In the USSR, two people were at the helm of the state for the longest time: Stalin - 29 years and Brezhnev - 18. But even political leaders are mortal. Today we will talk about how the Soviet leaders were seen off on their last journey and what was hidden behind the lines of official messages.
New idols
The first leader of the Land of Soviets, Vladimir Lenin, experienced a series of strokes: the first turned 52-year-old Ilyich into an invalid, the third killed him.
Shortly before Ilyich's death, in the autumn of 1923, a secret meeting of the Politburo was held, at which Stalin announced that Lenin's health had deteriorated and death was possible. After which Stalin announced that there was a proposal to subject the body of Ilyich to embalming.
“When Comrade Stalin finished speaking, I said that this had nothing to do with the science of Marxism,” Lev Trotsky, one of the participants in the meeting, would later write. - Before there were the relics of Seraphim of Sarov, now they are offered replace the relics of Vladimir Ilyich ...
Lenin's wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, was of approximately the same opinion, but, despite the protests of Lenin's closest relatives, his body was embalmed and exhibited on Red Square in the mausoleum.
Crush on Trubnaya
After the death of Lenin, the Soviet Union was headed by Joseph Stalin.
Joseph Vissarionovich ruled the country for 29 years, but he was not eternal. On March 5, 1953, at 21:50, Stalin died. According to the medical report, death was the result of a cerebral hemorrhage. A four-day mourning was declared in the country.
For farewell, Stalin's body was exhibited in the Hall of Columns.
During the farewell ceremony on Trubnaya Square there was a stampede. According to the most conservative estimates, at least two thousand people died in it.
Soon the embalmed body of Stalin was placed on public display in the Lenin Mausoleum., which in 1953 - 1961 was called the "Mausoleum of V. I. Lenin and I. V. Stalin."
Second funeral
The body of the leader of the peoples was in the mausoleum until October 1961. In 1961, the XXII Congress of the CPSU was held in Moscow. It adopted a resolution on the removal of the embalmed body of Stalin from the mausoleum. On the same night, the body of Joseph Vissarionovich was buried in a grave near the Kremlin wall. Konev, commander of the Separate Special Purpose Regiment of the Commandant's Office of the Moscow Kremlin, was ordered to make a coffin from good dry wood in a carpentry workshop.
The wood was covered with black and red crepe, so that the coffin looked very good and even rich. Six soldiers were assigned from the Kremlin commandant's office to dig the grave and eight officers to lower the coffin with the body into the grave.
The disguise was provided by the head of the economic department of the commandant's office of the Kremlin, Colonel Tarasov. He covered the right and left sides behind the Mausoleum with plywood so that the place of work was not visible from anywhere.
At the same time, a wide white ribbon with the letters "LENIN" was made in the workshop of the arsenal. She had to close the inscription "LENIN STALIN" on the Mausoleum until it was replaced.
And in the morning of the next day, the main ideologue of the CPSU, Mikhail Suslov, informed the delegates of the XXII Congress that the decisions of the Congress had been put into practice.
Forgotten leader
Stalin's successor was the now forgotten Georgy Malenkov. Since 1948, Malenkov led the secretariat of the Central Committee. The question of a successor arose as soon as it became known that Stalin's condition was hopeless. At first, everything went to the fact that Malenkov would become the next leader.At that time, Malenkov was considered the second person in the party and the country., and was seen by many as Stalin's most likely successor.And the death of Stalin elevated him to the very pinnacle of power. On March 5, 1953, at a joint meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Lavrenty Beria proposed to appoint Malenkov as chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, which was done. However, after nine days, Malenkov resigned his post.The fact that until recently Malenkov had been Stalin's favorite, now did not help him, but rather hindered him. Malenkov very soon lost his high position. The weakening of his power was facilitated by the elimination of Beria, who had been his ally for many years.
Lavrenty Beria and Georgy Malenkov (pictured to the right of Beria).
The first person in the party was Nikita Khrushchev, who was elected in September 1953 as the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.
