Leonid Brezhnev, b. Dec. 19, 1906, was the leader of the USSR from October 1964 until his death on Nov. 10, 1982. A native of Russified eastern Ukraine, he rose steadily in party ranks during the 1930s and in 1939 was appointed propaganda secretary of the Dnepropetrovsk regional committee. During World War II, he worked at the front as a political commissar attached to the armed forces, becoming a major general in 1944.
In the postwar years Brezhnev worked under Nikita KHRUSHCHEV in Ukraine, later serving as Communist party chief in Moldavia (1950-53) and Kazakhstan (1954-56). He was elevated to the highest political body in the USSR (the Presidium, later called the Politburo) once Khrushchev's political opponents had been defeated (1957). For four years (1960-64) he served as the titular head of the USSR. After helping to oust Khrushchev in 1964, Brezhnev became first secretary (later general secretary) of the Communist party.
Brezhnev first ruled the country in tandem with Prime Minister Aleksei KOSYGIN and later as the first among the "collective leadership" of the party. But as he grew older, he resisted the economic reforms of Kosygin and kept conservative, often corrupt bureaucrats in positions of power. The economy faltered: industrial growth rates slowed down, and bad harvests--particularly in 1981--forced the Soviet Union to buy grain abroad. For this reason, the Brezhnev era was later dubbed the "period of stagnation." Brezhnev suppressed (1968) reform Communism in Czechoslovakia and formulated the Brezhnev Doctrine, which asserted the USSR's right to intervene against "anti-socialist degeneration" within the Soviet bloc. In his early years he continued the policy of DETENTE with the West, but he also expanded the Soviet arsenal, supported revolutionary movements in Africa and Asia, and in 1979 involved the USSR in a civil war in Afghanistan. When he died, he left the Soviet Union a military superpower but a country with deep economic problems and an increasingly discontented population.