Galina Brezhneva
Encyclopedia
Galina Leonidovna Brezhneva was the daughter of Soviet
Soviet people
Soviet people or Soviet nation was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union. Initially used as a nonspecific reference to the Soviet population, it was eventually declared to be a "new historical, social and international unity of people".-Nationality politics in early Soviet...

 politician and longtime General Secretary
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the title given to the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. With some exceptions, the office was synonymous with leader of the Soviet Union...

 Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev  – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...

 and Viktoria Brezhneva
Viktoria Brezhneva
Viktoria Petrovna Brezhneva was the wife of Soviet politician and longtime General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. She was the mother of Yuri Brezhnev and Galina Brezhneva.-Life:...

.

Life and death

Brezhneva was born on 18 April 1929 in Sverdlovsk
Yekaterinburg
Yekaterinburg is a major city in the central part of Russia, the administrative center of Sverdlovsk Oblast. Situated on the eastern side of the Ural mountain range, it is the main industrial and cultural center of the Urals Federal District with a population of 1,350,136 , making it Russia's...

. As a child she refused to become a member of the Komsomol
Komsomol
The Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...

, and later, refused to study for an academic degree
Academic degree
An academic degree is a position and title within a college or university that is usually awarded in recognition of the recipient having either satisfactorily completed a prescribed course of study or having conducted a scholarly endeavour deemed worthy of his or her admission to the degree...

. Brezhneva was married briefly to Igor Kio
Igor Kio
Igor Kio was a Russian illusionist with the Russian Circus Association. A member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, he won numerous awards including People's Artist of the Russian Federation and an Oscar from Belgium.Igor was born into a family of circus performers, to another noted...

, a union which lasted only 9 days. By 1971, her father, Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev  – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...

 had become displeased with the way things were going in Brezhneva's life. Brezhnev wanted to arrange a marriage for Brezhneva, after having Brezhneva's second marriage annulled, and from a number of suitors Yuri Churbanov
Yuri Churbanov
Yuri Mikhailovich Churbanov was the son-in-law of Soviet politician and longtime General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev.-Life and career:Chubranov was born on 11 November 1936. As a young boy he was an active member of the Komsomol. He attended the Moscow State University in the 1960s and studied...

 was selected by Brezhneva. Churbanov was chosen even though he was already married and had children. By the end of Brezhnev's life, Brezhneva was much-less visible, and under the reign of Yuri Andropov
Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.-Early life:...

, she disappeared from the public eye altogether. Brezhneva made a public comeback during Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko was a Soviet politician and the fifth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He led the Soviet Union from 13 February 1984 until his death thirteen months later, on 10 March 1985...

's short rule, and she appeared in a conference commemorating International Women's Day
International Women's Day
International Women's Day , originally called International Working Women’s Day, is marked on March 8 every year. In different regions the focus of the celebrations ranges from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women to a celebration for women's economic, political and...

. At the conference Brezhneva wore only one piece of jewelry, the Order of Lenin
Order of Lenin
The Order of Lenin , named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union...

 she had been awarded by Andrei Gromyko
Andrei Gromyko
Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet . Gromyko was responsible for many top decisions on Soviet foreign policy until he retired in 1987. In the West he was given the...

 in 1978 for her fiftieth birthday.

Later, after Churbanov had been arrested on charges of corruption, Brezhneva divorced him. Brezhneva married for a fourth, and last time, at the age of 65 to a 29 year old man. Before her death Brezhneva had been a guest on British television to talk about life in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

. Brezhneva, in her later life, gradually became an alcoholic, and her own daughter placed her in a psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...

 where she died on June 30th,1998.

Personal life and rumours

Historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 Larisa Vasilʹeva wrote in her book that "Galina Brezhneva was an all-too-typical product of what came to be known as the Era of Stagnation". Brezhneva was a heavy drinker and was known to be heavy-tempered
Temperament
In psychology, temperament refers to those aspects of an individual's personality, such as introversion or extroversion, that are often regarded as innate rather than learned...

