50 interesting facts about the personality of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev and his era. Leonid Brezhnev

INTERESTING FACTS FROM THE BIOGRAPHY OF LEONID BREZHNEV On October 15, 1964, Leonid Brezhnev stood at the helm of the USSR, ruling it for 18 years. Much of his life we know. Movies and series are made about him. The era of his reign is still of considerable interest. But there are facts from the biography, which are not remembered very often.

Pictured: Zabaikalsky Krai. Chita region. Cadet and political instructor of a tank company Leonid Brezhnev, 1935. 1. BY NATIONALITY - UKRAINIAN Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was born in Ukraine on December 19, 1906, in the village of Kamenskoye (now the city of Dneprodzerzhinsk), and in most of his documents the nationality was recorded - Ukrainian. In any case, for many years in his various identity cards, this column did not change. Both in the passport and the military ID. Much was connected with Ukraine in his life. But he began his career in Belarus, after graduating from the Kursk land management and reclamation technical school, he worked as a land surveyor in the Kokhanovsky district of the Orsha district of the Belarusian USSR. In 1927, Brezhnev married, and in the same year he and his wife ended up in the Urals. 2. HISTORY WITH THE AUCP(B) In the Sverdlovsk region (then still the Ural region), Brezhnev started as a simple land surveyor, then became the head of the district land department, deputy chairman of the Bisert regional executive committee of the Ural region (1929-1930), deputy head of the regional land administration. It was in the Urals that, in order to make a further career, Brezhnev joined the party exactly 85 years ago, as evidenced by archival documents. True, with the entry of the future General Secretary into the Bolshevik Party, there are still questions. A document has been preserved in which Ivan Ivanovich Neputin (a very popular surname in those places), who headed the Nizhneserginsky City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of the Bisert District of the Ural Region at the end of the twenties of the last century, recommended accepting Leonid Ilyich as a candidate for the party. In the official biography, it appears that Brezhnev joined the party in Dnepropetrovsk. Two years later. There is a version that Brezhnev fled from the Urals to Dnepropetrovsk from arrest. He threatened him for doing the wrong measurement of the land and he was interested in the NKVD. Brezhnev got to Dnepropetrovsk through Moscow, where in 1930 he entered the Moscow Institute of Mechanical Engineering named after M. I. Kalinin, and in the spring of 1931 he transferred to the evening faculty of the Dneprodzerzhinsk Metallurgical Institute. Simultaneously with his studies, he worked as a simple stoker-fitter at a factory in Dnepropetrovsk. On October 24, 1931, according to the official version, he joined the CPSU (b). And then his career skyrocketed. In 1937, he was already deputy chairman of the Dneprodzerzhinsky city executive committee. In 1939, he was secretary of the Dnepropetrovsk regional party committee, where he first oversaw ideology, and then the defense industry. Then, they say, Stalin himself noticed him, saying: "What a handsome Moldavian." Then Brezhnev already led the Central Committee of the party of this republic. And most importantly, no matter how rapidly Brezhnev moved up the career ladder, his fear of the Urals did not go away. He never visited the Sverdlovsk region after that. 3. THE MOST FAITHFUL PERSON OF KHRUSHCHEV

Pictured: Moscow. Kremlin. 1st Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev (left) and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, 1962. In early 1954, Leonid Brezhnev was sent to work in Kazakhstan, where he was instructed to lead all work on the development of virgin and fallow lands. This is where the education of a surveyor came in handy! The first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan was then Panteleimon Kondratievich Ponomarenko, the second - Brezhnev. It is known that shortly before his death, Joseph Stalin saw his successor and successor in Ponomarenko. According to many contemporaries, Nikita Khrushchev exiled a possible competitor away from Moscow, putting his most reliable subordinate in his deputies to keep an eye on him. If Khrushchev had known, he would have assigned a spy to Brezhnev himself and would never have trusted him. 4.SPACE ASSURANCE In January 1969, an assassination attempt was made on Leonid Brezhnev. It all happened during the ceremonial meeting of the crews spaceships"Soyuz-4" and "Soyuz-5". An officer of the Soviet army, junior lieutenant Viktor Ilyin, dressed in a police uniform, entered the Borovitsky Gate under the guise of a security guard and opened fire with two pistols at the car in which, as he believed, the head of state was supposed to go. In fact, cosmonauts Leonov, Nikolaev, Tereshkova and Beregovoi were in the car. The driver, Ilya Zharkov, was killed by shots and several people were injured before the escort motorcyclist knocked the shooter down. Brezhnev himself rode a different route and was not injured at all. Another assassination attempt on Brezhnev was being prepared in Paris during his visit. But there all attempts managed to warn in advance.