Shortly after Khrushchev was elected First Secretary, Malenkov, who came to a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee, saw that the chair of the chairman was already occupied - Nikita Sergeevich settled comfortably in it. To the bewildered question of Georgy Maximilianovich - "we decided to return to the tradition of Lenin and I should preside as the head of the government," Khrushchev replied: "What are you, Lenin or what?" Malenkov no longer claimed this chair.
Soon, "for belonging to an anti-party group," Malenkov was removed from all posts. He was evicted from his apartment and removed from Moscow, and in 1961 he was expelled from the party. Prior to his retirement, he worked as the director of the Ekibastuz State District Power Plant.
Having received permission to return to Moscow, Malenkov lived out his life quietly and modestly and differed little from the usual Soviet pensioner. He spent most of the year at his mother's house in the village of Udelnaya near Moscow. He used to ride in an armored limousine. Now on a regular train.
Georgy Maximilianovich died in January 1988. They buried him at the Kuntsevo cemetery, farewell to him was modest. In the midst of perestroika and glasnost, the media did not even report that Malenkov, who had been the second person in the country for quite a long time and not for long the first, had passed away…
Disgraced general secretary
In September 1953, Khrushchev was elected First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Black and white combined in Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev whimsically. He promised the Soviet people "to overtake and overtake America" in a few years. Alas, he did not keep his promise. But under him, in 1955, a military bloc (the Warsaw Pact Organization) was created, which consolidated the bipolarity of the world for 36 years. Under him, the Berlin Wall was built (1961), which became a symbol of the confrontation between socialism and capitalism.
And his major achievements include the issuance of passports to collective farmers, mass housing construction, the achievements of the USSR in the field of science and technology: the world's first nuclear power plant (1954), the first satellite (1957), the first cosmonaut (1961), the development of 30 million hectares of virgin lands.
Be that as it may, in 1964 Khrushchev was removed from his post. Since that time, his name has never been mentioned in the Soviet press. For the last seven years of his life, Nikita Sergeevich was kept under house arrest. The disgraced pensioner died in 1971 at the age of 77.
Khrushchev was buried in the strictest secrecy: no crowds of mourners, no obituaries. Those who knew that Khrushchev had died and was able to get to the cemetery were waiting for a piece of paper on the gate: “Today the cemetery is closed. Sanitary day". Reliability of understanding this announcement was guaranteed by police cordons, soldiers and armored personnel carriers.Immediately after Khrushchev's death, the KGB tried to erase the last signs of his political activities. All memoirs and records were destroyed. The dacha where he spent the last years of his life was demolished. Officials were afraid that someone would think of setting up a museum there.
Even the Novodevichy Cemetery was decided to be closed.
The grave of Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev at the Novodevichy Cemetery. The author of the monument is Ernst Neizvestny.
Death of a long-liver
Khrushchev was replaced as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU by Leonid Brezhnev. He did not beat Stalin's record, but he ruled for a long time - 18 years. So by the end of his term, Brezhnev began to fall apart literally before the eyes of the whole country. And on November 11, 1982, the Soviet media officially announced the death of Leonid Ilyich.
In fact, the Secretary General died in his sleep at his dacha near Moscow on the morning of November 10, but for almost a day this was not officially reported. Although the fact that something extraordinary had happened, citizens began to guess as early as the afternoon of November 10th. Suddenly, the broadcasting grid began to be adjusted, from which entertainment programs suddenly disappeared. In the evening, at the end of the programs, the TV announcer usually read out the program for tomorrow, and on this day he unexpectedly simply said goodbye to the audience.
Yuri Andropov became the head of the commission for organizing the funeral. Thus was born a popular sign: the next head of the USSR is the one who leads the funeral of his predecessor.
On November 15, Brezhnev's coffin was loaded onto an artillery carriage. Accompanied by an honorary escort of the soldiers of the Moscow garrison, generals and admirals, who carried numerous awards of the deceased on red cushions, the carriage with the coffin moved to Red Square. There were already ranks of garrison soldiers and other participants in the ceremony. The leaders of the Soviet state stood on the podium of Lenin's Mausoleum.
