Leonid Brezhnev
General Secretary of the Communist Party of The Soviet Union, Russian, 1964 - 1982
Place of DeathZarechye, Russia
In 1954 Nikita Khrushchev, who had gained full power in Moscow, made Brezhnev second secretary of the Kazakhstan Communist Party, in which capacity he vigorously implemented Khrushchev’s ambitious Virgin and Idle Lands Campaign in Kazakhstan. Brezhnev was soon promoted to first secretary of the Kazakhstan Communist Party (1955), and in 1956 he was reelected to his posts on the CPSU Central Committee and in the Politburo. A year later, after he had loyally worked against the “antiparty group” that attempted to remove Khrushchev, Brezhnev was made a full member of the Politburo, and in 1960 he became chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. In July 1964 he resigned that post to become Khrushchev’s assistant as second secretary of the Central Committee, by which time he was considered Khrushchev’s heir apparent as party leader. Three months later, however, Brezhnev helped lead the coalition that forced Khrushchev from power, and, in the division of spoils that followed, Brezhnev became first secretary (after 1966, general secretary) of the CPSU (October 15, 1964).