Leonid Brezhnev.

While pushing for détente between the two Cold War superpowers, he achieved nuclear parity with the United States and strengthened Moscow’s dominion over Central and Eastern Europe. The massive arms buildup and widespread military interventionism under Brezhnev’s leadership substantially expanded Soviet influence abroad, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. By the mid-1970s, numerous observers argued the Soviet Union had surpassed the United States to become the world’s strongest military power.

When visiting the United States for a summit with Richard Nixon in 1973, he expressed a wish to drive around Washington in a Lincoln Continental that Nixon had just given him; upon being told that the Secret Service would not allow him to do this, he said ‘I will take the flag off the car, put on dark glasses, so they can’t see my eyebrows and drive like any American would’ to which Henry Kissinger replied ‘I have driven with you and I don’t think you drive like an American!

From 1935 to 1936 he completed the compulsory term of military service. After taking courses at a tank school, he served as a political commissar in a tank factory.

Like many youths in the years after the Russian Revolution of 1917, he received a technical education, at first in land management and then in metallurgy.

He graduated from the Kamenskoye Metallurgical Technicum in 1935 and became a metallurgical engineer in the iron and steel industries of eastern Ukraine.

After the results of the October Revolution were finalized with the creation of the Soviet Union, Brezhnev joined the Communist party’s youth league in 1923 before becoming an official party member in 1929.

His niece Lyubov Brezhneva published a memoir in 1995 which claimed that Brezhnev worked systematically to bring privileges to his family in terms of appointments, apartments, private luxury stores, private medical facilities and immunity from prosecution.

Brezhnev’s ethnicity was given as Ukrainian in some documents, including his passport, and Russian in others. A statement confirming that he regarded himself as a Russian can be found in his book Memories 1979, where he wrote: And so, according to nationality, I am Russian, I am a proletarian, a hereditary metallurgist.

In 1936, he became director of the Dniprodzerzhynsk Metallurgical Technicum a technical college and was transferred to the regional center of Dnipropetrovsk. In May 1937, he became deputy chairman of the Kamenskoye city soviet. In May 1938, after Nikita Khrushchev had taken control of the Ukrainian communist party, he was appointed head of the propaganda department of the Dnipropetrovsk regional communist party, and later, in 1939, a regional Party Secretary, in charge of the city’s defense industries. Here, he took the first steps toward building a network of supporters which came to be known as the Dnipropetrovsk Mafia that would greatly aid his rise to power.

His love of medals he received over 100 was well known, so in December 1966, on his 60th birthday, he was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union. Brezhnev received the award, which came with the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star, three more times in celebration of his birthdays. On his 70th birthday he was awarded the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union’s highest military honour. After being awarded the rank, he attended an 18th Army Veterans meeting, dressed in a long coat and saying Attention, the Marshal is coming!

Brezhnev’s main passion was driving foreign cars given to him by leaders of state from across the world. He usually drove these between his dacha and the Kremlin with, according to historian Robert Service, flagrant disregard for public safety.

In 1964, he consolidated enough power to replace Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary of the CPSU, the most powerful position in the country.

Brezhnev’s eagerness for undeserved glory was shown by his poorly written memoirs recalling his military service during World War II, which treated the minor battles near Novorossiysk as a decisive military theatre. Despite his book’s apparent weaknesses, it was awarded the Lenin Prize for Literature and was hailed by the Soviet press.

When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, he joined the Red Army as a commissar and rose rapidly through the ranks to become a major general during World War II.

He also conferred upon himself the rare Order of Victory in 1978, which was posthumously revoked in 1989 for not meeting the criteria for citation. A promotion to the rank of Generalissimo of the Soviet Union, planned for Brezhnev’s seventy-fifth birthday, was quietly shelved due to his ongoing health problems.

Brezhnev’s vanity made him the target of many political jokes. Nikolai Podgorny warned him of this, but Brezhnev replied, If they are poking fun at me, it means they like me.

Leonid Brezhnev was a Soviet politician who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982, and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet head of state from 1960 to 1964 and again from 1977 to 1982.

His 18-year term as General Secretary was second only to Joseph Stalin’s in duration.