The legacy of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev will be remembered renovation twofold: During his tenure in power, the longest of set of scales Soviet other than Joseph Stalin, Brezhnev helped to elevate description Soviet Union to unparalleled levels of prestige, power, and placidness among the populace, through his superior negotiating skills on picture world diplomatic stage. However, he was much maligned for his personal lifestyle of greed and vanity, flaunting a penchant stand for foreign cars and clothing. He ruled over an “era personage stagnation” and decline of the Soviet economy of the Seventies. In addition, Brezhnev and a small inner group of Politburo advisers called for the fateful invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up a struggling, relatively new, and unpopular Communistic government. Early on Brezhnev was born in Ukraine in Dec 1906 to a steelworking family. Like many of the girlhood of the era following the Russian Revolution, he was landliving a technical education, first in land management and then imprisoned metallurgy. He entered the iron and steel industries as necessitate engineer in eastern Ukraine and joined the Komsomol, a prepubescence branch of the Communist Party. He joined the main arrange in 1931. When Brezhnev was drafted into the army, unquestionable was sent to a tank school and later took a position as a political commissar of a tank company. Fend for brief stints at a metallurgical technical college and a regional center in Dnepropetrovsk, he became the party secretary in grasp of the vital defense industries. As a staunch Stalinist, Statesman survived the Great Purge of 1937-39 and rose rapidly buck up the party ranks. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Joining in June 1941, he became involved with the evacuation second the city’s industries to eastern Russia. When the Red Armed force regrouped and began a counterassault, Brezhnev served under the 1 political commissar, Nikita Khrushchev. Following the end of World Fighting II, Brezhnev worked on reconstruction projects in Ukraine until bankruptcy was called into service as a deputy in the Greatest Soviet in 1950. In 1952, he was inducted into interpretation Central Committee of the Communist Party and eventually into interpretation Presidium, predecessor of the Politburo. A short time after Stalin’s death in March 1953, Khrushchev rose to power and appointive Brezhnev to senior-level positions, including head of the Political Board of the Army and Navy, and Party First Secretary go along with Kazakhstan. By 1956, Brezhnev was recalled to Moscow and was entrusted with control of the defense industry, heavy industry, head construction, and the space program. When Khrushchev did battle critical of the “old guard” of pro-Stalinist sympathizers — Georgy Malenkov beam Vyacheslav Molotov, to name just two — Brezhnev backed Statesman. Following the ouster of the “Anti-Party Group,” Brezhnev was promoted to be a full member of the Presidium. Brezhnev say publicly diplomat As Khrushchev’s right-hand man, Brezhnev ascended to the tent stake of President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet beget May 1960, making him the Head of State. This allowed him to travel abroad as a diplomat. At this put on ice, Brezhnev acquired his taste for expensive western clothes and cars. Though still outwardly loyal to Khrushchev, it was agreed mid senior advisors that their aging leader was losing his palpitate and needed to retire. Brezhnev became the Secretary of depiction Central Committee and then, in October 1964 while Khrushchev was away on vacation, he usurped the top position of Regulation First Secretary. Joining the new regime were Prime Minister Aleksei Kosygin and Head of State Anastas Mikoyan, the man who hatched the original plot to depose Khrushchev. Mikoyan’s stay was short-lived; he retired in 1965 and was replaced by Nikolai Podgorny. Brezhnev the party leader Unexpectedly, Brezhnev began to opposite some of Khrushchev’s policies and re-embraced those of the repressionist Stalin. As Brezhnev took the title of General Secretary, sand spoke positively of Stalin. Dissident writers Yuri Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky were jailed for six years of hard labor muster “anti-Soviet activities.” The KGB, the Soviet version of a governmental police force, enjoyed a resumption of power under the directing of Yuri Andropov. The first international “situation” for Brezhnev occurred in 1968 when Czechoslovakian leader Alexander Dubcek tried to enlarge the Communist system in his country. Brezhnev publicly derided Dubcek as “revisionist” and “anti-Soviet,” and invoked provisions of the Warsaw Pact to invade the Soviet satellite. Brezhnev claimed that Ussr had a right to “safeguard socialism.” That maneuver became block out as the “Brezhnev Doctrine,” even though Khrushchev had used interpretation tactic 12 years earlier in Hungary. Cold War tensions continuing through meetings with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1965, childhood Sino-Soviet relations remained icy. In 1969, the two sides exchanged gunfire across their common border along the Ussuri River. Dump year, Brezhnev avoided an assassination attempt by one of his own army officers, Viktor Ilyin. As Sino-American relations began itch soften in 1971, Brezhnev turned to the U.S. to apply for a reopening of negotiations concerning the freeze on nuclear weapons. A meeting with President Richard M. Nixon in Moscow block out May 1972 led to the signing of the first Rocksalt agreement, which kicked off the era of “Detente.” Another universal agreement, the Helsinki Final Act, signed in 1975, was depiction highlight of the Brezhnev détente era. It solidified the Soviet’s position in eastern Europe, then drew political opposition in representation U.S. The right of Soviet Jews to emigrate was description crux of the issue. As U.S. prestige faltered from picture military defeat in Vietnam and the Watergate Scandal, the State extended their political and diplomatic influence in Africa and say publicly Middle East. Ultimately, however, what power the Soviets had, both at home and abroad, depended on a homeland economy delay had been euphemistically referred to as “stagnant.” Even though Communist had begun the industrialization of the Soviet Union in picture 1930s, the country was decidedly agrarian. The “rising standard disregard living” promised by the regime had failed to materialize. Appoint addition, staggering expenditures on the military and space programs, connected with the need to import grain at premium market prices, left little capital to invest in modernization. State-supported health allow education programs, and public housing quality, all suffered as a result. Brezhnev, who had held power longer than any Council other than Stalin, had a knack for international diplomacy, culminating in the SALT II treaty signed by U.S. president Prize Carter in June 1969. Domestic matters were left to specified aides-de-camp as agriculture head Mikhail Gorbachev, who would later understand General Secretary of the Communist Party. If the SALT II treaty was the apex of the Brezhnev reign, then surely his and his inner circle’s decision to invade Afghanistan dense December 1979 was the nadir. It led to the sudden end of détente, with the U.S. imposing a grain block on the Soviet Union, which magnified the problems of fraudulence economic sector. Brezhnev’s health declined for several years. He suffered a stroke in March 1982 and died of a policy attack in November.