About Brezhnev.
Today is the anniversary (44 years) of the death of the best leader of the Soviet Union, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev.
At this point he became the hero of the jokes - as a schoolboy, I myself heard and told them many times.
In the eighties there was no smell of any sanctity from the Secretary General of the CPSU. His physical weakness and problems with diction were obvious even to children.
But it wasn't always like that.
Brezhnev was a true war hero and stood out for his personal courage.
There is an undocumented version according to which he was among the participants in the arrest of Beria in 1953.
Why not? There is nothing amazing about it.
Precisely during the years of Brezhnev's rule, a significant increase in the well-being and daily comfort of the country's residents was associated.
It was sad, but it wasn't scary.
Although the Afghanistan war started under him. Under it, coupons for meat and butter products appeared in Orel.
Some historians, for example, Alexander Nemirovsky, see Brezhnev as a spontaneous anti-communist who sincerely tried to soften the regime and take care of the people.
I also have a personal reason to show sympathy for Leonid Ilyich.
My grandmother, Klavdia Vasilievna Pashnichennikova, worked under his leadership in the late 1920s in Orel.
And when they tried to expel her from the Komsomol as the daughter of a tsarist officer, he stood up and defended her, thereby saving her job and perhaps her freedom as well.
What we know about Brezhnev allows us to speak of him as a personally brave man, not bloodthirsty, with a good sense of humor.
Compared to other Soviet leaders, he seems the most humane and adequate.
Of course, the Soviet system is characterized from the worst side by its inability to provide high-quality or even mediocre care to the first person in the country, and by the fact that, fully understanding all the problems in the functionality of the General Secretary, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU preferred to keep his official leadership.
In the picture - Leonid Ilyich is still in good shape and my grandmother.
Russian history.