Leonid Brezhnev

Leonid Illich Brezhnev (19 December 1906 - 10 November 1982) was a leader of the Soviet Union. Born in 1906, Brezhnev was First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, effectively the dictator of the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982. During the Second World War, Brezhnev was a Political Commissar, supervising various military units. There, he became a friend of Nikita Khrushchev.

Unlike Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union before him, Brezhnev did not agree with the process of destalinization, and did not support reform. Under Brezhnev, the Soviet economy mostly consisted of military spending. Because the country's resources were going to the armed forces, as they had under Joseph Stalin in wartime, consumer wants were ignored. The standard of living began to fall.

Brezhnev died of a heart attack on November 10, 1982.