After speeches from the podium of the Mausoleum, members of the commission for organizing the funeral carried the coffin in their arms to the grave near the Kremlin wall.
After parting with the relatives, the coffin was lowered into the grave. At the time of burial, the work of all enterprises and organizations of the USSR was stopped for five minutes. All water and rail transport, as well as plants and factories, gave a three-minute salute with horns.
Funeral of "Man of the Year"
The mourning for Brezhnev passed, and in 1982 the country had a new leader - not young, but quite active, the former head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov. Andropov energetically set about correcting the course of development of the country of the Soviets, reforming the government.
Alas, few in the country knew that the new Secretary General was seriously ill. Moreover, Andropov did not give cause for concern - he energetically set about adjusting the course, reforming the government and enlisting the sympathy of society.
But since the summer of 1983, the general secretary's condition has seriously deteriorated. In August 1983, he entered the Central Clinical Hospital in western Moscow and spent the rest of his life there until his death.The most important state meetings are transferred to the hospital.
At the end of January 1984 Andropov's health deteriorated sharply. Due to the growth of blood intoxication, he sometimes fell into an unconscious state. The denouement came on February 9, 1984 - Andropov died due to kidney failure. The country's chief Chekist is gone.
According to the official medical report, Andropov suffered from several diseases: interstitial nephritis, nephrosclerosis, hypertension and diabetes mellitus, which were aggravated by chronic renal failure.
A month before his death, Yuri Andropov in Time magazine, together with Ronald Reagan, was recognized as "Person of the Year". His predecessor Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (who was in power for 18 years) never received such an honor, and Yuri Vladimirovich was at the head of the state for only fifteen months.
After Andropov's death, a 4-day mourning was declared in the USSR.
If Brezhnev died on Police Day, then Andropov died the day after the opening of the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. For sports fans in the USSR, who remembered the "Gothic darkness" of mourning for Brezhnev, this was akin to a disaster - will the Olympic competitions not be shown on television?
However, the mourning for Andropov turned out to be much more liberal - the Olympics were shown in the planned volume, which only added sympathy for the deceased among citizens.
Otherwise, the farewell procedure with Andropov repeated the farewell procedure with Brezhnev - three days of mourning, the Hall of Columns, an artillery carriage and a grave near the Kremlin wall. Yuri Andropov was buried on February 12, 1984.
Funeral meeting on the occasion of the death of Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov at one of the factories in Kyiv.
“Dad is Russian, mother is Evenk”
Andropov was replaced as head of state by Konstantin Chernenko. At the time of coming to power, the new General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Chernenko was 72 years old, and his health was extremely poor. To be more precise, he was terminally ill... Konstantin Ustinovich ruled even less than Andropov - 13 months.
Chernenko was remembered only for his attempt to rehabilitate Stalin, the fight against "ideologically inconsistent" musical groups and the restoration of the 94-year-old Vyacheslav Molotov in the party. Chernenko not only granted Vyacheslav Mikhailovich's request for restoration, which he was invariably denied throughout the Brezhnev and Andropov years, but also personally handed the party card to the former head of the USSR government. Soon, a scathing cartoon appeared in the foreign press, depicting 72-year-old Chernenko presenting his party card to 94-year-old Molotov, with the caption: "Chernenko is preparing his successor ..."
The mourning and funeral of Chernenko passed quickly and formally. People waited with intense interest to see who would be the head of the Funeral Commission. Soon it became known that 54-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed to them.
Konstantin Chernenko was buried on Red Square on March 13 at 1 pm, becoming the last to rest in the necropolis near the Kremlin wall. Farewell to him went according to the scheme, to which Brezhnev's funeral was also accustomed - farewell in the Hall of Columns, a ride on a gun carriage, horns and the last parade of troops.
In the people's memory of him, only a stupid saying remained: "Dad is Russian, mother is Evenk, it turns out Chernenko." And if Naberezhnye Chelny was named after Brezhnev, Rybinsk was named after Andropov, then Chernenko got the Siberian village of Sharypovo to be renamed.
So simply, routinely and completely imperceptibly ended the Soviet era.
