Thirty-five years ago, at approximately 8 a.m. on November 10, 1982, Soviet President Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, who led the Soviet Union for 18 years, died suddenly at the age of 75. The official announcement of Brezhnev’s death was not made until the next day at 11 a.m.
On that day, Soviet television programming was abruptly replaced with classical music, a common practice when a member of the leadership had died. Brezhnev had consolidated his power by the late 1970s and served simultaneously as president of the Politburo, chairman of the Council of Ministers, in addition to general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Because of this, there was uncertainty as to who would succeed to these positions. Brezhnev’s death also signaled the end of a period of Soviet history that was marked by both stability and stagnation.
Born in Kamianske, Ukraine, in 1906, Brezhnev graduated from the Dniproderzhynsk Metallurgical Technicum. He was a metallurgical engineer in Ukraine’s iron and steel industry, and following military service during World War II with the rank of major general, he succeeded Nikita Khrushchev as first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1964.
His style of governance was hostile toward reformers and was dependent on cronyism, which bred the pervasive corruption and socioeconomic decline that came to be known as the Brezhnev Stagnation.
The Brezhnev era was also marked by forceful repression of political opponents and dissidents, a massive build-up of the military that bankrupted the Russian economy, and a foreign policy that seemed confusing – with moments of “peaceful co-existence” (détente) with the West, while at the same time Soviet invasions and military actions were conducted from Czechoslovakia in 1968 to Afghanistan in 1979.
The early 1970s were also a time when prominent dissident figures such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov were internally exiled, with an increased clamp-down on domestic dissent marked by mass arrests of activists, particularly in Ukraine.
One of the major triumphs in Soviet-U.S. relations during the Brezhnev era was the signing of the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which legitimized post-World War II borders in Europe and pledged the Soviet Union to uphold human rights within its borders. The move also spawned citizens’ groups in several Soviet republics, including Ukraine, to set up monitors to oversee Soviet compliance with the agreements, particularly in the area of human rights.
Yuri Andropov succeeded Brezhnev as general secretary, but served only two years before his death, and Andropov was succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko, who lasted 13 months (1984-1985) before his death. Mikhail Gorbachev, who served from 1985 to 1991, saw the collapse of the Soviet Union less than 10 years after the death of Brezhnev.
Source: “Leonid Brezhnev dead at 75,” The Ukrainian Weekly, November 14, 1982.