Brezhnev, Leonid Ilich

Brezhnev, Leonid Ilich (b. 19 Dec. 1906, d. 10 Nov. 1982). First (General) Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1964–82 Born in Dneprodzerzhinsk (Ukraine), where he graduated from the Metallurgical Institute in 1935. A member of the Soviet Communist Party, he became Secretary of his local party organization, and served in World War II as a senior political officer in the Red Army. After the war, he became First Secretary of the Communist Party in Moldova, and in 1952 joined the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. He was put in charge of agricultural policies in Kazakhstan in 1955, but returned in 1957 to join the Presidium of the Central Committee, responsible for the development of heavy industry.

Brezhnev became head of state in 1960, and assumed control over state and party in 1964, when he succeeded Khrushchev as First Secretary of the party. A more steady leader than either the brutal Stalin or the erratic Khrushchev, he left no doubt as to his intention of preserving and extending Soviet influence through ordering his troops to intervene in the Czechoslovak Prague Spring of 1968. He justified this through the Brezhnev doctrine of limited sovereignty, whereby a socialist state was justified in interfering in the affairs of another in order to uphold socialism. Internally, he continued to develop the economy, though ultimately he presided over a period of economic stagnation caused by his country's ever-increasing technological backwardness, and the crippling cost of keeping up with the arms race. He agreed to some measures of disarmament, as well as the Helsinki Accord, though he lacked the flexibility to make the country's Communist system viable in the long run. His inability to adapt to changing circumstances was best portrayed when in December 1979 he ordered his troops to enter Afghanistan in a last (and ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to impose Communist rule in a country regardless of internal or international opinion. After his death, the system limped on for another three years until the leadership of Gorbachev, who found that it had become moribund beyond reform.