The text uses photographs from RIA Novosti.
, site - Socialist information resource [email protected]
The path of the Soviet Union finally ended in 1991, although in a sense, its agony lasted until 1993. The final privatization started only in 1992-1993, simultaneously with the transition to a new monetary system.
The bright period of the Soviet Union, more precisely, its dying, was the so-called "perestroika". But what brought the USSR first under perestroika, and then under the final dismantling of socialism and the Soviet system?
The year 1953 was marked by the death of the long-term de facto leader of the USSR, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. After his death, a struggle for power began between the most influential members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU. On March 5, 1953, the most influential members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU were Malenkov, Beria, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Bulganin, Kaganovich, Mikoyan. On September 7, 1953, at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, N. S. Khrushchev was elected First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
At the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU in February 1956, Stalin's personality cult was condemned. But the most important mine was planted under the very structure of the Leninist principle of the Soviet state at the XXII Congress in October 1961. This congress removed the main principle of building a communist society - the dictatorship of the proletariat, replacing it with the anti-scientific concept of a "state of the whole people". What was also terrible here was that this congress became a virtual mass of voiceless delegates. They accepted all the principles of a virtual revolution in the Soviet system. The first shoots of decentralization of the economic mechanism followed. But since the pioneers often do not stay in power for a long time, already in 1964 the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU removed N. S. Khrushchev from the post of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
This time is often called the "restoration of the Stalinist order", the freezing of reforms. But this is just philistine thinking and a simplified worldview, in which there is no scientific approach. Because already in 1965 the tactic of market reforms won out in the socialist economy. The "People's State" came into its own. In fact, under the strict planning of the national economic complex, the result was summed up. The unified national economic complex began to unravel, and subsequently to disintegrate. One of the authors of the reform was A. N. Kosygin, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Reformers constantly boast that as a result of their reform, enterprises have gained "independence." In fact, this gave power to the directors of enterprises and the right to conduct speculative transactions. As a result, these actions led to the gradual emergence of a shortage of necessary products for the population.
We all remember the "golden days" of Soviet cinema in the 1970s. For example, in the film “Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His Profession”, the viewer is clearly shown how the actor Demyanenko, who plays the role of Shurik, buys the semiconductors he needs not in stores that are closed for repairs or for lunch for some reason, but from a speculator. A speculator who was kind of "condemned and condemned" by the Soviet society of that period.
The political and economic literature of that time acquires a unique anti-scientific terminology of "developed socialism". But what is "developed socialism"? Strictly following the Marxist-Leninist philosophy, we all know that socialism is a transitional period between capitalism and communism, a period of the withering away of the old order. An acute class struggle led by the working class. And what do we get as a result? That some incomprehensible stage of something appears there.
The same thing happened in the party apparatus. Hardened careerists and opportunists rather than ideologically hardened people began to willingly join the CPSU. The party apparatus becomes virtually uncontrolled by society. No trace of the dictatorship of the proletariat remains here.
In politics, at the same time, there is a tendency towards the irremovability of leading cadres, their physical aging and decrepitude. Career ambitions emerge. Soviet cinematography also did not ignore this moment. In some places this was ridiculed, but there were also brilliant tapes of that time that gave a critical analysis of the ongoing processes. For example, the film of 1982 - the social drama "Magistral", which posed with all its frankness the problem of decomposition and degradation in a single industry - on the railway. But in the films of that time, mainly in comedies, we already find direct glorifications of individualism, ridicule of the working man. In this field, the film "Office Romance" especially distinguished itself.
There are already systematic disruptions in trade. Of course, now the directors of enterprises are in fact the masters of their destinies, they have “independence”.
Anti-communists often mention in their "scientific" and anti-scientific writings that in the 1980s the country was already seriously ill. Only an enemy can be closer than a friend. Even if we do not take into account the frank slop that the anti-communists poured out on the USSR, a rather difficult situation actually loomed in the country.
For example, I myself remember well how in the early 1980s we traveled from the “undeveloped” Pskov region of the RSFSR to the “developed” and “advanced” Estonian SSR for groceries.
