b> The last years of Brezhnev's rule have gone down in history as a pathetic spectacle starring the living dead. Brezhnev suffered from dementia and was completely childish. It was even joked that he was only kept alive by the blood of infants shed at night. When he died in November 1982, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. It's hard to believe that it probably wasn't a natural death. Brezhnev murdered
Leonid Brezhnev was a secretary general (gensek) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he owed patience and cunning. He had both ups and downs in his party career. Ultimately - on the road of a bloodless coup - on October 14, 1964, he overthrew Nikita Khrushchev and became the leader of the second most important power in the world. Not bad for the son of an ordinary steelworker.
There was only one "little" problem. Brezhnev - this seemingly glorious peasant - struggled with constant health problems. The competition, meanwhile, was awake. Soviet dictator found in the sights of the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, who has long sharpened his teeth on the gensek chair.
The secret dream of the KGB chief
Brezhnev had his first heart attack in 1952, when he was only 46 years old. Later it only got worse. In 1968 - during difficult talks with Czechoslovak leaders - the secretary general suddenly fainted.
As Philippe Comte writes in one of the chapters of the book "The Last Days of Dictators": [Brezhnev] loses the thread, his tongue begins to tangled, his arm dangles limply. The Soviet leader falls into a strange numbness, he has no control over deeds or words . The diagnosis is unequivocal: the nervous system cannot withstand the constant tension and stress.
It did not bode well for the Soviet Union and for Brezhnev himself, who also fell into severe drug addiction. It quickly turned out that he could not live without strong sleeping pills. Their overuse, in turn, only aggravated the cardiological problems.
From the left, Yuri Andropov, Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev during the congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. Berlin 1967 (source:Bundesarchiv, license CC-BY-SA).
Looking forward to the opportunity
In late 1974, the aging dictator underwent another heart attack, starting an irreversible process of degradation . Brezhnev was increasingly reluctant to make any key decisions. The Soviet Union inevitably began to crumble. In all of this, Yuri Andropov saw his chance, who even admits in his family that he has been dreaming of taking power for ten years.
As befits the head of the notorious KGB, Andropov did not stop at nothing to achieve his goal. Further potential rivals to the Brezhnev schema were framed in various scandals, effectively eliminating them from the race for the highest position in the state. It even got to the point that Andropov ordered that the closest family of the general secretary, who, moreover, had his ears be examined. A large part of it was involved in the profitable smuggling of jewelry and precious stones.
This is how the subsequent years passed, during which the head of the KGB looked for allies who could help him achieve his goal. He found them, among others in the persons of the head of the Soviet diplomacy, Andrei Gromyka, and the Minister of Defense, Dmitry Ustinov.
Thanks to their support, in 1978 the KGB was finally freed from the authority of the Council of Ministers, gaining full independence. Now no one or anything could stand in the way of Andropov.
Brezhnev briskly leaves the rostrum after giving a speech at the plenary congress of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1968. It seems to be a specimen of health, but already then he suffered from many ailments (source:RIA Novosti archive; license CC BY-SA 3.0).
Brezhnev's daughter Galina and her husband Yuri Churbanov - appointed deputy minister of internal affairs - learned about it painfully. At the end of 1981, they became the main suspects in the so-called "Brilliant scandal". Her leads led to the office of Nikolai Shchelokov, Churbanov's superior. Thus another major rival to power has been eliminated.
Meanwhile, ailing Brezhnev was more and more clearly intending to retire from honor. However, the head of the KGB could not let that happen because he would not be the gensek then. The dictator appointed his longtime friend Volodymyr Szczerbycki, who headed the Communist Party of Ukraine, as his successor. Andropov did not have much time to react. The changing of the guard was to take place during the plenary session of the Central Committee on November 15, 1982.
However, the situation became sharply complicated. Andropov himself at the same time was transferred to the post of secretary of the Central Committee and deprived of influence over the secret police. The apparent promotion made it clear that if he did not do something immediately, he would never fulfill his dream again. Especially that the new head of the KGB was appointed his ardent enemy - Vitaly Fedorchuk.
Andropov was perfectly prepared for this, however. As Philippe Comte, quoted earlier, writes, for several months now KGB agents working in the vicinity of Brezhnev they provided mu counterfeit drugs sleeping pills, white pills, which at first glance did not differ from the real ones, but did not work.
A few days before the death of the gensek, it even happened that the security guard started giving the secretary-general new pills. This time yellow ... Brezhnev was surprised, he wrote it down in his diary, but he swallowed without hesitation. Who knows if he didn't pay for it with his life.
Mystery phone
As I have already mentioned, the announcement of the decision to retire was to take place on November 15, at the plenary session of the Central Committee, which preceded the deliberations of the Politburo, which began four days earlier. Before they happened on November 9, Brezhnev met only one person in the Kremlin - Andropov. Several hours later he was dead. This could of course be considered a coincidence if it were not for the events of November 10th.
The day before his death, Leonid Brezhnev met only one person in the Kremlin. It was Yuri Andropov. Several hours later, the Soviet dictator was dead (photo:Julim; license CC BY-SA 1.0).
This morning, at nine o'clock in the dacha in Užupis, security guards found the dying Brezhnev. They immediately started heart massage and called an ambulance. They also informed their superiors. After an hour, an order was received at the dacha saying that no one was allowed to enter the dying man's bedroom - this also applied to the immediate family.
Who gave the order? Most likely, Andropov's trusted man Yevgeny Chazov - head of the IV Department of the Ministry of Health. But before he did that, he had at 8:50 call the former head of the KGB with the information that Brezhnev ... was dead !
No, this is not a mistake. It happened ten minutes before security guards opened the secretary general's bedroom door. It will be a good dozen or so minutes before one of them, Sobchakov, informs Andropov about the disturbing state of health of the gensek. You will admit that this sequence of events is very food for thought.
Of course, Andropov didn't waste a minute. By nine-thirty he was already in Zarzecze. When he got there, the first thing he did was not to find out what was going on with Brezhnev. On the contrary. It didn't interest him at all.
He immediately directed his steps to the gensek's office, from where he took the armored box containing the most secret papers of the dying dictator. When he was leaving, he shouted to Czazów - who also came to the dacha - that an extraordinary plenary session of the Central Committee should be urgently called. Thus, he made a diagnosis, although Brezhnev was still alive. Clinical death did not occur until ten-thirty.
Although Brezhnev still showed signs of life, Andropov had already called an extraordinary plenary session of the Central Committee, which elected him as a new gensek (source:Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain).
Two days later, Andropov was announced as the new secretary general. His dream has finally come true. Did he actually order the murder of Brezhnev? We cannot say that with 100% certainty. But with 90%? Absolutely.
Ironically, Dr. Czazov, on behalf of Konstantin Chernenko, will give his hand to Andropov's death two years later. History has come full circle.
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Trivia is the essence of our website. Short materials devoted to interesting anecdotes, surprising details from the past, strange news from the old press. Reading that will take you no more than 3 minutes, based on single sources. This particular material is based on:
- Diane Ducret, Emmanuel Hecht, The Last Days of Dictators , Horizon 2014 sign.