Leonid Brezhnev

In 1928, he got married to Viktoria Brezhneva with whom he had two children namely Galina and Yuri.

In the last decade of his life, he encountered many health issues including heart problems.

He passed away at the age of 79 as a result of a heart attack.

He was born to Ilya Yakovlevich Brezhnev, a metalworker, and Natalia Denisovna in Kamenskoe (presently Dniprodzerzhynsk, Ukraine). Leonid Brezhnev witnessed a civil war during his childhood days.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, he received a technical education, first in land management and then in metallurgy.

He joined the Communist Party youth organization, the Komsomol in 1923. This organisation used to express its opposition against the idea of possessing private property.

After graduating from the Dniprodzerzhynsk Metallurgical Technicum in 1935, he started working as a metallurgical engineer in the iron and steel industry, in Ukraine. But he left engineering field after a brief period to serve for the government and the party.

At that time, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered peasant farmers to sell their surplus grain to the state instead of preserving it for themselves. To follow Stalin’s order, Leonid tortured the peasants to get their co-operation.

From 1935 to 1936, he served his compulsory military period. Thereafter, he acted as a political commissar in a tank factory. It was in 1936, when he became director of the Dniprodzerzhynsk Metallurgical Technicum.

In the year 1936, he was transferred to the regional centre of Dnipropetrovsk. He acquired the position of an important party leader during the World War II.

At that time, he also served for the Soviet Red Army that used to work for the implementation of Stalin’s “Russification” policy. Gradually, he achieved the position of major general in this Army.

After leaving the service of Army in 1946, he devoted his time for party works. His election as the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Moldavian S.S.R. in 1950 brought him national recognition.

After two years, he visited Moscow to serve for Stalin in the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. After Stalin’s death in 1953, he was removed from the Secretariat.

This powerful statesman had a penchant towards medals and he owned more than hundred medals. That is why, during his burial, his body was dressed in his Marshal’s uniform along with all of his medals.