. She had little self-discipline, and had a seemingly natural tendency toward self-gratification. She was known for her passion for jewelry and diamond
Diamond
In mineralogy, diamond is an allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions...

s. Why or how Galina received her diamonds were unknown to the majority at the time, however, according to a former director of Yuvelirtorg, the state-run jewelry company in the USSR, all jewellery and valuables seized from criminals were given to nomenklatura
Nomenklatura
The nomenklatura were a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key administrative positions in all spheres of those countries' activity: government, industry, agriculture, education, etc., whose positions were granted only with approval by the...

 members. There were many rumors circulating Soviet society about Brezhneva, most notable during Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev  – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...

's tenure as General Secretary
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the title given to the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. With some exceptions, the office was synonymous with leader of the Soviet Union...

; these rumours have been colloquially referred to as "diamond legends". In one such rumor, Brezhneva, during her visit to the Georgian SSR, visited a museum where she noticed two relic
Relic
In religion, a relic is a part of the body of a saint or a venerated person, or else another type of ancient religious object, carefully preserved for purposes of veneration or as a tangible memorial...

s on display. Brezhneva then demanded the two relics to be given to her as a gift. The museum director refused to comply and instead called the First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party
Georgian Communist party
Georgia was incorporated into the Soviet Union as the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic after 25 February 1921 when the Red Army entered its capital Tbilisi and installed a communist government led by Georgian Bolshevik Filipp Makharadze. After the 1924 August Uprising in Georgia the country was...

, Eduard Shevardnadze
Eduard Shevardnadze
Eduard Shevardnadze is a former Soviet, and later, Georgian statesman from the height to the end of the Cold War. He served as President of Georgia from 1995 to 2003, and as First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party , from 1972 to 1985. Shevardnadze was responsible for many top decisions on...

, to discuss the matter with General Secretary Brezhnev. Shevardnadze told Brezhnev that given her Georgian national heritage, her behavior was unacceptable; Brezhnev agreed and ordered Brezhneva back to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

.

Stories such as this one greatly affected Brezhnev. The General Secretary said once to a party colleague that "The world respects you, but your own family causes you pain". At the height of perestroika
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...

, a reform initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...

, many of the rumors about Brezhneva became increasingly wild and questionable; new details and information, possibly apocryphal, were increasingly included in the rumors. In popular culture, these rumors helped depict the Brezhnev era as an "Era of Stagnation". Many of the rumors stemmed from the fact that most of Brezhneva's friends and colleagues had earlier been arrested, and the majority of them had been linked to some sort of corruption
Political corruption
Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...

.

Embezzlement

In January 1982, as part of Andropov's anti-corruption campaign while Brezhnev was still alive, several prominent jewelry smugglers who all had links with Brezhneva were arrested, with some of them even receiving the death sentence
Death Sentence
Death Sentence is a short story by the American science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the November 1943 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and reprinted in the 1972 collection The Early Asimov.-Plot summary:...

. It was later proven that Galina was smuggling
Smuggling
Smuggling is the clandestine transportation of goods or persons, such as out of a building, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.There are various motivations to smuggle...

 jewelry out of the Soviet Union on such a scale as to threaten the business of De Beers Consolidated Mines, a group of companies concentrated on mining of diamonds. Brezhneva was detained by the authorities, being summoned in one instance to the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

 headquarters for questioning. Being the daughter of Brezhnev resulted in charges against Brezhneva being dismissed; she was, however, internally exiled by the Andropov administration. When Gorbachev became General Secretary the criminal investigations against Galina and her brother, Yuri
Yuri Brezhnev
Yuri Leonidovich Brezhnev is the son of Soviet politician and longtime General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and Viktoria Brezhneva.-Life and career:By Konstantin Chernenko's death Yuri had become a chronic alcoholic...

, were resumed. Her brother Yuri, a former First Deputy of the Ministry of Foreign Trade, and her husband, Yuri Churbanov
Yuri Churbanov
Yuri Mikhailovich Churbanov was the son-in-law of Soviet politician and longtime General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev.-Life and career:Chubranov was born on 11 November 1936. As a young boy he was an active member of the Komsomol. He attended the Moscow State University in the 1960s and studied...

, were both arrested on charges of corruption. However, investigators were never able to produce any solid charges against Galina for her post-1982 criminal activities. In her later life, Galina had become an alcoholic and usually signed statements without reading them properly.
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