Such a country approached the turn of the mid-1980s. Even from the films of that period, it is already clear that the country no longer believes in building communism. Even the 1977 film "Racers" clearly shows what ideas were in the minds of the townsfolk, although at that time they also tried to show the character of this film in a negative light.
In 1985, after a series of deaths of "irremovable" leaders, a relatively young politician, M. S. Gorbachev, came to power. His long speeches, the very meaning of which went into the void, could go on for many hours. But the time was such that the people, as in the old days, believed the deceitful reformers, since the main thing on their minds was changes in life. But what happens to the layman? What do I want - I do not know?
Perestroika became a catalyst for accelerating all the destructive processes in the USSR, which had been accumulating and smoldering for a long time. Already by 1986, openly anti-Soviet elements appeared, which set as their goal the dismantling of the workers' state and the restoration of the bourgeois order. By 1988 it was already an irreversible process.
In the culture of that time, anti-Soviet groups of that period appear - "Nautilus Pompilius" and "Civil Defense". According to an old habit, the authorities try to "drive" everything that does not fit into the framework of the official culture. However, even here dialectics threw out strange things. Subsequently, it was the "Civil Defense" that became a bright revolutionary beacon of anti-capitalist protest, thereby forever fixing all the contradictory phenomena of that era behind the Soviet era, as rather Soviet than anti-Soviet phenomena. But even the criticism of that time was at a fairly professional level, which was clearly reflected in the song of the Aria group - “What did you do with your dream?”, Where the entire path traveled is actually overturned as erroneous.
In its wake, the era of perestroika brought out the most disgusting characters, the vast majority of whom were just members of the CPSU. In Russia, B. N. Yeltsin became such a person, who lowered the country into a bloody mess. This is the shooting of the bourgeois parliament, which, out of habit, still had a Soviet shell, this is the Chechen war. In Latvia, such a character was the former member of the CPSU A. V. Gorbunov, who continued to rule bourgeois Latvia until the mid-1990s. These characters were praised by the Soviet encyclopedias of the 1980s, calling them "outstanding leaders of the party and government."
"Sausage inhabitants" usually judge the Soviet era by perestroika horror stories about Stalin's "terror", through the prism of their narrow-minded perception of empty shelves and shortages. But their mind refuses to accept the fact that it was the large-scale decentralization and capitalization of the country that led the USSR to such results.
But how much strength and mind of the ideological Bolsheviks was applied in order to raise their country to the cosmic level of development by the mid-1950s, to go through a terrible war with the most terrible enemy on Earth - fascism. The dismantling of communist development, which began in the 1950s, continued for more than 30 years, preserving the main features of socialist development and a just society. After all, at the beginning of its journey, the Communist Party was a truly ideological party - the vanguard of the working class, a beacon of the development of society.
Throughout this story, it is clearly manifested that not owning one's ideological weapon - Marxism-Leninism, leads the leaders of the party to the betrayal of the entire people.
We did not set ourselves the goal of analyzing in detail all the stages of the decomposition of Soviet society. The purpose of this article is only to describe the chronology of some significant events of Soviet life and its individual significant aspects of the post-Stalin period.
Nevertheless, it would be fair to mention that the relative modernization of the country continued throughout the entire period of the country's existence. Until the end of the 1980s, we observed the positive development of many social institutions and technological development. Somewhere the pace of development slowed down significantly, something continued to remain at a very high level. Medicine and education developed, cities were built, infrastructure improved. The country moved forward by inertia.
In the Dark Ages, our path went at an accelerated pace and irreversibly only since 1991.
Andrey Krasny
Historians call the dates of Stalin's reign the period from 1929 to 1953. Joseph Stalin (Dzhugashvili) was born on December 21, 1879. Is the founder. Many contemporaries of the Soviet era associate the years of Stalin's rule not only with the victory over fascist Germany and an increase in the level of industrialization of the USSR, but also with numerous repressions of the civilian population.
During the reign of Stalin, about 3 million people were imprisoned and sentenced to death. And if we add to them those sent into exile, dispossessed and deported, then the victims among the civilian population in the Stalin era can be counted as about 20 million people. Now many historians and psychologists are inclined to believe that the situation within the family and upbringing in childhood had a huge impact on Stalin's character.
The formation of Stalin's tough character
From reliable sources it is known that Stalin's childhood was not the happiest and most cloudless. The leader's parents often cursed in front of their son. The father drank a lot and allowed himself to beat his mother in front of little Joseph. The mother, in turn, took out her anger on her son, beat and humiliated him. The unfavorable atmosphere in the family greatly affected Stalin's psyche. Even as a child, Stalin understood a simple truth: whoever is stronger is right. This principle became the motto of the future leader in life. He was also guided by him in governing the country. He was always strict with his.
In 1902, Joseph Vissarionovich organized a demonstration in Batumi, this step was the first for him in his political career. A little later, Stalin became the Bolshevik leader, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Ulyanov) is among his best friends. Stalin fully shares the revolutionary ideas of Lenin.
In 1913, Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili first used his pseudonym - Stalin. From that time on, he became known by this surname. Few people know that before the surname Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich tried on about 30 pseudonyms that never took root.
Stalin's reign
The period of Stalin's rule begins in 1929. Almost all the time of the reign of Joseph Stalin is accompanied by collectivization, mass death of the civilian population and famine. In 1932, Stalin adopted the law "on three spikelets". According to this law, a starving peasant who stole ears of wheat from the state was immediately subject to the highest penalty - execution. All the saved bread in the state was sent abroad. This was the first stage in the industrialization of the Soviet state: the purchase of modern foreign-made equipment.
During the reign of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, mass repressions of the peaceful population of the USSR were carried out. The beginning of the repressions was laid in 1936, when the post of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR was taken by Yezhov N.I. In 1938, on the orders of Stalin, his close friend, Bukharin, was shot. During this period, many residents of the USSR were exiled to the Gulag or shot. Despite all the cruelty of the measures taken, Stalin's policy was aimed at raising the state and its development.
Pros and cons of Stalin's rule
Minuses:
- tough government policy:
- the almost complete destruction of the highest army officials, intellectuals and scientists (who thought differently from the government of the USSR);
- repression of wealthy peasants and the believing population;
- widening "chasm" between the elite and the working class;
- oppression of the civilian population: wages in products instead of cash rewards, working hours up to 14 hours;
- propaganda of anti-Semitism;
- about 7 million starvation deaths during the period of collectivization;
- prosperity of slavery;
- selective development of branches of the economy of the Soviet state.
Pros:
- the creation of a protective nuclear shield in the post-war period;
- an increase in the number of schools;
- creation of children's clubs, sections and circles;
- space exploration;
- lower prices for consumer goods;
- low prices for utilities;
- development of the industry of the Soviet state on the world stage.
In the Stalin era, the social system of the USSR was formed, social, political and economic institutions appeared. Iosif Vissarionovich completely abandoned the NEP policy, carried out the modernization of the Soviet state at the expense of the village. Thanks to the strategic qualities of the Soviet leader, the USSR won the Second World War. The Soviet state began to be called a superpower. The USSR became a member of the UN Security Council. The era of Stalin's rule ended in 1953, when. N. Khrushchev replaced him as chairman of the government of the USSR.
The first ruler of the young Land of Soviets, which arose as a result of the October Revolution of 1917, was the head of the RCP (b) - the Bolshevik Party - Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin), who led the "revolution of workers and peasants." All subsequent rulers of the USSR held the post of general secretary of the central committee of this organization, which, starting from 1922, became known as the CPSU - the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
It should be noted that the ideology of the system ruling in the country denied the possibility of holding any nationwide elections or voting. The change of the top leaders of the state was carried out by the ruling elite itself, either after the death of its predecessor, or as a result of coups accompanied by serious inner-party struggle. The article will list the rulers of the USSR in chronological order and mark the main stages in the life path of some of the most prominent historical figures.
