1979, Brezhnev had a private meeting with American President Carter. He read the manuscript prepared for him according to the script. When he read the crossed-out paragraph, he turned his head and asked the translator, "Do I still want to read it?" 1In September, 982, Brezhnev visited Azerbaijan and delivered a congratulatory speech at the general party membership meeting held in Azerbaijan. He took another speech prepared for him by mistake and read it unconsciously. Because his speech had nothing to do with the conference, the audience was emotional, and the secretary quickly changed it for him, then he realized that he had read it wrong.
Even funnier, Brezhnev gave a welcome speech at the opening ceremony of the Moscow Olympic Games. Brezhnev put the secretary's written speech in his coat pocket and couldn't say a word on the podium. After a while, Brezhnev finally spoke. His welcome speech is confusing, and no one can understand it, because he has just read the Russian letter "O" five times in a row: "Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! " It turned out that he regarded the five rings on the Olympic flag as five "O". As a person with mediocre talent and "weak in all aspects", Brezhnev left the deepest impression on the world during his more than ten years as general secretary of CPSU, perhaps the kiss of Brezhnev.
Because of personal preference, "in the Brezhnev era, when members of the Politburo met with socialist countries and republics, they formed the etiquette of men kissing each other." In Bertrand's view, this may be a unique magic weapon for him to show his personal diplomatic charm, but few politicians from various countries who have been kissed by him are willing and willing.
No one hates "Brezhnev's Kiss" more than the member of CPSU Politburo under Black Blind Man-after all, his political affairs have been "strongly kissed" by Black Blind Man several times at most in his life, while the member of CPSU Politburo has to "match words with deeds" and always devote himself to carrying forward "Brezhnev's Kiss". Andropov and chernenko, two CPSU general secretaries after Yeltsin, hated this kind of "kissing". Brezhnev has a strong "medal complex", and he won 1 14 medals in his life. As for when Brezhnev began to have this "addiction", it has been unclear.
In the history of "Soviet heroes", two people have won the "Gold Star Medal" four times, that is, they have won the title of "Soviet heroes" four times. One is a veritable legendary Soviet marshal zhukov; The other is Brezhnev of the Soviet Union. When the maximum amount of three "Gold Star Medals" came into effect, zhukov was awarded the fourth Hero Medals as an exception. Brezhnev awarded himself four Gold Star Medals and decided to be a "supreme" hero. After Brezhnev came to power, he said that he would "guarantee respect for cadres", and the scope of privileges enjoyed by cadres expanded and the types of privileges increased. Not only that, Brezhnev bureaucrats also built "hunting huts" for their own enjoyment and private clubs for upper-class gatherings. These private villas, called "huts", are often as magnificent as palaces, with gardens, indoor swimming pools and other facilities. During Brezhnev's reign, the historical problems such as corruption, corruption and privilege in Soviet society have reached a very serious level.
Brezhnev has a strong complex of "protecting calves" and is very "generous" to his children. He used public funds to build villas for his daughter Galina Brezhneva and his son Yuri Brezhnev. Even his uneducated and greedy son-in-law, yuri mikhailovich Churbanov, soared because of Brezhnev's blessing, becoming the first deputy minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union and an alternate member of the Central Committee. Churbanov embezzled as much as 2 billion rubles of public funds and was taken to the dock after Brezhnev's death.
Because Brezhnev's power is based on the "unity" and "stability" of his cronies whom he admired and promoted. Therefore, Brezhnev pursued the policy of "protecting cadres" to protect his cronies.
