Good General Secretary: unknown facts from the life of Leonid Brezhnev. Interesting facts about Brezhnev (1 photo)

Brezhnev is the only person in the entire history of the existence of the USSR who possessed five golden stars of the Hero: one star of the Hero of Socialist Labor and four stars of the Hero 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. For the rest of the Heroes in the USSR, this title and the Gold Star are more three times were not awarded.

Also, Brezhnev is the only person awarded the Order of Victory, whose award was canceled. By the statute of the order, which states that to be awarded with the order only those who commanded the front during the war and made 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 eligible. 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 Soviet aircraft with the subsequent crossing of 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 supported football club"Spartak" 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, a characteristic in a personal file dated 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 Kyiv, 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 has been proven that Brezhnev became addicted to the sleeping pill Nebutal. On November 7, 1982, it took place last appearance in public, 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.

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.

In our history, to characterize any character as a "contradictory personality" is to say absolutely nothing about him. History is so changeable that absolutely everything in it is contradictory. And those who yesterday sang praises to the next leader, no matter how he was titled, after his death are ready to wriggle outward, revealing terrible truth about the departed.

Leonid Brezhnev did not escape this fate either. The people who wrote his memoirs for him and awarded him countless awards, praised him in all genres of art and at all events, quickly reorganized. It turned out that Brezhnev did not particularly like to work, and he created almost a new cult of personality for himself, and begged for cars abroad as a gift, and all relatives for warm places attached. In general, she did it, seized upon the feeder.

Brezhnev was certainly not a great ruler. In fact, he was a fairly ordinary person, for long years who understood and accepted the principles of the hardware game. This allowed him not only to climb the political Olympus, but also to stay there for 18 years. And in life, judging by the facts below, Leonid Ilyich was content with what he had, but he also tried not to miss his own.

1. At the end of the last century, many media outlets and authors of memoirs tried to create the image of L. I. Brezhnev as a narrow-minded, not very literate, but crafty peasant who managed to ingratiate himself with those in power. In fact, for a man born in 1906, Brezhnev received an excellent education. He graduated from a classical gymnasium, a land management technical school and a metallurgical institute. And this is in a country where a seven-year education was considered a great achievement.

2. Before meeting Victoria Denisova, who became his wife in 1927, Brezhnev was far from being so imposing. Everything changed the hairstyle invented by Victoria. With such a hairstyle, Leonid Ilyich went through his whole life.

3. Due to the fact that many party leaders of the highest echelon married Jewish women, Victoria was also considered a representative of this nationality, since her appearance allowed.

4. Judging by the memoirs of contemporaries, Viktoria Petrovna was the only person who reproached Brezhnev to his face for illegally and undeservedly awarding him the Order of Victory. The award decree was annulled by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989.

5. A year after graduating from the land surveying and reclamation technical school, Brezhnev was sent by order to the Urals, where he quickly became deputy head of the regional land management department. In 1930, unknown events forced him to leave the Urals and go to Moscow to study at the institute. This can be explained by the desire to study or get career prospects. There is one “but”: L. I. Brezhnev never came to the Sverdlovsk region for the rest of his life, even when he was General Secretary. Yes, and the transition of an official of the regional level into students looked painfully sharp. And having moved from Moscow to Dneprodzerzhinsk, Leonid Ilyich combined his studies with work as a stoker.

6. Officially, the future secretary general joined the CPSU (b) in 1931 in Dneprodzerzhinsk, although information surfaced about Brezhnev's recommendation to the party in the archives, signed by a man named Neputin.

7. Brezhnev served military service after graduating from an institute in Transbaikalia, where in 1935 he received the rank of lieutenant.

8. Leonid Ilyich went through the war, as they say, "from start to finish." Most sources, however, report that from the beginning of the war he was engaged in the mobilization and evacuation of industry, but this is not so. In the pre-war years, party workers even at the level of Brezhnev (third secretary of the regional party committee) knew in advance where and what position they would occupy. Brezhnev was supposed to become the head of the political department of the division, but the war began so unsuccessfully that already on June 28, 1941, he was appointed deputy head of the political department of the front. The war ended for Major General Brezhnev on May 12, 1945, when his 18th Army (Leonid Ilyich went through the entire war with it) finished off the remnants of the Germans in Czechoslovakia.

9. L. I. Brezhnev had to put on his uniform without a solemn occasion in 1953-1954, when he was appointed to leading positions in political bodies first in the Navy, and then in the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army.

10. Very interesting story associated with the rather unexpected transfer of Brezhnev to Kazakhstan in 1954. The first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan was A.P. Ponomarenko, who was unofficially considered a possible successor to Stalin, who had died the year before. N. Khrushchev, whose power was very fragile, sent Brezhnev as a spy for Ponomarenko. After 10 years, Brezhnev personally showed how Khrushchev did not understand personnel and replaced Nikita Sergeevich with the ambassador of the Secretary General.

11. With all his love for cars, including foreign ones, L. I. Brezhnev drove them only in an informal setting. "During the performance", as they say, he always drove Soviet cars. The exception is foreign visits.

12. Brezhnev became the first leader of the Soviet Union to officially congratulate citizens on the upcoming New Year. The broadcast of his speech took place a few minutes before the beginning of 1972.