Pictured: Moscow. Meeting of the crews of spacecraft "Soyuz-4" and "Soyuz-5" at the Vnukovo airfield. From left to right: members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU Dmitry Polyansky, Nikolai Podgorny, Leonid Brezhnev and Soviet pilot-cosmonauts Vladimir Shatalov, Boris Volynov, Yevgeny Khrunov and Alexei Eliseev, 1969. 5. MILITARY GENERAL SECRETARY Brezhnev's establishment in power and his glorification began already in the 70s of the last century. The country lived then, not expecting change. The clock of the great Soviet era ran smoothly, snapping off the seconds and minutes of its heyday. But it was during these years that the USSR fought as much as the country had never fought. Moreover, taking part in the most senseless wars. This, however, did not prevent Leonid Ilyich from passionately kissing the leaders of fraternal and developing countries. His regalia were then innumerable - General Secretary Central Committee of the CPSU, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, four times Hero Soviet Union, Hero of Socialist Labor, Marshal of the Soviet Union, holder of the Order of Victory (it was awarded to the generals who made a radical change in the course of the Second World War), and all other Soviet, as well as countless foreign orders, in fact, the autocratic owner of a huge empire with almost three hundred million people named after the Soviet Union, located on the vast continent of Eurasia. This great person managed to stop the development of a huge state for eighteen years. The ancient Greek philosopher Democritus was put to shame, who told the world that "everything flows, everything changes." Everything was flowing, but nothing has changed. And then it seemed to everyone that it would always be like this and that Leonid Ilyich was eternal. The people laughed without malice at his forgetfulness, amused themselves with countless anecdotes about him - fortunately for political anecdotes then they no longer shot and did not give terms. Even a caustic anecdote about the leader of Angola and the poet Agostinho Netto, who died unexpectedly in 1979 during his visit to Moscow: “Netto came to us, and Brutto left (which means a product with packaging)”, aroused more sympathy than sarcasm.

Pictured: Moscow. Kremlin. Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Nikolai Viktorovich Podgorny presents to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev military badge honors "Marshal's Star", 1975. Agostinho Netto, becoming the head of state, announced a course towards the construction of socialism, but immediately the troops of Zaire and South Africa invaded the territory of his country. They joined with anti-government organizations and moved to the capital of Angola, Luanda. And then, of course, President Netto asked for help from best friends- USSR and Cuba. The Cuban corps, numbering 15,000 well-armed fighters, plus our military advisers and weapons, did their job, defended the independence of the freedom-loving Angolese people. Then the oppositionists, represented by orthodox communists, were eliminated. Tens of thousands of Angolans died in the course of intra-party purges and mass repressions.

