page_title: Leonid Brezhnev
section_title: Consolidation of power
hierarchical_section_title: Leonid Brezhnev / Leader of the Soviet Union (1964–1982) / Consolidation of power
caption_attribution_description: English: “Secretary general of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev after speaking at the VLKSM Central Committee plenary session”. Secretary general of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev after speaking at the VLKSM Central Committee plenary session dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Lenin's Komsomol. Русский: «Генеральный секретарь ЦК КПСС Л. Брежнев после выступления на пленуме ЦК ВЛКСМ». Генеральный секретарь ЦК КПСС Леонид Брежнев после выступления на Торжественном пленуме ЦК ВЛКСМ, посвященном 50-летию Ленинского комсомола. Россия, Москва
context_page_description: Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was a Soviet politician who led the Soviet Union as General Secretary of the governing Communist Party and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. His 18-year term as general secretary was second only to Joseph Stalin's in duration. While Brezhnev's rule was characterized by political stability and notable foreign policy successes, it was also marked by corruption, inefficiency, and rapidly growing technological gaps with the West.
  Brezhnev was born into a Russian worker's family in Kamenskoye, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire. Upon the Soviet Union's formation in the aftermath of the 1917 October Revolution, Brezhnev joined the Communist party's youth league in 1923. He became an official party member in 1929. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, he joined the Red Army as a commissar and rose rapidly through the ranks to become a major general during World War II. Brezhnev was promoted to the Central Committee in 1952 and became a full member of the Politburo in 1957. In 1964 he ousted Nikita Khrushchev and took over as First Secretary of the CPSU, the most powerful position in the Kremlin.
context_section_description: Upon replacing Khrushchev as the party's First Secretary, Brezhnev became the de jure supreme authority of the Soviet Union. However, he was initially forced to govern as part of a troika alongside the country's Premier, Alexei Kosygin, and the party's Second Secretary, Nikolai Podgorny. Due to Khrushchev's disregard for the rest of the Politburo upon combining his leadership of the party with that of the Soviet government, a plenum of the Central Committee in October 1964 forbade any single individual from holding both the offices of General Secretary and Premier. This arrangement would persist until the late 1970s when Brezhnev firmly established himself as the dominant figure in the Soviet Union.
  Before consolidating power, Brezhnev was forced to contend with the ambitions of Alexander Shelepin, the former Chairman of the Committee for State Security and current head of the Party-State Control Committee. During the first half of 1965, he called for the restoration of "of obedience and order" as part of his own bid to seize power. Towards this end, he exploited his control over both state and party organs to leverage support among the nomenklatura. Recognizing Shelepin as an imminent threat to his position, Brezhnev mobilized the collective leadership to remove him from the Party-State Control Committee before having the body dissolved altogether on 6 December 1965. 
  At the same time as Shelepin's demotion in December 1965, Brezhnev transferred Podgorny from the Secretariat to the ceremonial post of Chairman of the Presidium. Over the course of the following years, Podgorny's base of support was steadily eroded as the proteges he cultivated in his rise to power were forcibly "retired" from the Central Committee. While Podgorny temporarily emerged as the second most powerful figure in the regime when his powers as Presidium Chairman were enhanced in 1973, his influence over Soviet policy continued to decline relative to Brezhnev as the latter shored up his support with the national security apparatus. By 1977, Brezhev was secure enough in his position to remove Podgorny as head of state and a member of the Politburo.
  After sidelining Shelepin and Podgorny as threats to his leadership in 1965, Brezhnev directed his attentions to his remaining political rival, Alexei Kosgyin. In the 1960s, U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger initially perceived Kosygin to be the dominant leader of Soviet foreign policy in the Politburo. Within the same timeframe, Kosygin was also in charge of economic administration in his role as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. However, his position was weakened following his enactment of several economic reforms in 1965 that collectively came to be known within the Party as the "Kosygin reform". Due largely to coinciding with the Prague Spring (whose sharp departure from the Soviet model led to its armed suppression in 1968), the reforms provoked a backlash among the party's old guard who proceeded to flock to Brezhnev and strengthen his position within the Soviet leadership. Brezhnev further expanded his authority following a clash with Second Secretary Mikhail Suslov, who thereafter never challenged his authority.
  Brezhnev was adept at politics within the Soviet power structure. He was a team player and never acted rashly or hastily. Unlike Khrushchev, he did not make decisions without substantial consultation from his colleagues, and was always willing to hear their opinions. During the early 1970s, Brezhnev consolidated his domestic position. In 1977, he forced the retirement of Podgorny and became once again Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, making this position equivalent to that of an executive president. While Kosygin remained Premier until shortly before his death in 1980 (replaced by Nikolai Tikhonov as Premier), Brezhnev was the dominant driving force of the Soviet Union from the mid-1970s to his death in 1982.
caption: Leonid Brezhnev after speaking before the 1968 Komsomol Central Committee plenary session in his capacity as General Secretary, which he reestablished by then as the top authority in both name and practice.
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