Because mediocrity has escaped numerous political struggles, because incompetence has become the supreme leader.
At the beginning of Brezhnev's political stage, no one would associate this gentle, "burly handsome man" (Stalinist) with the position of the supreme leader of the Soviet Party and state. Brezhnev, born in 1906, did not show anything extraordinary when he was young, but his road to promotion was exceptionally smooth. 1939, 33-year-old Bosch became the secretary of the State Party Committee, and successively served as the director of the political department of the 18 Army and the Fourth Ukrainian Army in the Great Patriotic War, and was awarded the rank of Major General. However, during the whole war, Brezhnev did not really go to the front.
After the war, the Bolsheviks were promoted to the third level and served as the secretary of the Central Secretariat of the Soviet Union from 1952, which was deeply appreciated by Stalin. At the Central Committee of the Soviet Union at that time, Brezhnev was recognized as a weak person and posed no threat to anyone. He himself has expressed "modesty" many times: he has no talent for leadership and no such ambition. Therefore, in the dangerous power field, Bertrand escaped countless disasters.
1964 10 suslov, secretary of the Soviet central Committee, and shelepin, head of the KGB, plotted to oust Khrushchev. At that time, Bertrand was asked to call Khrushchev who was on vacation, but he was "scared and almost fainted, and was later dragged to the telephone". When he heard that Khrushchev knew the news of the coup, Boorsch Baum threw himself into his friend's arms and said in horror, "It's all over. Khrushchev will shoot us all. "
After Khrushchev stepped down, suslov and shelepin were at loggerheads for the big position. In order to avoid mutual losses, they had to elect Boris Yeltsin as the supreme leader of the Soviet Union. This is not because he has any special talents, but because he is mediocre, gentle and has no ambition ... He is "a person acceptable to everyone". At that time, in the eyes of many people, Bertrand was just a transitional figure. Whenever the Politburo meets to discuss major issues, many of his proposals are often rejected, and I have been criticized by other members many times. Brezhnev even begged his colleagues for his "prestige": "Leaders need prestige, please help!" He also asked his colleagues: When speaking at the mass meeting, please take the lead in standing up and applauding, so as to lead the masses to applaud. However, it was this seemingly mediocre Brezhnev who quietly cut off shelepin's confidant in a few years and firmly grasped the position of the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union.
A good hunter, a motorcyclist and a movie fan.
Brezhnev ended the chaos caused by various reckless reform attempts in Khrushchev's era. In a sense, this era is a rare and very "stable" peaceful era in the turbulent history of the Soviet Union, and there has never been any social unrest worth mentioning. However, it is this seemingly prosperous era that implies various crises and accumulates countless contradictions.
Brezhnev's criteria for selecting officials are simple. Anyone who studied at his alma mater or came from the place where he worked may be promoted. While entrusting a large number of cronies with important tasks, Brezhnev is gradually crowding out people he doesn't trust. So that gromyko, a famous Soviet diplomat, once said with emotion, "Our Politburo is like the Bermuda Triangle. Some people suddenly appeared here, and some people suddenly disappeared here. " Brezhnev also had a strong feeling of licking calves, was unusually generous to his children, and even used public funds to build luxury villas for their children. His son-in-law Churbanov also rose to the top. In just ten years, he was promoted from a junior officer to a general.
Bo's personal life has also been criticized. According to his translator Sukhodrev, Bo does two things very well: hunting and driving. He once saw Bob shoot a wild boar in the heart while hunting. 1973, when Bob visited America, Nixon gave him a Lincoln car. Brezhnev immediately pulled Nixon into the car. On the narrow road, running all the way scared Nixon and the translator sitting in the back seat into a cold sweat. In the later period of his administration, he always stayed at home and watched TV and movies, then recruited his favorite actors and awarded them various medals and medals.
During Brezhnev's administration, the Soviet Union maintained a double-digit national economic growth rate and the second largest economy in the world, but its main consumer goods were in short supply for a long time. At that time, the Soviet Union had the most cultivated land in the world, but the grain harvest failed year after year, so it had to spend a lot of foreign exchange to import grain. Soviet spacecraft can reach the moon and Mars, but car failures are frequent and fuel consumption is amazing; Many Soviet household appliances are out of date, and TVs often explode. Many people often joke that TV sets made in the Soviet Union should be given to the enemy.
It was also during this period that western thoughts, cultures and lifestyles began to penetrate into the hearts of ordinary citizens in the Soviet Union, especially the younger generation. Disco, jazz and other western cultures have become the fashion of young people. Drugs that were once eradicated are rampant and the social security situation has greatly deteriorated. According to statistics, in Brezhnev's Soviet Union, there were about 2,400 mafia organizations, most of which had bureaucratic backgrounds. In the early 1980s, Moscow, like new york, became one of the most unsafe big cities in the world.
Vigorously promote the arms race, launch a war of aggression against Afghanistan, and exhaust national strength.
During Brezhnev's 18 years in power, the huge military expenditure and the same huge investment in heavy industry made the Soviet Union's military power expand rapidly, gradually changing the balance of power between the Soviet Union and the United States. In the 1960s, the Soviet Union was suppressed by American military forces, but in the 1970s, the Soviet Union's military forces were on an equal footing with the United States, and even surpassed the United States in some aspects. At this time, the United States was caught in the quagmire of Vietnam War abroad, but at home it was faced with the rising anti-war movement and the political crisis of Watergate Incident. China is in the turmoil of the "Cultural Revolution". Therefore, Brezhnev formed an illusion that the development of the whole international situation was beneficial to the Soviet Union and frequently challenged the United States. During this period, the Soviet Union strengthened its economic and military assistance to third world countries. Many third world countries are directly or indirectly controlled by the Soviet Union, and the leaders of these countries are all pro-Soviet. At this time, the Soviet Union itself admitted that its foreign policy was "a global attack under current conditions".
