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Brezhnev has a well-developed taste for little luxuries. He keeps a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud for his personal use, although he rides a Soviet-made ZIL limousine on state occasions. While Khrushchev was sometimes a sartorial slob, Brezhnev has some regard for his image, and is usually impeccably arrayed in well-tailored, single-breasted suits and a pearl gray, flat-top Homburg. His daughter Galina is a researcher for Moscow's U.S.A. Institute, the Soviet center for the study of American affairs, while son Yuri is an official in the Foreign Trade Ministry. In Moscow, Brezhnev and his wife Viktoria live at 26 Kutuzovsky Prospekt in a six-room flat conveniently sandwiched between the apartments of Secret Police Chief Yuri Andropov, below, and of Minister of Public Order Nikolai Shchelokov, above. In leisure hours, Brezhnev indulges in his favorite pastime, hunting boar, deer and duck on hunting preserves kept for high officials. He is often seen at soccer games fervently rooting for his team, the Central Army Club.
Like Khrushchev, Brezhnev is given to fits of anger, but his outbursts are often mixed with floods of tears and sentiment. An indefatigable greeter, Brezhnev has a tendency to bear-hug visitors in the Russian fashion. His ebullience, apparent good health and present success may assure him of another decade of political life. Still, he complains of insomnia. "The problems of the day don't stop spinning in my head at night," he said recently. He is certain to suffer many more restless nights as he attempts to solve the myriad problems that beset Soviet society. Brezhnev is not a liberal, and will not tolerate any diversity of ideas in the Soviet Union. But he is a modernizer and is increasingly intolerant of inefficiency and discomfort in the work and the life of the Soviet people. Whether he succeeds in solving Russia's internal problems or not, his place in history is already assured by the arresting changes in Soviet foreign policy that now offer hope for the reversal of the glacial course of the cold war.