Pictured: Cuba. Santiago de Cuba. General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev (center) and First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party Fidel Castro Ruz (right) while driving through the city, 1974. At that time, the African continent was practically divided into the sphere of influence of militarily strong states. In fact, this territory (as well as South East Asia , Latin America, Middle East) was transferred to the military confrontation between the two world systems, focused on building either socialism or capitalism. But what actually happened inside the country was sometimes incomprehensible to the most intelligent advisers. No wonder there is a continuation of the saying “East is a delicate matter, Africa is a dark matter.” In July 1977, an armed conflict broke out between the Republic of Somalia and Ethiopia, which also did not pass by the USSR. The 42 thousandth army of Somalia, which is 12 mechanized infantry brigades, 250 tanks, hundreds of artillery pieces, more than 30 modern Soviet-made MiG-17 and MiG-21 aircraft, crossed the border and began hostilities against Ethiopia, whose leaders also headed for building socialism . I must say that the current situation for Soviet aviation advisers was largely anecdotal: they had to teach Ethiopian pilots flying the American F-5A, F-86 Saber (before the fall of the emperor in 1974, Ethiopia was armed with the help of the United States) to fight against the Soviet MiG- 17 and MiG-21, which were in service with Somalia. For 15 years, the USSR supplied weapons to Somalia, trained officers in schools and academies, Somalis fought according to our combat regulations, and our specialists literally a week before the conflict served as advisers in the Somali army. In March 1978, Somali troops were expelled from Ethiopia. The Cuban corps, our advisers and specialists, have again worked. The total losses in the war are about a hundred thousand killed, half a million refugees. And with whom are Angola, Ethiopia, Somalia and a dozen other African states now? 6. THE FIRST SOCIALIST WAR? On February 17, 1979, the People's Liberation Army of China invaded Vietnam. In this conflict, the USSR took the side of Vietnam, arranging an act of intimidation along the entire eastern border with China, 4,500 kilometers away. 44 divisions with tank and air support advanced towards China. The divisions of the strategic, operational and operational-tactical missile troops of the Far Eastern Military District were put on combat readiness number one. Deep reconnaissance reported that the PLA troops, residents of cities and villages on the adjacent side, were fleeing in panic deep into the country. From the very first days of the war, Soviet specialists, who were both in Vietnam and in neighboring countries, began combat activities together with the Vietnamese. In addition to them, reinforcements began to arrive from the USSR. An air bridge between the USSR and Vietnam was installed. The USSR expelled the Chinese embassy from Moscow, and sent its personnel not by plane, but by railway. In fact, after the Ural ridge to the very border with China and Mongolia, they could see columns of tanks going east. The aggression turned into the collapse of the Chinese military machine - 300,000 Chinese, equipped with heavy weapons, were held back not by the regular Vietnamese army, which performed its international duty in Kampuchea and Laos, but by the border guards, the police and the people's militia of the border provinces. At the same time, for 30 days of the conflict, the maximum advance Chinese army was about 80 kilometers, although the modern war assumed the advance of the division in the offensive 50 kilometers per day. According to Vietnamese data, Chinese losses amounted to 62.5 thousand people killed, as well as 280 tanks and armored vehicles, 118 guns and mortars, and several aircraft. In December 1979, units of the 40th Army of the USSR Armed Forces entered the territory of the Republic of Afghanistan. The countdown to the beginning of the collapse of the Brezhnev era, and with it the Soviet Union, has begun. Dnepropetrovsk, March 20, 1946. At the presidium of the meeting on the nomination of the first secretary of the Dnepropetrovsk regional committee of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev (third from right at the table) as a candidate for deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

Brezhnev is the only person in the entire history of the existence of the USSR who possessed five gold stars of the Hero: one star of the Hero of Socialist Labor and four stars of the Hero of the Soviet Union. Marshal Zhukov had only four stars of the Hero of the Soviet Union, while Brezhnev's predecessor N. S. Khrushchev had three stars of the Hero of Socialist Labor and one star of the Hero of the Soviet Union. The rest of the Heroes in the USSR were not awarded this title and the Gold Star more than three times.

Also, Brezhnev is the only person awarded the Order of Victory, whose award was canceled. According to the statute of the order, which states that only those who commanded the front during the war and carried out a strategic turning point in any operation, or the commanders-in-chief of the allied armies who made a significant contribution to the victory over fascism, are entitled to be awarded the order. Brezhnev, who spent the entire war in managerial positions in the political apparatus of the Red Army, had absolutely no rights to this order, especially in 1978, when the award took place.

There is a rumor that L. I. Brezhnev’s peculiar diction is due to the fact that during the war he was wounded in the jaw, which especially affected with age. According to other sources, Brezhnev did not receive a single wound during the entire war.

Brezhnev liked to play dominoes.

On February 9, 1961, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, left Moscow for the Republic of Guinea on an official visit on an IL-18 plane. About 130 km north of Algiers at an altitude of 8250 m, a fighter with French markings suddenly appeared and made three approaches dangerously close to the aircraft. During the visits, the fighter twice opened fire on the Soviet aircraft, followed by crossing the course of the aircraft. Pilot Bugaev managed to get his plane out of the firing zone.

