Brezhnev's habit of collecting medals is estimated to have been developed during the war, and on September 16, 1943, after the liberation of Novorossiysk, he was awarded a Medal of the Great Patriotic War of the First Class; on May 1, 1944, he was awarded a medal "Defending the Caucasus"; on May 29, he was awarded a second Red Banner Medal.
However, during this period, Brezhnev's rank was never promoted, his colonel's epaulettes had been memorized for more than a year, and it was supposed that it was his turn, so he complained to his old friends several times that many of the directors of the political department of the army group had been promoted to general, and that he had been suppressed.
After the Battle of Novorossiysk, the 18th Army participated in the liberation of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Hungary and other battles with the Fourth Ukrainian Front, and then ended its combat process, and Brezhnev was finally awarded the rank of major general in November 1944 and appointed director of the political department of the Fourth Ukrainian Front in June 1945.
The subtlety is that by the time Brezhnev was promoted, the war was over.
After Brezhnev came to power, he asked to state in his biography that what he experienced in the Great Patriotic War was a path from director of the political department of the group army to director of the political department of the front.
But some generals made mistakes, such as Marshal Moskalenko, whose annotation in brezhnev's photograph in his memoir reads: Director of the Political Department of the Fourth Ukrainian Front, who knew that it was changed by a more serious auditor: Director of the Political Department of the 18th Army.
When Brezhnev saw this, he summoned Moskalenko and asked: What's wrong with you, don't you know that I am the director of the main political department of the Front?
Moscalenko argued: This is not what I wrote, it was changed by someone from the General Political Department.
Brezhnev asked: But why do you agree?
So the manuscript was discontinued, and the text under the photo was changed to: Director of the Political Department of the Fourth Ukrainian Front.
In the post-war years, Brezhnev was awarded several medals, namely the Bogdan Khmelnytsky Medal (commemorating the liberation of Ukraine), as well as the medals for the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, for heroic labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, for the liberation of Warsaw, for the liberation of Prague, etc., but these medals were awarded in large quantities and were not rare. Brezhnev, believing that he had received too few rewards, envied the others for being more colorful on their chests, and when he became leader, he made up for this shortcoming.
On June 18, 1946, Brezhnev was transferred to the reserves, and the former secretary of the state party committee returned to civilian life. Ukraine remembered him, who was the first secretary of Ukraine at that time, and he was also the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian Government, Khrushchev had always supported Ukrainian cadres, and at his initiative, many Ukrainian cadres returned to their homeland, and Brezhnev was one of them.
Brezhnev's advantage over others was that he returned from the battlefield wearing the general's epaulettes, unlike some other cadres who stayed in the rear during the war, and although he did not fight in the trenches, this did not prevent him from being crowned a front-line soldier.
On August 30, 1946, Brezhnev was elected First Secretary of the Zaporizhian Oblast and Municipal Party Committee, at which time the political situation changed, and Khrushchev was snubbed by Stalin for failing to complete the Ukrainian production plan, and was deprived of his position as First Secretary of Ukraine, replaced by Stalin's tried and tested comrade-in-arms Kaganovich.
Kaganovich was an imperious man who could dismiss the secretary of the state party committee he did not like, but he was more friendly to Brezhnev, because during the war, Kaganovich served as a member of the military committee of the North Caucasus Front, and had intersected with Brezhnev, the director of the political department of the 18th Army, in the battle of the small land.
During his tenure as secretary of the Zaporizhian Oblast Party Committee, Brezhnev's main task was to restore the Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Station and the Zaporizhian Steel Works destroyed during the war, and he did a good job and thus received his first Lenin Medal.
During this period, the family was not with Brezhnev, he passed on a lot of affair, and later a subordinate described it this way: he came to Zaporizhia at the height of his 40th birthday, the first secretary of the state party committee, the brave general, a beautiful man, and there were many young widows around him, you can imagine...
Among them, it can be determined that a woman named Tamara, she is known as Brezhnev's "female comrade-in-arms on the front line", Tamara was originally a nurse, and later transferred to the political department of the group army, where she met her compatriot Brezhnev, and omitted three thousand words...
After the war, Tamara was demobilized to Kiev and married, but Brezhnev wrote to her to ask for a meeting, so Tamara came to Zaporizhia and rekindled his old love with Brezhnev.
The legend circulating among Brezhnev's family is that after the return of the female comrades on the front line, Brezhnev proposed to divorce his wife for this reason, and Victoria asked him to personally tell the children that he was leaving the family, but Brezhnev saw that the children all threw themselves around his neck, and he could no longer find the strength to abandon them...
Fortunately, Brezhnev did not have the impulse, otherwise he would probably lose the opportunity for promotion due to a matter of principle. In any case, Brezhnev was constantly promoted under Kaganovich, and in November 1947 he became first secretary of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, one of the largest states in Ukraine.
Brezhnev came to the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, where the situation was worse than in zaporizhian oblast, where the mines were flooded, the factories were destroyed, the houses burned down, and the city center was in ruins, he immediately threw himself into the reconstruction work, and with his previous experience, he was familiar with it and in 1948 was awarded the medal "Reconstruction for the Ferrous Metallurgical Enterprises of the South".
In 1949, in order to balance the power of Beria, Malenkov and others, Khrushchev was recalled by Stalin to Moscow as secretary of the Central Committee, and Stalin entrusted him with finding a new first secretary for the Moldavian Republic, and Khrushchev selected Brezhnev.
Although he was promoted to first secretary of the Republic of Moldavia, this life was not easy at all. Moldavia was an autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic newly established in 1924, and in August 1940, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic emerged among the members of the Soviet Union, but due to the outbreak of war, these areas became the jurisdiction of Romania.
After the war, Moldavia suffered a severe drought, resulting in widespread famine, and for historical reasons, Moldavian leaders did not dare to turn to Moscow for help, in order to escape, many people tried to escape to Romania, and were captured by border guards. According to official sources, about one in five residents of Moldavia suffer from malnutrition, and the exact number of deaths is "impossible to determine".
In Moldavia, a group of people gathered around the future Soviet leader who would work with him for many years in the future, including Chernenko, then Minister of Propaganda in Moldavia, Tsvegon, Deputy Minister of State Security, and Glykov, an assistant to the First Secretary.
It should be said that Brezhnev's work is still very diligent, he often goes to work at ten o'clock and leaves at four o'clock in the morning. But this overload caused him to suffer a myocardial infarction in May 1952 and had to spend a month and a half recuperating, an illness believed to have been the root cause of his later stroke.
Brezhnev's work in Moldavia was praised by Moscow, and in October 1952 Brezhnev led a Moldavian delegation to the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, where he was expected to be elected to the Central Committee.
Stalin, however, gave him an even greater surprise.
On October 26, 1952, Stalin announced the new leading members of the CPSU, including Brezhnev's name, and Stalin made him secretary of the Central Committee and alternate member of the Presidium. In this way, Brezhnev joined the supreme league, and he himself was amazed by this unexpected rise, he was only 45 years old, but he had almost reached the top of power.
The new Secretariat of the Central Committee was numerous, and since Brezhnev had experience on the front lines, it was decided that he would supervise the work of the General Political Department of the Military Department and the General Political Department of the Naval Department.
The newcomer Brezhnev was not included in the National Defense Council at first, and this was the real position of real power. Perhaps Stalin, feeling that his time was running out, deliberately promoted Brezhnev, and with his direct intervention, on 19 November Brezhnev became a member of the Defense Committee.
According to Stalin's instructions, Brezhnev should not only control the political workers of the army and navy, but also supervise the selection and distribution of cadres in the military and naval department systems, which theoretically gave Brezhnev a great deal of power.
Brezhnev's meteoric rise did not last long, and on January 26, 1953, he saw Stalin for the last time, and on March 1, Stalin suffered a stroke, and Brezhnev was immediately kicked out of the inner circle, and when the list of new leaders was drawn, the old committee members simply wrote him off.
On March 5, 1953, Stalin died, and Brezhnev's position plummeted.
= To be continued =
(Soviet History Series)