Ulyanov (Lenin) Vladimir Ilyich (1870-1924)
One of the most famous figures in the history of Soviet Russia. Vladimir Ulyanov stood at the origins of its creation, was the organizer and one of the leaders of the event that gave rise to the world's first communist state. Leading a coup in October 1917 aimed at overthrowing the provisional government, he assumed the position of chairman of the Council of People's Commissars - the post of leader of a new country formed on the ruins of the Russian Empire.
His merit is the 1918 peace treaty with Germany, which marked the end of the NEP, the new economic policy of the government, which was supposed to lead the country out of the abyss of general poverty and hunger. All the rulers of the USSR considered themselves "faithful Leninists" and praised Vladimir Ulyanov in every possible way as a great statesman.
It should be noted that immediately after “reconciliation with the Germans”, the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Lenin, unleashed internal terror against dissent and the legacy of tsarism, which claimed millions of lives. The NEP policy also did not last long and was abolished shortly after his death on January 21, 1924.
Dzhugashvili (Stalin) Joseph Vissarionovich (1879-1953)
Joseph Stalin became the first general secretary in 1922. However, until the death of V. I. Lenin, he remained on the sidelines of the leadership of the state, inferior in popularity to his other associates, who also aimed at the rulers of the USSR. Nevertheless, after the death of the leader of the world proletariat, Stalin quickly eliminated his main opponents, accusing them of betraying the ideals of the revolution.
By the beginning of the 1930s, he became the sole leader of the peoples, capable of deciding the fate of millions of citizens with a stroke of the pen. The policy of forced collectivization and dispossession pursued by him, which came to replace the NEP, as well as mass repressions against persons dissatisfied with the current government, claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens of the USSR. However, the period of Stalin's rule is noticeable not only by the bloody trail, it is worth noting the positive aspects of his leadership. In a short time, the Union has gone from being a third-rate economy to a powerful industrial power that has won the battle against fascism.
After the end of the Great Patriotic War, many cities in the western part of the USSR, destroyed almost to the ground, were quickly restored, and their industry began to work even more efficiently. The rulers of the USSR, who held the highest post after Joseph Stalin, denied his leading role in the development of the state and characterized the time of his reign as a period of the leader's personality cult.
Khrushchev Nikita Sergeevich (1894-1971)
Coming from a simple peasant family, N. S. Khrushchev became at the helm of the party shortly after the death of Stalin, which occurred in the first years of his reign, he waged an undercover struggle with G. M. Malenkov, who held the post of chairman of the Council of Ministers and was the de facto head of state.
In 1956, Khrushchev read out a report on Stalin's repressions at the Twentieth Party Congress, condemning the actions of his predecessor. The reign of Nikita Sergeevich was marked by the development of the space program - the launch of an artificial satellite and the first manned flight into space. His new one allowed many citizens of the country to move from cramped communal apartments to more comfortable separate housing. Houses that were massively built at that time are still popularly called "Khrushchevs".
Brezhnev Leonid Ilyich (1907-1982)
On October 14, 1964, N. S. Khrushchev was dismissed from his post by a group of members of the Central Committee under the leadership of L. I. Brezhnev. For the first time in the history of the state, the rulers of the USSR were replaced in order not after the death of the leader, but as a result of an internal party conspiracy. The Brezhnev era in Russian history is known as stagnation. The country stopped in development and began to lose to the leading world powers, lagging behind them in all sectors, excluding the military-industrial.
Brezhnev made some attempts to improve relations with the United States, spoiled in 1962, when N. S. Khrushchev ordered the deployment of missiles with a nuclear warhead in Cuba. Treaties were signed with the American leadership that limited the arms race. However, all the efforts of Leonid Brezhnev to defuse the situation were crossed out by the introduction of troops into Afghanistan.
Andropov Yuri Vladimirovich (1914-1984)
After the death of Brezhnev, which occurred on November 10, 1982, Yu. Andropov, who had previously headed the KGB, the USSR State Security Committee, took his place. He set a course for reforms and transformations in the social and economic spheres. The time of his reign was marked by the initiation of criminal cases exposing corruption in power circles. However, Yuri Vladimirovich did not have time to make any changes in the life of the state, as he had serious health problems and died on February 9, 1984.
