Heroes of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic - Andrei Grechko, Andrey Yeryomenko, Dmitriy Ustinov, Ivan Konev, Ivan Yakubovsky, Kirill Moskalenko, Leo (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 29. Chapters: Andrei Grechko, Andrey Yeryomenko, Dmitriy Ustinov, Ivan Konev, Ivan Yakubovsky, Kirill Moskalenko, Leonid Brezhnev, Ludvik Svoboda, Matvei Zakharov. Excerpt: Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (Russian: IPA: ( listen); Ukrainian: , 19 December 1906 (O.S. 6 December) - 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in length. He presided over the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia to stop the Prague Spring. During Brezhnev's rule, the global influence of the Soviet Union grew dramatically, in part because of the expansion of the Soviet military during this time, but his tenure as leader has often been criticised for marking the beginning of a period of economic stagnation in which serious economic problems were overlooked, problems which eventually led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Brezhnev was born in Kamenskoe into a Russian worker's family. After graduating from the Dniprodzerzhynsk Metallurgical Technicum, he became a metallurgical engineer in the iron and steel industry, in Ukraine. He joined Komsomol in 1923, and in 1929 became an active member of the Communist Party. He was drafted into immediate military service during World War II and left the army in 1946 with the rank of Major General. In 1952 Brezhnev became a member of the Central Committee, and in 1964, Brezhnev succeeded Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary. Alexei Kosygin succeeded Khrushchev in his post as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. As a leader, Brezhnev took care to consult his colleagues before acting, but his attempt to govern without meaningful economic reforms led to a national decline by the...