in the Soviet Union. Brezhnev's assertion that the Soviet Union had the right to interfere in the internal affairs of its satellites to "safeguard socialism" became known as the
Brezhnev Doctrine, although it was really a restatement of existing Soviet policy, as Khrushchev had shown in Hungary in 1956.
Under Brezhnev, relations with China continued to deteriorate, following the
Sino-Soviet split which had broken out in the early 1960s. In 1965, Chinese Premier
Zhou Enlai visited Moscow for discussions, but there was no resolution of the conflict. In 1969, Soviet and Chinese troops
fought a series of clashes along their border on the
Ussuri River. Brezhnev also continued Soviet support for
North Vietnam in the
Vietnam War. On 22 January 1969, a Soviet Army officer,
Viktor Ilyin, tried to
assassinate Brezhnev.
The thawing of
Sino-American relations beginning in 1971, however, marked a new phase in international relations. To prevent the formation of an anti-Soviet U.S.-China alliance, Brezhnev opened a new round of negotiations with the U.S. In May 1972, President
Richard Nixon visited Moscow, and the two leaders signed the
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), marking the beginning of the "
détente" era. He received the
Lenin Peace Prize as a result. The
Paris Peace Accords of January 1973 officially ended the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War, removing a major obstacle to Soviet-U.S. relations. In May, Brezhnev visited West Germany, and, in June, he made a state visit to the U.S.
The high point of the Brezhnev "détente" era was the signing of the
Helsinki Final Act in 1975, which recognized the postwar frontiers in eastern and central Europe and, in effect, legitimized Soviet hegemony over the region. In exchange, the Soviet Union agreed that "participating States will respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion." But these undertakings were never honoured, and political opposition to the détente process mounted in the U.S. as optimistic rhetoric about the "relaxation of tensions" was not matched by any internal liberalization in the Soviet Union or its satellites. The issue of the right to emigrate for Soviet
Jews became an increasing irritant in Soviet relations with the U.S. A summit between Brezhnev and President
Gerald Ford in
Vladivostok in November 1974 failed to resolve these issues. (See
Jackson-Vanik amendment)
In the 1970s, the Soviet Union reached the peak of its political and strategic power in relation to the U.S. The
SALT I treaty effectively established parity in nuclear weapons between the two superpowers, the Helsinki Treaty legitimized Soviet hegemony over eastern Europe, and the U.S. defeat in Vietnam and the
Watergate scandal weakened the prestige of the U.S. Under Admiral
Sergei Gorshkov the Soviet Union also became a global naval power for the first time.
The Soviet Union extended its diplomatic and political influence in the Middle East and Africa. Soviet ally
Cuba successfully intervened militarily in the 1975 civil war in
Angola and then in the 1977–78
Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia. USSR military intervention was minimal, but Soviet arms and advisers entered these conflicts along with Cuban forces.
During this period, Brezhnev consolidated his domestic position. In June 1977, he forced the retirement of Podgorny and became once again Chairman of the Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, making this position equivalent to that of an executive president. While Kosygin remained Prime Minister until shortly before his death in 1980, Brezhnev was clearly dominant in the leadership from 1977 onwards.
In May 1976, he made himself a
Marshal of the Soviet Union, the first "political Marshal" since the Stalin era. Since Brezhnev had never held a military command, this step aroused resentment among professional officers, but their power and prestige under Brezhnev's regime ensured their continuing support. It was also during this time when his health showed signs of decline.
Flight incident
At 9 February 1961 when Brezhnev (then Chairman of the Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet of the USSR) was en route to
Guinea Republic on a state visit, his
IL-18 plane was attacked by a number of French fighters which opened fire. The pilot Boris Bugaev managed to successfully evade the attack.Medvedev R.A. Personality and Epoch. Political portrait of L.I. Brezhnev. Moscow, 1991 vol.1
Stagnation of the economy
The
Brezhnev stagnation was initiated by Soviet expansion
in Afghanistan and the belief in the economic benefits of improved diplomatic relations between the
Soviet Union and the United States. Social stagnation domestically was stimulated by the growing demands of unskilled workers, labour shortages and a decline in productivity and labour discipline. While Brezhnev, albeit "sporadically" attempted reform the
economy in the late 1960s and 1970s, it ultimately failed to produce any positive results. One of these reforms was the reorganization of the
Council of Ministries, this led to low unemployment at the price of low productivity and technological stagnation.Sakwa 1999, pp. 340. The economic reform of 1965 was initiated by
Alexei Kosygin, but its origin dates back to
Nikita Khrushchev. The
Central Committee was not willing to go through with the reform, while admitting to economic problems, they were not willing to follow through with the reforms.Sakwa 1999, pp. 341.
