Leonid Brezhnev

"Brezhnev" redirects here. For other uses, see Brezhnev (disambiguation).

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
In office 14 October 1964 – 10 November 1982
Preceded by	Nikita Khrushchev
Succeeded by	Yuri Andropov
Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
In office 7 May 1960 – 15 July 1964
Preceded by	Kliment Voroshilov
Succeeded by	Anastas Mikoyan
In office 16 June 1977 – 10 November 1982
Preceded by	Nikolai Podgorny
Succeeded by	Yuri Andropov (1983) Vasily Kuznetsov (acting)
Personal details
Born	(1906-12-19)19 December 1906 Kamenskoe, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	10 November 1982(1982-11-10) (aged 75) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Nationality	Soviet (Ukrainian)
Political party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Spouse	Viktoria Brezhneva
Profession	Metallurgical Engineer, Civil servant
Signature

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (December 19, 1906 – November 10, 1982) led the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He served as 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 responsible for the economic stagnation of the Soviet Union, for using much of the countries budget on the armed force, and not continuing with Nikita Khrushchev's liberal reforms during his tenure.

Brezhnev was born in the Ukrainian village of Kamenskoe 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 was 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 internationally and domestically. 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. 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: the percentage of children taught their native languages in those countries dropped, native-language media was restricted and "nationalists" were jailed.

File:Brezhnev1936.jpg

A 1936 photo of Leonid Brezhnev.

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).

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. 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.

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, 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. Brezhnev was appointed Party First Secretary; Aleksey Kosygin was appointed Prime Minister, and Anastas Mikoyan became head of state.

Leader (1964–82)

File:Richard Nixon Leonid Brezhnev.png

Richard Nixon and Brezhnev meeting at the White House, 19 June 1973

Gerald Ford and Brezhnev meeting in Vladivostok, November, 1974

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. 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. In 1962, Brezhnev became an honorary citizen of Belgrade. 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)

Leonid Brezhnev and Gerald Ford are signing joint communiqué on the SALT treaty in Vladivostok

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.

Stagnation of the economy

Main articles: Brezhnev stagnation and Economy of the Soviet Union

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. 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.

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". On the other hand, the standard of living and housing quality improved significantly.

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. 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.

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 then the Soviet Union.

Last years

Carter and Brezhnev sign the SALT II treaty, 18 June 1979, in Vienna

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 and another on the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine's industries, were translated into scores of languages (including such an unlikely choice as Yiddish) and became (at least on paper) compulsory study material in every Soviet school. It is now believed 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". He had developed narcotic dependence on sleeping pill nembutal and died of a heart attack on 10 November 1982. He was honoured with one of the largest and most impressive funerals in the world. 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. 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

File:Brezhnev plaque.jpg

Commemorative plaque of Brezhnev, donated to the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, Germany

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 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.

Brezhnev was very well said in the world but mainly in his country by leading his country to the end of the war, and giving the world at least a few peace, with attitudes such as the prohibition of arms and strategic policies, détente and peaceful cooperation, also raised the social status of its people without distancing the socialists ideals. However, it was highly criticized, especially by the West, by causing a stagnation in the Soviet economy.
He demanded that all communist parties of Europe were 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.

Centenary

On the 100th anniversary of his birth Russians are looking back on Brezhnev's iron-fisted rule with a nostalgia that is coloured by communist hyperbole. "During his years at the helm, [Brezhnev] got things done, said Gennady Zyuganov, the current leader of Communist Party of the Russian Federation. "Industrial production almost tripled and the standard of living doubled. "These years were a renaissance, said Alexei Ponamarev, a Moscow resident. "Even though people call it the 'time of stagnation' in fact these years were a time of rebirth. Indeed, after the destruction of World War II, Russia had reached rock bottom, Brezhnev's early years did see various improvements.
Brezhnev's Dec. 19 centenary has prompted a slew of exhibitions, films and television documentaries that all focus on the same themes: nostalgia for the certainties of the Brezhnev era and a yearning to recapture a time when the rest of the world treated the Kremlin with awed respect.
Most of the photos are bland, lack revelation about Brezhnev's character, and have an official feel to them. Attendance at the exhibit has been lacklustre. When the photos were originally taken, the photographer had a certain task, and one which is similar today—to show the Soviet leader in a positive light. "My work wasn't just about taking photos, said Vladimir Musaelyan, who for most of Brezhnev's 18 years in office was his personal photographer. ``I worked on his image. So of course we were friends. A small number of the images are more candid, however. One previously unseen image shows Brezhnev on a hunting trip. In another he is drinking champagne with Cuban leader Fidel Castro in the back of a speedboat. "When I started working for him I couldn't keep up, said Vladimir Musaelyan. ``I was 28 and he was 64. He travelled a lot around the country, maybe 20 or 30 days at a time. Of course, I was tired after all this. But I was amazed how he could do this. He usually took only 8 minutes to eat and so in the beginning I often went hungry until I also learned to eat fast. Today, Russia is plagued by high crime, corruption, and police abuse, all of which are out of control and growing. These factors, more than anything, fuel the nostalgia for Brezhnev's era of stagnation.

Best period of history

From Tsarist era to Vladimir Putin, the years of Leonid Brezhnev and his two successors at the head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were those in which the Russians claim to have lived better, according to a survey published by Nezavissimaya Gazeta. The question 'what time the Russians live better?', 54.9% of respondents said 'the period of stagnation', the years when the USSR was addressed successively by Leonid Brezhnev, Konstantin Chernenko and Yuri Andropov.

Most Russians consider the Brezhnev Era (1964–1982) 'times of wellness', according to a survey released by the Public Opinion Foundation in Russia. 61% of the inquiries made a positive assessment of the time and only 17% to recall as 'negative'. And among people aged 36 and 54 years, positive rating rises to 75%. Even among young Russians (up to 35 years), 35 percent give a positive note this period of the communist regime, while 20% consider it negative. The role played by former 50% consider it positive, while 16% take the opposite view. However, 42% responded negatively to the question: "I would like to return the country to the historical period in which it was directed by Brezhnev, with all aspects and distinctive features of this period of life?", And 36% were willing to come the 'time machine'. According to this study, the most nostalgic of the 'Brezhnev era' live in Russia. The centenary of Leonid Brezhnev, in November 19, 2006 in Ukraine (where he was born) and Russia (where he ruled), has been highlighted by the publication of numerous articles and documentary films about the life and work of communist leader. On the one hand, it is noted that at that time, the Soviet Union reached the peak of its power globally, achieved military parity with the United States, and leadership in clearing the area. "The times of Brezhnev was the golden age, if not all of Russian history, at least in their Soviet-era" - believes Vitali Tretyakov, lead author of the weekly Moskovskie Novosti.

References

Bibliography

• Sakwa, Richard (1998). Soviet Politics in Perspective. Routledge. p. 355. ISBN 0415071534.
• Sakwa, Richard (1999). The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union. Routledge. p. 521. ISBN 0415122902.
• Childs, David (2000). The Two Red Flags: European Social Democracy and Soviet communism since 1945. Routledge. p. 187. ISBN 0415171814.
• Sandle, Mark; Bacon, Edwin (2002). Brezhnev Reconsidered. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 233. ISBN 033379463X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Ulan, Adam Bruno (2002). Understanding the Cold War: a historian's personal reflections. Transaction Publishers. p. 410. ISBN 0765808854.
• Taubman, William (2003), Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, W.W. Norton & Co., ISBN 039332484 {{citation}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help)
• Oliver, Michael J.; Aldcroft, Derek Howard (2008). Economic Disasters of the Twentieth Century. Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 361. ISBN 1848441584.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

External links

• Our Course: Peace and Socialism Collection of Brezhnev's 1973 speeches
• Leonid Brezhnev at Find a Grave
• СССР TV: Videoprograms with L.Brezhnev on Soviet TV portal (in Russian)