Leonid Brezhnev

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev;
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Brezhnev was born to a working-class family in Kamenskoye (now Kamianske, Ukraine) within the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire. After the results of the October Revolution were finalized with the creation of the Soviet Union, Brezhnev joined the Communist party's youth league in 1923 before becoming an official party member in 1929. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, he joined the Red Army as a commissar and rose rapidly through the ranks to become a major general during World War II. Following the war's end, Brezhnev was promoted to the party's Central Committee in 1952 and became a full member of the Politburo by 1957. In 1964, he consolidated enough power to replace Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary of the CPSU, the most powerful position in the country.

During his tenure, Brezhnev's governance improved the Soviet Union's international standing while stabilizing the position of its ruling party at home. Whereas Khrushchev regularly enacted policies without consulting the Politburo, Brezhnev was careful to minimize dissent among the party elite by reaching decisions through consensus thereby restoring the semblance of collective leadership. Additionally, while pushing for détente between the two Cold War superpowers, he achieved nuclear parity with the United States and strengthened Moscow's dominion over Central and Eastern Europe. Furthermore, the massive arms buildup and widespread military interventionism under Brezhnev's leadership substantially expanded Soviet influence abroad, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. By the mid-1970s, numerous observers argued the Soviet Union had surpassed the United States to become the world's strongest military power.

Conversely, Brezhnev's disregard for political reform ushered in an era of socioeconomic decline referred to as the Era of Stagnation. In addition to pervasive corruption and falling economic growth, this period was characterized by an increasing technological gap between the Soviet Union and the United States.

After 1975, Brezhnev's health rapidly deteriorated and he increasingly withdrew from international affairs despite maintaining his hold on power. He ultimately died on 10 November 1982 and was succeeded as general secretary by Yuri Andropov. Upon coming to power in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev denounced Brezhnev's government for its inefficiency and inflexibility before launching a campaign to liberalise the Soviet Union. Notwithstanding the backlash to his regime's policies in the mid-1980s, Brezhnev's rule has received consistently high approval ratings in public polls conducted in post-Soviet Russia. Provided by Wikipedia