13. In general, Leonid Ilyich was very democratic. He could go down a couple of floors in the building on Staraya Square (Central Committee of the CPSU) to the office of a newly appointed comrade or even to the referents. For joint celebrations, the family invited the most different people. Yes, and Brezhnev began his working day by calling his subordinates in Moscow and in the field, clarifying or consulting on various issues.

14. Brezhnev's life was seriously attempted at least once. In 1969, at the entrance to the Kremlin, a young man in a police uniform opened fire with two pistols at the car in which Brezhnev was supposed to go. The driver was killed, security officers were injured, the terrorist was detained. And the Secretary General was driving in another car on a different route. During foreign visits, dozens of reports of possible assassination attempts were received by local law enforcement officers, but the matter did not come to practical implementation.

15. The Brezhnev family lived in a large apartment for the 1970s in a house on Kutuzovsky. The house, of course, was different from the typical Soviet housing of those times, but there was no special luxury. The family was served by a cleaning lady, a waitress and a cook. Security was posted at the entrance to the entrance. In the late 70s, a new, more spacious apartment was prepared for the Brezhnevs in another house, but Leonid Ilyich refused to move. But the Head of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR R. Khasbulatov did not refuse 20 years later.

16. The dacha was bigger. The three-story brick house was located on a large plot. There was a tennis court, which was not played, and billiards, which was rarely played. But the pool was used frequently. The house was planned in the American style - common rooms downstairs, offices and bedrooms upstairs. It was in the bedroom on the third floor that Leonid Brezhnev passed away.

17. The General Secretary was very fond of the dacha in Nizhnyaya Oreanda. The Crimean air and bathing had a beneficial effect on him. “Again, grandfather swam to Turkey!” - Victoria Petrovna commented on especially long swims. This dacha already had some signs of luxury, but it is worth considering that it also served as a place for state visits and work meetings.

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  8 out of 49 If in the 1950s Brezhnev supported Khrushchev, then in 1964 he participated in a conspiracy against him and replaced him as head of state. "Khrushchev debunked the cult of Stalin after his death, and we debunked the cult of Khrushchev during his lifetime," Brezhnev later said.
  
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  9 out of 49 In Moscow, at the 19th Party Congress, Stalin drew attention to the stately Brezhnev. At that time, he served as head of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Moldova. Eyewitnesses recalled that the leader said about Brezhnev: "What a handsome Moldavian!"
  
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  10 out of 49 Brezhnev had in his arsenal more than a hundred different awards, including international ones. Among them were four "Gold Stars" of the Hero of the Soviet Union and the Hero of Socialist Labor.
  
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• 12 out of 49 Brezhnev was also awarded the Order of Victory, which was awarded for outstanding success in leading large-scale military operations. In 1989, Gorbachev deprived Brezhnev of this order posthumously due to the fact that the award was contrary to the status of the order.
  
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  16 out of 49 He played a special role in protecting the car from the criminal.
  
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  18 out of 49 In the late 1970s, Brezhnev's memoirs were published - three books "Small Land", "Renaissance" and "Virgin Land". In fact, the books were written by essayist Anatoly Agranovsky, Izvestiya publicist Arkady Sakhnin, and Pravda correspondent Alexander Murzin.
  
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  19 out of 49 Several other journalists also took part in the release of the book. Brezhnev's memoirs were included in school curriculum on literature. For his memoirs, Brezhnev received the Lenin Prize and a fee of 180 thousand rubles, but the compilers did not receive money, although Murzin (on the picture) and Sakhnin were awarded orders.
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  21 out of 49 Brezhnev liked to greet politicians with a kiss: first he kissed them on one cheek, then on the other, and then on the lips. Such a kiss was even nicknamed "triple Brezhnev."
  
• 22 out of 49 Among the "victims" of Brezhnev's kisses are Yugoslav leader Josef Broz Tito, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and even US President Jimmy Carter. In addition, Brezhnev tried to kiss Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, but failed.
  
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  23 out of 49 Brezhnev's kiss with East German leader Eric Honecker was depicted by artist Dmitry Vrubel on the Berlin Wall in 1990. The artist called the work "Lord! Help me survive among this mortal love."
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  31 of 49 In connection with this way of life, Victoria Brezhneva was not the "first lady" in our usual sense: she quite rarely accompanied him during official trips. They say that she dressed modestly, did not wear jewelry, did not attend noisy parties and did not know how to have fun.
  
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  32 out of 49 By the way, this could not be said about their daughter Galina, who was the complete opposite of her mother: she had many lovers, spent time in constant parties, drank a lot and adored expensive outfits.
  
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• 35 out of 49 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.
  
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• 41 out of 49 Brezhnev carefully recorded everything related to sleeping pills and the arrival of a package of pills up to last days of his life: "I spoke with Andropov. I received it", "I spoke with Tsvigun. Four pieces", "I received yellow ones from Andropov" and so on.
  
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  44 out of 49 The funeral of the Secretary General in 1982 was the most pompous since Stalin's, they were attended by a huge number of guests, including international ones. The highest ranks participated in the mourning event on Red Square communist party and states.
  
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  49 out of 49 There, 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.

Leonid Brezhnev and Willy Brandt. 1971

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, a characteristic in a personal file dated 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 Kyiv, 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 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.

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 the former Minister of Defense Dmitry Ustinov, there was a bus route Brezhnev - Ustinov.