By the late 1970s, the Soviet economy slowed down and lagged behind the economy of
Western Europe, because of enormous expenditure on the armed forces and the refusal to reform the Soviet economy. While refusing to reform the economic system, Brezhnev tried to improve the standard of living in the Soviet Union by an extension in
social benefits, which led to more
public support. Soviet agriculture increasingly could not feed the urban population, let alone provide the rising standard of living which the government promised as the fruits of "mature socialism", and on which industrial productivity depended. One of the most prominent critics of Brezhev's economical policies was
Mikhail Gorbachev, who called the economy under his rule; "the lowest stage of socialism".Bacon and Sandle 2002, pp. 28. On the other hand, the
standard of living and
housing quality improved significantly.Sakwa 1998, pp. 28.
With the
GNP growth of the Soviet economy drastically decreasing from the level it held in the 1950s and 1960s, the country began to lag behind Western Europe and the United States. With the GNP slowing down to 1–2% each year, and with the technology falling farther and farther behind, the Soviet Union was facing economic collapse by the early 1980s.Ulam 2002, pp. 249. During his last years of reign, the
CIA monitored the Soviet Unions economic growth, and according to them, the Soviet economy peaked in the 1970s calculating that it then reached 57% of the American GNP. However the development gap between the two nation widened, with the United States growing an average of 1% over the Soviet Union.Oliver and Aldcroft 1998, pp. 275.
The Eleventh Five-Years Plan of the Soviet Union delivered a disappointing result, seeing a growth from 4–5%. During the earlier Tenth Five-Years Plan, they had tried to meet the target of 6.1% of growth, but failed to meet their target. Brezhnev was however able to "postpone" the economic collapse with
foreign trade with Western Europe and the
Arab World. However, the Soviet Union out-produced the United States in heavy industry during the Brezhnev era. One more galling result of Brezhnev's rule was that some of the
Eastern Bloc economies were more advanced than the Soviet Union.Oliver and Aldcroft 1998, pp. 276.
Last years
The last years of Brezhnev's rule were marked by a growing
personality cult. He was well known for his love of medals (he received a total of 114), so in December 1976, for his 70th birthday, he was awarded the
Hero of the Soviet Union. The award, the highest order of the Soviet Union, is normally given for heroic feats in service to the Soviet state and society. Brezhnev received the award, which comes with the
order of Lenin and the
Gold Star, three more times in celebration of his birthdays. Brezhnev also received the
Order of Victory, the highest Soviet military award, in 1978, becoming the only recipient receiving the order after the end of
World War II. Brezhnev's controversial award was, however, revoked posthumously in 1989 for not meeting the requirements for the award.
This slew of military awards was justified by his participation in the comparatively little-known WWII episode, when a group of Soviet marines beat off a series of German attempts to destroy the Soviets' beachhead, nicknamed
Malaya Zemlya, on the
Black Sea coast near
Novorossiysk. By the early 1980s, Brezhnev's book on the subject, followed by his
other books, one on the
Virgin Lands Campaign{{cite news|url=http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=19803|title=Brezhnev Remembered Fondly 100 Years Since Birth
|author=Nabi Abdullaev |agency=St. Petersburg Times}} and another on the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine's industries, were translated into scores of languages (including such an unlikely choice as
Yiddish The three Brezhnev's "masterpieces" were published in Yiddish by the
Sovetskiy Pisatel Publishers in 1979 in one volume, under the titles
Di Klayner erd; Vidergeburt; Tselina. See also the
bibliography entry.) and became (at least on paper) compulsory study material in every Soviet school. It is now believed by Western historians and political analysts that the books were written by some of his "
court writers". At the urging of Brezhnev—or to flatter the elder leader—the Malaya Zemlya episode was tremendously hyped up: a movie was filmed, featuring a song by
Aleksandra Pakhmutova. How much Brezhnev was aware of attempts to foster a relatively mild
personality cult is unclear, since he often occupied himself with international summitry (such as the
SALT II treaty, signed with
Jimmy Carter in June 1979), and frequently overlooked important domestic matters.
These were left to his subordinates, some of whom, like his agriculture chief
Mikhail Gorbachev, became increasingly convinced that fundamental reform was needed. There was, however, no plotting in the leadership against Brezhnev, and he was allowed to grow increasingly feeble and isolated in power as his health declined. His declining health was rarely if ever mentioned in the Soviet newspapers, but it was practically evident at his public appearances and with the declining political and economic situation.
Among Brezhnev's legacy to his successors was the December 1979
decision to intervene in Afghanistan, where a communist regime was struggling with the
US-sponsored Islamist insurrection and other forces to hold power. This decision was not taken by the Politburo, but by Brezhnev's inner circle at an informal meeting. It led to the sudden end of the détente era, with the imposition of a grain embargo by the U.S., exacerbating the Soviet economic problems.
