Today in History, June 16: Leonid Brezhnev

byericpierre

915 followers

7 years ago

1977, on June 16, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, Soviet Communist Party General Secretary is named President of the Soviet Union. Thus, becoming the first person to hold both posts simultaneously.

Leonid Brezhnev was born in Kamianske, Ukraine on December 19, 1906, into a Russian worker's family. He joined Komsomol (a political youth organization in the Soviet Union) in 1923, and in 1929 became an active member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). In 1935, he graduated from the Dniprodzerzhynsk Metallurgical Technicum and became a metallurgical engineer in the Ukrainian iron and steel industry.

At the start of World war II he was drafted into immediate military. In 1946, he left the army with the rank of major general. In 1952 Leonid Brezhnev became a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU, an institution created by Lenin, which during the area of Joseph Stalin lost its importance, to regain it after the death of Joseph Stalin. In 1964 Leonid Brezhnev became the First Secretary of the Central Committee after the ouster of Nikita Khrushchev.

Leonid Brezhnev, as a leader, took care to consult his colleagues before acting. But his attempt to govern without meaningful economic reforms led to a national decline by the mid-1970’s. A period referred to as the Era of Stagnation. During his time as Secretary General and starting 1977 as President of the Soviet Union the military expenditure increased significantly, and stood by the time of his death at approximately 12.5% of the country's GNP.This and an aging and ineffective leadership set the stage for a dwindling GNP compared to Western nations.

While at the helm of the USSR, Leonid Brezhnev pushed for détente between his country and the Western countries. At the same time, he presided over the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia to stop the Prague Spring. He sent the Soviet military to Afghanistan to save the fragile regime, installed by the Soviet Union, and which was fighting a war against the Mujahedeen’s. However, in December 1981 he decided not to militarily intervene in Poland. Instead allowing the country's government to impose martial law. This marked effectively the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine.

After years of declining health, Brezhnev died in office on November 10, 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second in duration only to that of Joseph Stalin. Leonid Brezhnev had fostered a cult of personality, although not nearly to the same degree as Joseph Stalin. During Leonid Brezhnev's rule, the global influence of the Soviet Union grew dramatically. To a large part because of the expansion of the Soviet military. Mikhail Gorbachev, who would lead the USSR from 1985 to 1991, denounced his legacy. Leonid Brezhnev’s rule was considered less successful than that of Joseph Stalin. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Boris Yeltsin’s market reforms, many Russian changed their mind and to this day miss the Brezhnev era’s stability.