In 1976, a bust of Brezhnev was erected in Dneprodzerzhinsk on the railway station Oktyabrskaya Square. From this square, a green alley descended down to the Dnieper to the square near the Dnieper Metallurgical Plant. On the square near the DMKD, there was a monument to Lenin for a long time, and soon this alley was called “From Ilyich to Ilyich” among the people.

In 1977, the film "Soldiers of Freedom" was released, in the last episode of which E. Matveev played the role of young Colonel Brezhnev. This fact led to the fact that the people began to talk about the revival of the cult of personality, this time - Brezhnev.

About Brezhnev filmed in 2005 the eponymous art television series.

Brezhnev was a fan of the Spartak football club, and was also constantly present at the hockey matches of the Spartak team, held at the Ice Arena in Luzhniki.

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev held the highest post of the USSR for 18 years - from 1964 to 1982. Interestingly, the characteristic in the personal file of 42 years old read: “She shuns rough work, has very poor military knowledge ...”.
The first pre-New Year's television address on behalf of the leadership in the USSR to the Soviet people was first made by the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev on December 31, 1970.

Brezhnev was very fond of kissing, and he made no exceptions for men. Because of this, the people began to call the triple kiss Brezhnev's kiss. Knowing the weakness of the General Secretary, during his trips around the country, local authorities specially selected girls who were trusted to hand bread and salt to Leonid Ilyich. They say that in Kiev, in addition to external data, applicants were required to kiss sweetly. Brezhnev was also pleased with reminders of his previous successes on the love front.

By old age, Brezhnev began to talk and fall asleep during negotiations and speeches. In 1976 he moved clinical death. It is proved that Brezhnev became drug addicted from sleeping pills"nebutal" . On November 7, 1982, his last public appearance took place, and three days later Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev died at the age of 75.

During the funeral of Soviet leaders, it is customary to carry their awards pinned to small velvet pillows. But Brezhnev had more than two hundred orders and medals! I had to attach several orders and medals to each velvet cushion and limit the honorary escort to forty-four senior officers.

After the death of Leonid Ilyich from 1982 to 1988, the city of Naberezhnye Chelny in the Republic of Tatarstan bore the name Brezhnev. It is characteristic that when the city of Izhevsk was renamed in memory of former minister defense of Dmitry Ustinov, there was a bus route Brezhnev - Ustinov.

Brezhnev liked to play dominoes.

About Brezhnev filmed in 2005 the eponymous art television series.

Brezhnev was a fan of the Spartak football club, and was also constantly present at the hockey matches of the Spartak team, held at the Ice Arena in Luzhniki.

The first pre-New Year's television address on behalf of the leadership in the USSR to the Soviet people was first made by the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev on December 31, 1970.

By old age, Brezhnev began to talk and fall asleep during negotiations and speeches. In 1976, he suffered clinical death. It has been proven that Brezhnev became addicted to the sleeping pill Nebutal. On November 7, 1982, his last public appearance took place, and three days later Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev died at the age of 75.

The last general secretary and at the same time the first president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, was modest salary at 500 rubles. Slightly above the national average. However, almost before the collapse of the USSR, his monetary reward increased sharply to several thousand rubles. He did not manage to acquire special capital for himself. And after the end of his political career, he began to speak around the world at various conferences, forums and other events. The annual income of the "former" president started from 200 thousand dollars.

Yeltsin was also ascetic about his salary. In the mid-1990s, he practically lost control of power. The country is ruled by a handful of elected oligarchs headed by Berezovsky.

Current head of state V.V. Putin received at the beginning of his political activity as president about $5,000 a month. To date, this amount is about 80 thousand dollars. Add a separate expense item to support the presidential activities in the amount of about 1 million per month (dollars, of course).

Interesting fact. According to the current legislation, a pension to the former head is assigned in the amount of at least 75% of the salary he received during the presidency. And it is charged immediately after the end of the term of office.

Brezhnev liked to play dominoes.

About Brezhnev filmed in 2005 the eponymous art television series.

Brezhnev was a fan of the Spartak football club, and was also constantly present at the hockey matches of the Spartak team, held at the Ice Arena in Luzhniki.

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev held the highest post of the USSR for 18 years, from 1964 to 1982. Interestingly, the characteristic in the personal file of 42 years old read: “She shuns rough work, has very poor military knowledge ...”.