Leonid Brezhnev: 1906-1982
In his 76th year, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev possessed more power than any other individual on earth. He held undisputed authority as President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and General Secretary of the Communist Party. In the twilight of a political career that virtually spanned the history of the Soviet Union, he accumulated extraordinary honors. Although his contributions to the Red Army's wartime efforts were largely limited to political propagandizing, he gained the exalted rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. He was the only Russian in history to have been decorated with five gold stars as a Hero of the Soviet Union and of Socialist Labor, his country's equivalent of both the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Brezhnev's colleagues in the Politburo had even been known to refer to him as vozhd (roughly, great leader), a title previously given only to Lenin and Stalin. Privately, Soviets joked about the cult of personality that gradually surrounded their President as he fought against the inexorable frailties of old age. It was said, for example, that he had even outdone Stalin in the matter of mustaches by cultivating two of them, a reference to the bushy eyebrows that dominated his face.
There were other similarities. As in Stalin's last years, Kremlin iconographers labored to hide the ravages of age and disease. His portraits were meticulously airbrushed to darken his gray hair, to erase his wrinkles, to sharpen his jawline. Sound engineers who monitored his broadcasts used electronic magic to mask his slurred speech, possibly the result of a stroke. The disguises fell through when Brezhnev was placed in the harsh glare of cameras that could not be controlled by party discipline. At his meeting with President Carter in Vienna in June 1979, he stumbled and nearly fell while descending a flight of stairs. On his trip to West Germany in November 1981, he was followed everywhere by two ambulances. His jaw was seen to hang slackly, and his breathing was labored. When he wearied during discussions with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, he retired with a doctor to an adjoining room, presumably for an injection. He was even denied his favorite pick-me-up. Offered liquor at a state banquet, he dutifully refused it in favor of a medicinal concoction proffered by an aide.
Brezhnev had been plagued by illness since 1974. He suffered from heart disease. The list of maladies he was suspected of having included leukemia, cancer of the jaw, gout, emphysema and circulatory ailments. Several times during the past eight years, rumors of his death had swept through Western capitals after a faltering appearance or an unexpected absence from a meeting demanded by protocol. But in recent months he kept to a rigorous schedule of events. He even braved freezing temperatures for two hours early last week to review a Red Square parade. Thus the official announcement of his death three days later took Kremlin watchers by surprise.