Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (1906-1982)

Party and political leader in the Soviet Union; state functionary.

Born on December 1906 in Kamenskoye, Ukraine, to a family of metallurgists, Russian. From 1930 to 1935, he studied in Moscow Agricultural University and in Kamenskoye Metallurgical Institute successively and was awarded bachelor’s degree and metallurgical engineer title upon graduation. In May 1938, Korotchenko, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Ukrainan SSR, recommended him as the Minister of Commerce of the Party Committee of Dnipropetrovsk. In February 1939, he was promoted to be the Party Secretary in Dnipropetrovsk in charge of publicity, and in 1940 in charge of defense industries. During this period, he gained the trust of Khrushchev, the first Secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Party at that time.

After the outbreak of the Patriotic War of the Soviet Union in 1941, he was appointed as deputy head of political administration for the Southern Front (later changed to the Black Sea Army Group), and successively participated in the defense war in Rostov, Novorossiysk and other places in Ukraine, and was later transferred to Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary and other countries. He engaged in political work and has won two red flag honors, one red star and one Bogdan Khmelnitsky medal. He was promoted to major general in 1944.In August 1946, he was appointed as first Secretary of Zaporozhye State Committee of Ukraine; in the summer of 1950, he was transferred to Moldavia as the First Secretary of the Central Committee of Moldavian Communist Party.

In October 1952, he was promoted to become a member of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U., aa well as an alternate member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. In January 1954, he was sent to Kazakhstan to carry out the task of reclaiming wasteland and served as the second Secretary and later became the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR. In two years, Kazakhstan’s grain production increased more than nine times, and he was awarded with the Lenin medal.

In February 1956, he was re-elected as an alternate member of the Presidium and Secretariat of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. at the 20th Congress of the Party. In 1957, he became a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.. In May 1960, he served as the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. He became the Second Secretary of the Central Committee on July 15, 1964. In October 1964, he participated in the forced resignation of Khrushchev. In March 1966, he was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. at the 23rd C.P.S.U. National Congress.

In May 1976, he was awarded the title of Soviet marshal. He became once again Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in 1977.

During his reign as the supreme leader of the Soviet Union, Brezhnev gave up the theory of “comprehensively carrying out the construction of communism” put forward by Khrushchev, and replaced it with the theory of “the Soviet Union has already built developed socialism”.

Its basic contents were: Firstly, the long-term and relative independence of the socialist stage is the main basis for the stage of “developed socialism”. He argued: in the past, it was incorrectly thought that the transition to communism would begin immediately after the establishment of a socialist society. Socialist society has its own qualitative attributes, its own stable foundation which is different from capitalism and communism, and it has its own process of development, improvement and perfection. Socialism should be divided into different stages.

Secondly, the main feature of developed socialism is that the socialist society develops to a mature state. Its fundamental expression is that the transformation of all social relations on the basis of socialist internal and inherent collectivism principles is about to be completed; the role of socialist laws is fully exerted; the superiority of socialism in all fields of social life is fully demonstrated; the social system is equipped with organic integrity, vigorous vitality, political stability and unbreakable internal unity.

Thirdly, the basic laws for building a developed socialism are: the high development of productive forces; the development of two kinds of ownership systems and their gradual approach; the continuous growth of people’s welfare; the retention and improvement of the principle of distribution according to work; the implementation of reforms conducive to strengthening the leading role of the working class; national equality and common prosperity; the transformation from of a state under the dictatorship of the proletariat into a state owned by the whole people; and the further improvement of the people, at the same time strengthening the overall cooperation with the socialist countries and strengthening the leadership of the party. Fourth, the historical status of developed socialism can be summarized as: a period of social development, a mature period of socialism, and a period of gradual transition to a communist society. Although the theory of “developed socialism” corrected the mistakes of Khrushchev’s theory of “building communism in an all-round way”, there was still a lack of correct understanding of the level of socialist development and historical stage of the Soviet Union, and there was a tendency to go beyond the stage.

Brezhnev carried out reforms of the economic system. Major aspects of these reforms were to reduce the mandatory planning indicators of the central government, reform the management system, improve management methods and expand the autonomy of enterprises, and emphasized the material stimulation of profits to enterprise leaders and workers. Its essence was to make limited use of market mechanism within the framework of planned economy, and to manage the economy mainly by administrative means, supplemented by economic means. At that time, the reform had achieved obvious results, promoted the economic development of the Soviet Union, and made the national strength and international influence of the Soviet Union reach its peak. However, these reforms did not fundamentally overcome the shortcomings of the original economic system, and did not change the state of unbalanced development of heavy industry, military industry and various sectors of the national economy. By the second half of the 1970s, consequently the economic growth of the Soviet Union slowed down.

In domestic politics, Brezhnev made great efforts to maintain the stability of the governing cadres. He abolished the usual practice that the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. changing one third of their members at every Party Congress, and rarely changed the party Secretaries of the local organizations and the republics within the USSR, which led to a “serious stagnation” in the high-level organs of the Party and state and a caused the “senior old politicians” situation. He promoted personal worship around himself, emphasized “ensuring respect for cadres”, expanded the scope of cadres enjoying privileges, and increased the catalogue of these privileges. He also connived at the corruption of protecting his children’s cronies, which led to the extremely serious situation of bureaucracy, corruption and rampant privileges in the Soviet society.

In diplomacy, Brezhnev put forward a new doctrine and a new strategy of foreign expansion. Its main content was to adopt an offensive strategy, which considered USA as the main opponent militarily, the strategic focus of offensive and competition should be Europe. Brezhnev changed the past strategy of Soviet-US cooperation in co-dominating the world together with the USA and began to strive to replace the United States, and aimed to dominate the world alone. His policy towards the socialist camp countries and to the member states of the Warsaw Treaty, was formulated as the “limited sovereignty theory”, the interests of the socialist camp as a whole should hold the supreme sovereignty, and the sovereignty of each member socialist countries should be limited and subordinated to the supreme sovereignty.

In essence this doctrine aimed to restrict other countries’ sovereignty and to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, created a theoretical basis for the Soviet Union to pursue hegemonic foreign policy. During Brezhnev’s term of office, the Soviet Union carried out a series of activities to expand its sphere of influence, which included aiming to invade China’s Zhenbao Island and attacked Tielieketi Tacheng (Northwest China) in March and August 1969, deployed huge number of troops on the border between China and the Soviet Union for a long time, supported Vietnam to attack democratic Cambodia in December 1978, sending troops to invade Afghanistan in December 1979, etc., which caused extremely bad consequences.

Towards the western countries, Brezhnev carried out the “strategy of detente” including European countries, formally put forward USSR’s six point “Peace Program” to deal with the major issues of the world and stressed that “the detente policy should be raised to the level of first priority so as to consolidate and strengthen the peaceful coexistence diplomacy of the Soviet Union”. In his period, the Soviet Union launched an arms race with the United States, competed with the United States on a global scale, and expanded its sphere of influence.

On November 10, 1982, Brezhnev died of a heart attack in Moscow at the age of 76. He is the author of the work Following Lenin’s Course (8 Volumes), and others.