In March 1982, Brezhnev suffered a major stroke, and, thereafter, increasingly struggled to retain control.
Death
By the mid-1970s "one of his closest companions was a
KGB nurse, who fed him a steady stream of pills without consulting his doctors".
Christopher Andrew and
Vasili Mitrokhin (2000).
The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West. Gardners Books. ISBN 0-14-028487-7. page 266 He had developed narcotic dependence on sleeping pill
nembutal Генсек Брежнев Газета «Завтра», 48(471), 26.11.2002 and died of a heart attack on 10 November 1982. He was honoured with one of the largest and most impressive funerals ever held in the Soviet Union. A four-day period of nationwide mourning was announced. His body was placed in an open coffin in
House of Trade Unions in Moscow. Inside the hall, mourners shuffled up a marble staircase beneath chandeliers draped in black gauze. On the stage, amid a veritable garden of flowers, a complete symphony orchestra in black tailcoats played classical music. Brezhnev's embalmed body, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and black-and-red tie, laid in an open
coffin banked with
carnations, red
roses and
tulips, faced the long queue of mourners. At the right side of the hall, in the front row of seats reserved for the dead leader's family, his wife Viktoria, sat along with their two children, Galina and Yuri.
Then, on 15 November the day of the funeral, classes in schools and universities were cancelled and all roads into Moscow were closed. The ceremony was broadcast on every television channel. The coffin was taken by an armoured vehicle to
Red Square. As the
coffin reached the middle of the Red Square it was taken out of the carriage it was placed on, and with its
lid removed, it was placed on a red-draped
bier facing the
Lenin Mausoleum. At the top of the
Lenin Mausoleum lavish
eulogies were delivered by General Secretary
Andropov, Defense Minister
Dmitriy Ustinov,
Academy of Sciences President
Anatoli Alexandrov and a factory worker.
Then, the politburo members descended from the mausoleum and the most important of them,
Andropov,
Chernenko and
Gromyko on the left and by
Premier Nikolai Tikhonov, Defense Minister
Dimitry Ustinov and Moscow party leader
Grishin on the right, carried the open coffin to another
bier behind the mausoleum, in the
Kremlin Wall Necropolis. At exactly 12:45 p.m Brezhnev's coffin was lowered to the grave as foghorns blared, joining with sirens, factory whistles, and gunfire.
Following Brezhnev's death, the
Volga River valley city of
Naberezhnye Chelny was renamed "Brezhnev" in his honor.
Geoffrey Blainey,
A Short History of the Twentieth Century, Penguin Books Australia Ltd., Vic., 2006. In less than five years, however, the original name was restored. An outlying area of Moscow, the Cherry Tree District (
Cheryomushky Rayon), was returned to its former name, as was
Red Guards Square.
Legacy
Brezhnev presided over the Soviet Union for longer than any man except Stalin. He is criticized for a prolonged era of stagnation called the '
Brezhnev Stagnation', in which fundamental economic problems were ignored and the Soviet political system was allowed to decline. Intervention in Afghanistan, which was one of the major decisions of his career, also significantly undermined both the international standing and internal strength of the Soviet Union. In Brezhnev's defense, it may be said that the Soviet Union reached unprecedented and never-repeated levels of power, prestige, and internal calm under his rule. A Public Opinion Foundation poll conducted in 2006 showed that 61% of the Russian people viewed Brezhnev's era as good for the country.
A research by
VTsIOM in 2007 showed that most of the Russian people would like to live during Brezhnev's era rather than any other period of Russian history during the 20th century. Furthermore, unlike his predecessor Khrushchev, he was a skillful negotiator on the diplomatic stage. The task of attempting to reform that system following his rule would be left to wait three years later to the reformist
Gorbachev.
Brezhnev lived in 26
Kutuzovsky Prospekt, Moscow. During vacations, he also lived in his
Gosdacha in
Zavidovo. He was married to Viktoria Petrovna (1912–1995). Her final four years she lived virtually alone, abandoned by everybody. She had suffered for a long time from
diabetes and was nearly blind in her last years. He had a daughter,
Galina Brezhneva (officially, a press agent) (1929–1998), and a son, Yuri (born 1933) (a trade official). Yuri's son, Andrei Brezhnev (born 1961), has accused the
Communist Party of the Russian Federation of deviating from communist ideology and launched the unsuccessful All-Russian Communist Movement in the late 1990s.
He demanded that all communist parties of
Europe be subjected to the
Soviet Communist Party. He was accused of having authorized and instructed the Soviet military to promote the attack on Pope
John Paul II.http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article740181.ece
References
Notes
Bibliography
External links