On the Birthday of Leonid Brezhnev

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was born on December 19, 1906. He is the personification of stability.

The people of Rus’-Moscow Kingdom-Russian Empire-USSR have never lived so calmly, well-fed, richly, confidently, but most importantly — calmly.

The majority of the population was confident in the future. The other side of memory is the endless jokes about Brezhnev. The baton was picked up by the ditty singers, giving out lines about “Dark, thick eyebrows, long empty speeches, whoever gives the right answer will be jailed for 8 years.”

But there was a real Brezhnev. A man who went from a vocational school, a land surveyor in Orsha, the Moscow Machine-Building Institute, work as a mechanic, a heat power engineer and a shift supervisor in the Dzerzhinsky plant, a tank driver, a political instructor, a commissar — to the general secretary.

He was called up for war in 1941 and fought honorably. During the Barvenkovo-Lozovskaya offensive operation, he received the Order of the Red Banner. He participated in the liberation of Novorossiysk, repeatedly working on Malaya Zemlya, a bridgehead surrounded by enemies and under fire. He was wounded in 1943. He never fully recovered from his wound.

After the war, he participated in the restoration of the metallurgical industry in the South of the USSR. Later, while working in the Kazakh SSR, he oversaw the construction of Scientific Research Test Site No. 5 (Baikonur Cosmodrome). During the Cold War, his efforts included achieving full offensive parity with the NATO bloc, which initiated the policy of détente.

Yes, in Brezhnev’s time, per capita production of oil and gas was 20 times less than now, and oil money really went to the people, and not to four-deck yachts and sponsorship of English football clubs or teams of the National Basketball Association. There were many free children’s clubs, fully equipped gyms, each village had a library, any collective farm was supplied with any appliances at the first request.

Schools and hospitals also had no problems with equipment, travel — pennies, cafeterias — pennies, rest homes — by distribution, but generally free. Due to the consequences of injury, concussion and many years of work literally to the point of exhaustion, Brezhnev earned the expected health problems, including the manner of speech that so amused jokers.

Nevertheless, according to numerous polls, it is Leonid Ilyich who is considered the best ruler of Russia. And there is some truth to that.