Brezhneva, Viktoriya (1908–1995)

First lady of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982 who lived in near-total obscurity while her husband was a leading Soviet political figure, though her family would later become a symbol of the favoritism and corruption of an "Era of Stagnation." Name variations: Viktoria Brezhnev. Born Viktoriya Petrovna Denisova in Kursk in 1908; died in Moscow on July 5, 1995; daughter of Pyotr Nikanorovich Denisov (a train engineer) and a housewife mother; married Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982), in 1928; children: Galina Brezhneva (b. 1929); Yuri (b. 1933).

Until the appearance of Raisa Gorbachev as first lady of the Soviet Union in 1985, it was customary for the wives of the Kremlin leadership to remain in the shadows, unreported on in the press, unacknowledged in any official fashion. Viktoriya Brezhneva, wife of Leonid Brezhnev for more than a half-century, was the last of the Soviet leadership's wives to play this self-effacing role.

She was born in Kursk in 1908 into a proletarian family. Her father Pyotr Nikanorovich Denisov was a train engineer, her mother a housewife who kept busy raising Viktoriya and four other children. Viktoriya was a nursing student in Kursk when she met Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, an agronomy student, at a school dance. They married in 1928 and their first child, a daughter Galina, was born in 1929; a son Yuri followed in 1933. Uninterested in politics, Viktoriya Brezhneva raised her two children and enjoyed the perquisites that accrued to her and her family as her husband's career in the Communist bureaucracy flourished. After many years in the provinces, the Brezhnevs moved to Moscow in 1952 when Leonid Brezhnev became a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. By 1957, he had become a leading political figure, serving under Nikita Khrushchev. After Khrushchev's fall from power in October 1964, Brezhnev seized the reins and would rule until his death in November 1982. Throughout these years, Viktoriya was a dutiful wife who ignored her husband's many affairs as well as his preoccupations with hunting and expensive foreign automobiles.

While her husband was unchallenged ruler of the Soviet Union, she remained virtually unknown to the Soviet people. Even before he achieved supreme power, she and her family benefited as members of the Communist Party's Nomenklatura, the privileged elite who enjoyed material advantages over ordinary Soviet citizens, ranging from superior housing to plentiful food, plush vacations, advanced medical care, and educational advantages for their children. Brezhnev's regime emphasized impressive feats of space exploration, as well as transforming the Soviet army into the largest in the world and making the navy a major geopolitical force. But domestically, the economy stagnated and society became increasingly cynical and graft-ridden.

During the almost two decades of her husband's rule, Viktoriya did not see Leonid for long periods of time. She often went to a one-room apartment of her own that was stacked with boxes of gifts her husband had received over the years. Her acquisitiveness became an obsession. The few family members privileged to visit this room noticed that sealed boxes on the floor were carefully marked with the names of Viktoriya's children, nieces and nephews as well as other members of the next generation of the privileged Brezhnev clan.

Her husband's distinctly non-Socialist love of luxury and her own increasing materialism were coupled with their children's undisciplined natures. Galina Brezhneva , an intelligent young woman who studied literature and philosophy, graduated from Kishinev University, and she soon was attracted to the glittering world of the circus. In 1951, she married Evgenii Milaev, a circus acrobat and strongman. The marriage lasted eight years. Her second marriage to Igor Kio, a man 15 years her junior who was also from the world of the circus, so infuriated her father that Leonid Brezhnev sent the militia to break up the union. She chose as her third husband a lieutenant-colonel of the militia, Iurii Churbanov, whose career prospered due to favoritism. After growing tired of this marriage, Galina took up with a gypsy actor whose career also prospered until, thanks to the Brezhnev family "pull," he found himself engaged by Moscow's famous Bolshoi Theater. Once the full enormity of high-level corruption during the Brezhnev era was exposed, Galina was at the center of several scandals, which included an accusation against her for stealing diamonds. Her husband Churbanov was put on trial and found guilty of various charges of large-scale corruption.

Like his sister, Yuri Brezhnev at first showed promise. He completed his studies in metallurgical sciences and took various engineering jobs. After his father assumed supreme power in 1964, however, nepotism began to determine the nature of his career. By 1976, he had become deputy minister of Foreign Trade and by 1981 was a candidate member of the powerful Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. By the time of his father's death in 1982, Yuri's personal life was a shambles and his chronic alcoholism had become well-known in upper echelons. He was dismissed by the new regime of Yuri Andropov in 1983 and sent to work in the provinces.

In her last decades, Viktoriya Brezhneva had little in her life to bring her the consolations some parents derive from their children. Her husband's reputation was in shreds within a few years after his death, his period of rule being universally described in the Soviet Union as an era of stagnation and corruption (epokha zastoia). Viktoriya Brezhneva's health declined dramatically; she was physically enfeebled and virtually blind by the end of the 1980s. The lives of her two children had turned into disasters. In one of her last interviews, she stated that her children "gave me much happiness when I was young, but as they grew up they brought me much grief." Virtually forgotten by the peoples of Russia and the former Soviet Union, Viktoriya Brezhneva died in Moscow on July 5, 1995.

sources:

Brezhneva, Luba (Viktoriya Brezhneva's niece). The World I Left Behind: Pieces of a Past. Translated by Geoffrey Polk. NY: Random House, 1995.

Dornberg, John. Brezhnev: The Masks of Power. London: André Deutsch, 1974.

La Penseé Russe, April 1988.

Pozner, Vladimir. Parting with Illusions: The Extraordinary Life and Controversial Views of the Soviet Union's Leading Commentator. NY: Avon Books, 1991.

Solovyov, Vladimir, and Elena Klepikova. Yuri Andropov: A Secret Passage into the Kremlin. Translated by Guy Daniels in collaboration with the authors. NY: Macmillan, 1983.

Vasilieva, Larissa. Kremlin Wives. Translated by Cathy Porter. NY: Arcade, 1994.

"Viktoriya Brezhnev, 87, Widow," in The New York Times Biographical Service. July 1995, p. 979.

Vronskaya, Jeanne. "Tormented Prisoner of Russia's Past," in The European. June 31–July 2, 1991.

——, and Vladimir Chuguev. The Biographical Dictionary of the Former Soviet Union. London: Bowker-Saur, 1992.

John Haag , Associate Professor, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia