Leonid Brezhnev

Born in 1906 to a working-class family in the Russian Empire, Brezhnev joined the Communist youth league in 1923 and became a party member in 1929. When Nazi Germany invaded in June 1941, he entered the Red Army as a commissar and rose to major general by war's end. Promoted to the Central Committee in 1952 and the Politburo by 1957, he helped oust Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 and replaced him as First Secretary, initially sharing power in a triumvirate before consolidating control by decade's end. His rule restored consensus-driven governance after Khrushchev's erratic style, pursued détente while building the military into what many considered the world's strongest by the mid-1970s, and extended Soviet influence deep into the Middle East and Africa. But the same years brought heightened repression, pervasive corruption, shrinking consumer goods, and the economic slowdown known as the Era of Stagnation. After 1975 his health collapsed and he withdrew from daily governance, dying in office in November 1982 - a tenure Gorbachev would later denounce for its inflexibility, though Russian polls since have rated it surprisingly well.