Chernenko Konstantin Ustinovich (1911-1985)
From February 13, 1984, he served as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. He continued his predecessor's policy of exposing corruption in the echelons of power. He was very ill and died in 1985, having spent a little more than a year in the highest state post. All the past rulers of the USSR, according to the order established in the state, were buried at and K. U. Chernenko was the last on this list.
Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeevich (1931)
MS Gorbachev is the most famous Russian politician of the late twentieth century. He won love and popularity in the West, but his rule causes twofold feelings among the citizens of his country. If Europeans and Americans call him a great reformer, then many Russians consider him a destroyer of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev proclaimed internal economic and political reforms under the slogan "Perestroika, Glasnost, Acceleration!", which led to a massive shortage of food and manufactured goods, unemployment and a drop in the standard of living of the population.
It would be wrong to assert that the era of M. S. Gorbachev's rule had only negative consequences for the life of our country. In Russia, the concepts of a multi-party system, freedom of religion and the press appeared. Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his foreign policy. The rulers of the USSR and Russia, neither before nor after Mikhail Sergeevich, were awarded such an honor.
Soviet party and statesman.
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU since 1964 (since 1966 General Secretary) and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in 1960-1964. and since 1977
Marshal of the Soviet Union, 1976
Biography of Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was born on December 19, 1906 in the village of Kamenskoye, Yekaterinoslav province (now it is the city of Dneprodzerzhinsk).
L. Brezhnev's father, Ilya Yakovlevich, was a metallurgical worker. Brezhnev's mother, Natalya Denisovna, had the surname Mazelova before her marriage.
In 1915, Brezhnev entered the zero class of a classical gymnasium.
In 1921, Leonid Brezhnev graduated from a labor school, went to his first job at the Kursk oil mill.
1923 was marked by joining the Komsomol.
In 1927, Brezhnev graduated from the Kursk land management and reclamation college. After studying, Leonid Ilyich worked for some time in Kursk and in Belarus.
In 1927 - 1930. Brezhnev holds the post of land surveyor in the Urals. Later he became the head of the district land department, was deputy chairman of the District Executive Committee, deputy head of the Ural Regional Land Administration. He took an active part in the collectivization in the Urals.
In 1928 Leonid Brezhnev married.
In 1931, Brezhnev joined the VKP(b) (All-Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks).
In 1935, he received a diploma from the Dneprodzerzhinsk Metallurgical Institute, being a party organizer.
In 1937 he entered the metallurgical plant. F.E. Dzerzhinsky as an engineer and immediately received the post of deputy chairman of the Dneprodzerzhinsky city executive committee.
In 1938, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was appointed head of the department of the Dnepropetrovsk Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and a year later he received a secretary position in the same organization.
During the Great Patriotic War, Brezhnev occupied a number of 
senior positions: Deputy Head of the Political Directorate of the 4th Ukrainian Front, Head of the Political Department of the 18th Army, Head of the Political Directorate of the Carpathian Military District. He finished the war with the rank of major general, although he had "very weak military knowledge."
In 1946, L.I. Brezhnev was appointed 1st Secretary of the Zaporozhye Regional Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine, a year later he was transferred to the Dnepropetrovsk Regional Committee in the same position.
In 1950, he became a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, in July of the same year - the 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Moldova.
In October 1952, Brezhnev received from Stalin the post of secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU and became a member of the Central Committee and a candidate member of the Presidium of the Central Committee.
After the death of I.V. Stalin in 1953, the rapid career of Leonid Ilyich was interrupted for a while. He was demoted and was appointed 1st Deputy Head of the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy.
1954 - 1956 the famous uplift of virgin lands in Kazakhstan. L.I. Brezhnev 
consistently holds the positions of 2nd and 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Republic.
In February 1956, he regained his position as secretary of the Central Committee.
In 1956, Brezhnev became a candidate, and a year later a member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee (in 1966 the organization was renamed the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee). In this position, Leonid Ilyich led science-intensive industries, including space exploration.
Loading...