| Leonid Ilych Brezhnev was
a Soviet politician and First/General
Secretary of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, who was born in Kamenskoye
(now Dneprodzerzhinsk) in the Ukraine.
As both head of
the Communist Party since 1964 and
Chairman of the Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet from 1977 until his
death in 1982, Leonid Brezhnev ruled
the Soviet Union longer than any
previous leader except Stalin.
Communists say
that the Soviet Union, under his
leadership, improved the standards
of living by raising urban salaries
by around 75%, doubling rural wages,
building millions of one-family apartments,
and manufacturing large quantities
of consumer goods and home appliances.
Under his tutelage,
industrial output also increased
by 75%, and the Soviet Union became
the world's largest producer of oil
and steel. Others note the economic
inefficiency that became notorious
under Brezhnev, the repression of
those who disagreed with the Soviet
regime and the environmental vandalism
that occurred throughout the country.
He also introduced
the Brezhnev Doctrine, which stated:
"When forces that are hostile to socialism and try to turn the development
of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of
the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries."
This effectively
meant that no country was allowed
to leave the Warsaw pact, and the
doctrine was used to justify the
invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968
and Afghanistan in 1979.
In 1988, the new
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev officially
abandoned the doctrine and replaced
it with the Sinatra Doctrine in which
each nation was allowed to develop
in their own way.
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