Leonid Ilyich was born on December 12, 1906 in the city of Kamenskoye (now Dneprodzerzhinsk) in Ukraine. He was one of three children of Ilya Yakovlevich Brezhnev and Natalia Denisovna. His father worked in a steel mill, as did several previous generations of the family.
Childhood and youth
Brezhnev was forced to drop out of school at the age of fifteen to go to work. He entered the correspondence department of the technical school, which he graduated at the age of twenty-one years with a specialty land surveyor.
He graduated from the Dneprodzerzhinsky Metallurgical Institute and became an engineer in the metallurgical industry of Eastern Ukraine. In 1923, he joined the Komsomol, and in 1931, the Communist Party.
Carier start
In 1935-36, Leonid Ilyich was called up for compulsory military service, where after completing courses he served as political commissar in a tank company. In 1936 he became director of the Dneprodzerzhinsky Metallurgical Technical College. In 1936 he was transferred to Dnepropetrovsk, and in 1939 he became party secretary in Dnepropetrovsk.
Brezhnev belonged to the first generation of Soviet communists, who almost did not remember pre-revolutionary Russia, and who were too young to participate in the struggle for important posts in the leadership of the Communist Party, which unfolded after the death of Lenin in 1924. By the time Brezhnev joined the party, Stalin was its undisputed leader. Those who survived the Great Stalinist purge of 1937-39 could quickly get promoted. The purges opened many vacancies in the upper and middle offices of the party and the state.
Brezhnev on the Second World War
June 22, 1941, the day the Great Patriotic War began, Brezhnev was appointed to lead the evacuation of Dnepropetrovsk industry to the east of the USSR. In October, Leonid Ilyich was appointed deputy head of the political administration of the Southern Front.
In 1942, when Ukraine was occupied by the Germans, Brezhnev was sent to the Caucasus as deputy head of the political department of the Transcaucasian Front. In April 1943, where Nikita Khrushchev was the head of the political department, this acquaintance in the future greatly helped the post-war career of Leonid Ilyich. On May 9, 1945, Brezhnev met in Prague, as chief political officer of the 4th Ukrainian Front.
In August 1946, Brezhnev was demobilized from the Red Army. Soon he again became the first secretary in Dnepropetrovsk. In 1950 he became a deputy of the Supreme Council of the USSR, the highest legislative body of the Soviet Union. Later that year, he was appointed first party secretary in Moldova and moved to Chisinau. In 1952, he became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and was represented as a candidate for the Presidium (formerly the Politburo).
Post-war career
Stalin died in March 1953, and during the subsequent reorganization, the Presidium was abolished, and Brezhnev was appointed head of the political department of the army and the Navy with the rank of lieutenant general.
. In 1955, he was appointed first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan.
In February 1956, Brezhnev was recalled to Moscow and appointed as a candidate member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee. In June 1957, he supported Khrushchev in his clash with the old party guard, the so-called "Anti-Party Group, " led by Vyacheslav Molotov, Georgy Malenkov, and Lazar Kaganovich. After the defeat of the old guard, Brezhnev became a full member of the Politburo.
In 1959, Brezhnev became the second secretary of the Central Committee, and in May 1960 he was nominated as secretary of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, becoming the nominal head of state. Although the real power remained with Khrushchev, the presidency allowed Brezhnev to go abroad, where he showed a taste for expensive clothes and cars.
Party leader
Until 1963, Brezhnev remained loyal to Khrushchev, but then he took an active part in the conspiracy, which was aimed at overthrowing Nikita Sergeyevich from the post of general secretary. On October 14, 1964, when Khrushchev was on vacation, the conspirators convened an extraordinary plenum and removed him from his post. Brezhnev became the party’s first secretary, Alexei Kosygin became the prime minister, and Mikoyan became the head of state. (In 1965, Mikoyan resigned and was succeeded by Nikolai Podgorny).
After Khrushchev was removed from power, the leaders of the Politburo (as it was renamed at the Twenty-Third Party Congress in 1966) and the Secretariat again established a collective leadership. As in the case of the death of Stalin, several people, including Alexei Kosygin, Nikolai Podgorny and Leonid Brezhnev, claimed power behind the facade of unity. Kosygin took up the post of prime minister, which he held until his retirement in 1980. Brezhnev, who took the post of first secretary, may have initially been considered by his colleagues as a temporary appointee.
The years after Khrushchev were distinguished by the stability of cadres, groups of activists in responsible and influential positions in the party-state apparatus. Introducing the slogan "trust in personnel" in 1965, Brezhnev won the support of many bureaucrats who feared constant reorganization of the Khrushchev era and sought security in established hierarchies. Evidence of the stability of the period is the fact that almost half of the members of the Central Committee in 1981 joined it fifteen years earlier. The consequence of this stability was the aging of Soviet leaders, the average age of members of the Politburo increased from fifty-five in 1966 to sixty-eight in 1982. The Soviet leadership (or "gerontocracy", as it was called in the West) became more and more conservative and ossified.
Brezhnev domestic policy
Brezhnev was very conservative. He rolled back the Khrushchev reforms and resurrected Stalin as a hero and a role model. Brezhnev expanded the powers of the KGB. Yuri Andropov was appointed chairman of the KGB and launched a campaign to suppress dissent in the Soviet Union.
Conservative politics characterized the regime’s agenda in the years after Khrushchev. After coming to power, the collective leadership not only abolished Khrushchev’s policy as bifurcation of the party, but also stopped the process of de-Stalinization. The Soviet Constitution of 1977, although it differed in some respects from the Stalin document of 1936, retained the general orientation of the latter.
