Leonid Brezhnev (1906 - 1982) was part of an internal coup that stripped the Soviet Union's leader, Nikita Khrushchev, of power in 1964 because of Khruschev's reform efforts. Brezhnev became the new head of the Soviet Union and remained so until his death in 1982.
Brezhnev initially continued Khruschev's policy of peaceful co-existance and joined with U.S. President Richard Nixon in detente while continuing active support for armed national liberation movements around the world. In 1980 the Soviet Politburo presided over by Brezhnev initiated the Soviet-Afghan War in an effort to create a Soviet Socialist Republic of Afghanistan along atheist and secular models, subservient to the Soviet Union as another satelite-client state.
Brezhnev was the original author and planner of the nuclear freeze movement which became quite popular and fashionable in the West among liberals such as Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama because of its anti-NATO, anti-U.S. military spending and pro-socialist welfare stance.
The Brezhnev years are known as the years of stagnation and marked by rampant corruption.
Brezhnev's admiration for Western culture, especially music, was well-known.
He was succeeded by Yuri Andropov.
- The New American Desk Encyclopedia, Penguin Group, 1989