Brezhnev, Soviet Politician by Paul J. Murphy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"[Brezhnev] survived on the obstacle strewn path to power because he possessed the right mixture of tenacious energy, drive, cunning, discipline, ruthlessness, concealment, a polemic-sharpened intellect and a healthy respect for the Soviet political terrain."

My fourth read in a series about Soviet Communist party leaders is a biography of Leonid Brezhnev, a man who held the reins of power of the entire Soviet empire for 18 long years, between 1964 and 1982. Paul J. Murphy's Brezhnev. Soviet Politician (1981) was published while Brezhnev was still the Supreme Leader but it was already clear that his days were numbered because of massive health problems. The biography is not a particularly enthralling read, which may not be the author's fault: Brezhnev's is not a fascinating personality. He is not a ruthless murderer and torturer of untold millions like Stalin, not an enigma like Andropov, and not an accidental revolutionary like Gorbachev. Brezhnev is precisely like his characterization in the epigraph - a skillful politician, a clever party bureaucrat:

"[...] a safe Party man with practical experience who, though a trifle lackluster, had the requisite drive and leadership ability. [...] Brezhnev had proven himself to be a 'pragmatist' and a 'political engineer.'"

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, born in 1906, grew up in the times of the October Revolution, and - along with his family - survived the horrors of the bloody civil war in Ukraine that caused mass hunger and even occasional cases of cannibalism. The author claims that the estimated total of 14 million people died from starvation. After Brezhnev had joined Komsomol (The Young Communists League) he actively participated in "land consolidation" decreed by Stalin. Brezhnev was an eager enforcer of collectivization, forcefully taking land from the peasants to create "collective farms". Young party activists had to participate in the brutal process; otherwise they would be denounced as lax in enforcing the policies by more eager young party activists, and then executed.

In 1935 Brezhnev graduates from an engineering university and begins his rise in the party bureaucracy as a protégé of Khrushchev (see my review of his biography Khrushchev ), who succeeded Stalin in 1953). When the Germans outfox and surprise Stalin (the "Genius of Strategy") with the attack in 1941, Brezhnev distinguishes himself in military service during the Great Patriotic War and, after the war, along with Khrushchev organizes the efforts to rebuild the country.

It is during the momentous Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956 (Krushchev gave his famous "secret speech" denouncing Stalin's murderous regime) that Brezhnev firmly becomes a member of the top Soviet leadership and, in 1960, the President of the Soviet Union. The Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the Cuban Crisis of 1962, when the world is as close to the all-out nuclear war as it has never been before, shows the divisions in the Soviet leadership, and the power struggle begins in earnest.

Khrushchev is ousted in 1964 and the 18-year-long Brezhnev era begins. The author characterizes these years focusing on three aspects. Soviet Union becomes the only other superpower, with political and military might equal to that, if not greater than, of the United States. Second, this is the era of very active Soviet foreign policy and those are the years of détente the general easing of international tensions. Soviet Union, unable to compete economically with the Western world is trying to outdo the West in so-called "peace efforts." Finally, in 1979 the Soviet forces invade Afghanistan; the war becomes a sort of Soviet Vietnam and contributes to accelerating the decline of the Soviet empire. The arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev in the top leadership in 1978 is a harbinger of changes to come (I am planning to review another biography of Gorbachev soon).

There are numerous typos in the book; I don't think I have ever read a book with so many typos - not the author's fault, I guess. Anyway, even with the sloppiness, it is an worthwhile if not that captivating read.

Three stars.

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