Although Brezhnev later signed agreements with US President Nixon to ease the arms race, such as the Treaty on Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense System and the Interim Agreement on Certain Measures for Limitation of Strategic Offensive Weapons. However, the relationship between the two countries did not go on the track of relaxation, but fell into full-scale confrontation because Brezhnev launched the war of invading Afghanistan in 1979. It was Bolschmidt who launched this protracted war of aggression, which finally exhausted the development momentum of the Soviet Union.
I want to attack China with nuclear weapons and open the door to the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations in my later years.
Brezhnev's 18 is also the most ups and downs of Sino-Soviet relations. 1964 After Khrushchev was overthrown by a coup, the China government sent a high-level delegation of the party, government and army headed by Zhou Enlai to Moscow to participate in the celebration of the October Revolution Day to test the Soviet Union's China policy. At the reception, Marshal Marin Noszky, the Soviet Defense Minister, went up to Marshal He Long and said, "We got rid of Khrushchev, why don't you get rid of Mao Zedong? This will make the world peaceful. " As a result, this sentence pushed Sino-Soviet relations to the freezing point.
1in March, 1969, three armed conflicts occurred between the Chinese and Soviet armies in Zhenbao Island. After the conflict broke out in Zhenbao Island, the Soviet leadership reacted strongly. Under the vigorous advocacy of Marshal Graetsch, the defense minister of the Soviet Union, Brezhnev intends to "eliminate the threat of China once and for all" and prepare to use medium-range missiles to carry out a "surgical nuclear strike" against China's military and political targets. In order to gain American support, Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to the United States, was ordered to inform the United States.
However, the Nixon administration believed that a strong China was in the strategic interests of the West ... The most terrible thing was that once the Soviets opened Pandora's Box, the whole world would kneel before polar bears. "We can destroy the world, but they dare to destroy the world." A few days later, the Washington Star published a message in a prominent position, with the title "The Soviet Union wants to carry out a surgical nuclear strike against China". The news immediately aroused strong repercussions all over the world. Brezhnev was mad and shouted angrily: "The United States betrayed us."
Since then, the Soviet Union has deployed millions of soldiers on the Sino-Soviet border, posing a great threat to China's security. However, in the later period of his administration, he realized the importance of the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations, and sent out positive signals one after another in the last year of his life, which opened the curtain of Sino-Soviet relations "ending the past and opening up the future". In this sense, Sino-Soviet relations reached the peak of opposition in Bertrand's hands, which also opened the door to normalization. This period is a watershed in Sino-Soviet relations.
The mentality of Russians is very complicated.
198211kloc-0/October, Brezhnev died in Moscow at the age of 76. In the Brezhnev era, the national strength of the Soviet Union reached its peak. However, due to Brezhnev's lack of understanding of many sharp contradictions accumulated in Soviet society and his lack of determination and courage to solve problems, these contradictions have accumulated deeper and deeper, and the energy of social unrest has accumulated more and more. Finally, with Brezhnev's death, a once impressive force also rolled in.
However, more than 20 years after his death, Russians began to miss this "loyal elder". The evaluation of Brezhnev from all walks of life in Russia shows a general trend of being more positive than negative, mainly for the following two reasons: First, the Soviet Union in Brezhnev's era had a "just" advantage than it does now, and the living standards of ordinary people have been improved to varying degrees. Statistics show that in the early days of Brezhnev's administration, the average wage of Soviet troops was only 96.5 rubles, and it rose to 170 rubles in the later period of his administration. During this period, many Soviets moved into their own houses and bought decent furniture, clothes and even cars. However, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russian society was divided into two social groups: the rich and the poor. For most Russians, the Brezhnev era was the antithesis of "unjust and unequal" Russia. According to the materials of Levada Center, during June 5438+October 2005 10, 48% of the respondents thought that it would be better if everything in Russia remained before Gorbachev's reform. Second, during Brezhnev's period, the Soviet Union was at the peak of its development, and the international pattern once showed the Soviet Union's situation of attacking and defending the United States, and Russia's great power tradition and strength were fully exerted. However, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, after more than ten years of economic and social capitalism, Russia has never regained its former glory as a great power. Great power consciousness and great power consciousness occupy an important position in the ideological identity of the Russian people. According to a poll conducted by the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Research, the vast majority of Russians regard becoming a world power or even returning to the superpower status of the Soviet Union as Russia's strategic goal in the 2 1 century. In this case, it is not surprising that Russians miss Brezhnev and his time.
Of course, Russians are now rethinking the Brezhnev era. Because in the Brezhnev era, the Soviet Union began to stagnate. During this period, the GDP growth rate of the Soviet Union decreased from 2 1% in 1.966 to 1.970 to 9% in the later period. During Brezhnev's period, the Soviet Union could only guarantee bread supply for two years: 65,438+0,966 and 65,438+0,973. In other years, it actually needs to import a lot of food from abroad with hard currency. It was during this period that the Soviet economy began to rely heavily on the export of oil and natural gas, thus laying a hidden danger for the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Some people of insight pointed out that the history of Brezhnev's administration needs Russian people to ponder deeply. What is the price of maintaining stability? How does stability turn into stagnation? If Russia wants to rise again in the future, it must learn the painful lessons of Brezhnev era, instead of just indulging in the superficial glamour of this era.