Economics under Brezhnev
Despite the fact that Khrushchev was engaged in economic planning, the economic system still depended on central plans drawn up without reference to market mechanisms. The reformers, most notably the economist Eusei Liberman, advocated greater freedom for individual enterprises from external control and sought to turn the economic goals of enterprises toward profit. Prime Minister Kosygin defended Liberman's proposals and was able to incorporate them into the general program of economic reforms, approved in September 1965. This reform included the demolition of the Khrushchev regional economic councils in favor of the revival of the central industrial ministries of the Stalin era. Opposition from party conservatives and cautious managers, however, soon stopped Liberian reforms, forcing the state to abandon them.
After a brief attempt by Kosygin to rebuild the economic system, the planners proceeded to compile comprehensive centralized plans, first developed under Stalin. In industry, the plans focused on the heavy and defense industries. As a developed industrial country, the Soviet Union by the 1970s found it increasingly difficult to maintain high growth rates in the industrial sector. Despite the fact that the goals of the five-year plans of the 1970s were reduced compared to the previous five-year plans, these goals remained largely unfulfilled. The most acute industrial shortage was felt in the sphere of consumer goods, where the population was steadily demanding higher quality and more quantity.
The development of agriculture in the Brezhnev years continued to lag. Despite consistently high investments in agriculture, growth under Brezhnev fell lower than under Khrushchev. Droughts that occurred periodically during the 1970s forced the Soviet Union to import large quantities of grain from Western countries, including the United States. In rural areas, Brezhnev continued the trend of converting collective farms into state farms and raised the income of all agricultural workers.
Brezhnev and stagnation
The Brezhnev period is sometimes called "stagnation." Since the late 1960s, growth has stalled at a level significantly lower than in most Western industrial (and some East European) countries. Although some products became more affordable in the 60s and 70s, improved housing and food supplies were negligible. The shortage of consumer goods contributed to the theft of state property and the growth of the black market. Vodka, however, remained readily available, and alcoholism was an important factor in both reducing life expectancy and the increase in infant mortality that was observed in the Soviet Union in the late years of Brezhnev.
The Soviet Union managed to stay afloat thanks to hard currency earned from imports of minerals. There are no incentives to increase efficiency and productivity. The economy was hit by high defense spending, which undermined the economy, and a bureaucracy that hindered competitiveness.
The Soviet Union paid a high price for the stability of the Brezhnev years. Avoiding the necessary political and economic changes, Brezhnev’s leadership ensured the economic and political recession that the country experienced in the 1980s. This deterioration in power and prestige contrasted sharply with the dynamism that marked the revolutionary beginnings of the Soviet Union.
Foreign policy
The first crisis of the Brezhnev regime came in 1968, when the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, under the leadership of Alexander Dubcek, embarked on a liberalization of the economy. In July, Brezhnev publicly criticized the Czech leadership as "revisionist" and "anti-Soviet, " and in August he ordered the Soviet troops to enter Czechoslovakia. The invasion led to public protests by dissidents in the Soviet Union. Brezhnev’s statement that the Soviet Union and other socialist states had the right and duty to intervene in the internal affairs of their satellites to “protect socialism” became known as the Brezhnev doctrine.
Under Brezhnev, relations with China continued to deteriorate after the Sino-Soviet split that occurred in the early 1960s. In 1965, Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai visited Moscow for negotiations, which unfortunately did not lead to anything. In 1969, Soviet and Chinese troops fought a series of clashes along their border on the Ussuri River.
The warming of Sino-US relations in early 1971 marked a new stage in international relations. To prevent the formation of an anti-Soviet American-Chinese alliance, Brezhnev began a new round of negotiations with the United States. In May 1972, President Richard Nixon visited Moscow, where the two leaders signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), ushering in an era of "detente." The Paris Peace Accords in January 1973 officially ended the Vietnam War. In May, Brezhnev visited West Germany, and in June made a state visit to the United States.
The culmination of Brezhnev’s "detente" era was the signing in 1975 of the Helsinki Final Treaty, which recognized the post-war borders in Eastern and Central Europe and, in effect, legitimized Soviet hegemony over the region. In exchange, the Soviet Union agreed that “the participating States will respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, for all without distinction of race, gender, language or religion.”
In the 1970s, the Soviet Union reached the peak of its political and strategic power in relation to the United States.
The last years of life and the death of Brezhnev
After Brezhnev suffered a stroke in 1975, members of the Politburo Mikhail Suslov and Andrei Kirilenko for some time assumed some leadership functions.
The last years of Brezhnev’s reign were marked by a growing personality cult that peaked on its 70th birthday in December 1976. On his birthday, he was awarded the next title of Hero of the Soviet Union. And in 1978, Leonid Ilyich was awarded the Order of Victory, the highest military award of the USSR, he became the only gentleman who received it after the end of the Second World War.
In June 1977, he forced Podgorny to resign and again became chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, making this position equivalent to the position of executive president. In May 1976, he became the Marshal of the Soviet Union, the first “political marshal” from the time of Stalin. Since Brezhnev was never a regular soldier, this step provoked indignation among professional officers.
After a sharp deterioration in health in 1978. Brezhnev delegated most of his duties to Konstantin Chernenko.
By 1980, Brezhnev’s health deteriorated greatly, he wanted to resign, but members of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee were categorically against it, as soon as Leonid Ilyich was able to balance the influence of Soviet political elites.
In March 1982, Brezhnev suffered a stroke.
He died of a heart attack on November 10, 1982, and was buried in the Necropolis near the Kremlin wall.