Under Brezhnev's increasingly corrupt rule, the corruption, depravity and privilege of Soviet society gradually reached an intolerable level. The depth and breadth of corruption are incomparable in the past, and it is the deepening and development of corruption in Stalin's era. "Many members of the Soviet Union communist party, including the Secretary of the State Council, the Secretary of the Frontier Committee and the Secretary of the Central Committee, participated in dirty activities and presented valuable gifts, including to the General Secretary, which was considered justified. On the eve of the festival, the confidential communication department was as busy as a bee, distributing boxes sent from all over the south to the general secretary and members of the Political Bureau. " Brezhnev also encountered many economic problems, the most prominent of which is the continuous decline of economic growth rate. During the Eighth Five-Year Plan, the Ninth Five-Year Plan and the Tenth Five-Year Plan, the average annual growth rate of national income was 7. 1%, 6% and 3.8% respectively, and the average annual growth rate of industrial output value was 8.5%, 3.4% and 3.4% respectively. Due to one-sided emphasis on the development of heavy industry and military industry, the development ratio of various sectors of the national economy is unbalanced. Since 1979, agricultural production has been reduced year after year. The agricultural output value decreased by 3. 1%, 2.5% and 1.9% at 198 1, respectively. The recession of agriculture has seriously affected the national economy, especially the development of light industry and food industry, resulting in tight market supply. In addition, many drawbacks of the economic management system have not been eliminated, such as excessive concentration of economic decision-making power in leading organs; The limited autonomy of enterprises is still violated; The economic system is not suitable for the implementation of intensive policy, and the price setting is not conducive to the adoption of new technologies and the production of new products; Bureaucracy and egalitarianism are serious, and so on.
In addition, in the Soviet Union during Brezhnev's administration, the main consumer goods were in short supply for a long time. At that time, the Soviet Union had the most cultivated land in the world, but the grain harvest failed year after year, so it had to spend a lot of foreign exchange to import grain. Soviet spacecraft can reach the moon and Mars, but car failures are frequent and fuel consumption is amazing; Many Soviet household appliances are out of date, and TVs often explode. Many people often joke that TV sets made in the Soviet Union should be given to the enemy. It was also during this period that western thoughts, cultures and lifestyles began to penetrate into the hearts of ordinary citizens in the Soviet Union, especially the younger generation. Disco, jazz and other western cultures have become the fashion of young people, and drug abuse that was once eradicated is also all the rage. According to statistics, there were about 2,400 mafia organizations in the Soviet Union at that time, and most of them had bureaucratic backgrounds. In the early 1980s, Moscow, like new york, became one of the most unsafe big cities in the world. During the Brezhnev period, the reform of the problems left over from the Soviet economic history never stopped. The reform covers a wide range, which has caused many changes in the economic management system of the Soviet Union. The reform in this period is mainly to reduce the central mandatory planning indicators, reform the management system, improve management methods, expand enterprise autonomy, and emphasize the material stimulation of profits to enterprise leaders and employees. Its essence is to make limited use of market mechanism within the framework of planned economy; Manage the economy by administrative means, supplemented by economic means. At that time, this reform achieved remarkable results, promoted the economic development of the Soviet Union, and made the national strength and international influence of the Soviet Union reach its peak during the Brezhnev period.
The economic reform in Brezhnev period did not fundamentally change the historical issues such as the highly centralized planning and mandatory economic management system implemented by the Soviet Union for a long time, nor did it solve the substantive problem of how the Soviet economy continued to grow. By the second half of 1970s, the Soviet Union's economic growth slowed down, and the disadvantages that the Soviet economic system could not meet the requirements of productivity development were increasingly exposed. Firstly, there is a lack of theoretical understanding of the role of market mechanism in regulating economy under socialist conditions. In the later period of Brezhnev's administration, he also criticized the theory of "socialist market economy" in Eastern European countries, thus deterring the further exploration of the new socialist economic system. Second, in practice, due to the implementation of the "new economic system", we have not found effective solutions to the problems that occurred in the past, such as one-sided pursuit of profits, neglect of product quality, blind and indiscriminate bonuses, and disregard for the long-term interests of the country and the people. The internal forces of the political system are intertwined, and the situation is too big to fail. It has been difficult for reform to play its due role. Therefore, the reform gradually contracted and the reform measures introduced were cancelled, which led to the interruption of economic system reform.