On October 12, 1964, a plenum of the top leadership of the CPSU was held, the main purpose of which was to depose Khrushchev.
The Soviet leader thought that with the support of Brezhnev and others, he would have the best chance of winning, but he did not expect that after the meeting began, his loyal subordinates would take the lead in attacking. After the meeting, Khrushchev was forced to sign his resignation, and Brezhnev managed to rise to the top of power......
Stalin died of a sudden cerebral hemorrhage, Khrushchev came to power, and Brezhnev was promoted
On the night of March 4, 1953, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin enjoyed a rare leisure time as usual with his favorite barbecue and a small drink.
Late at night, he was found to be in poor condition by the staff, and was rushed to the hospital where rescue efforts failed, and the hospital's diagnosis was that he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
The leader who led the Soviet people to defeat Nazi Germany and single-handedly turned poor and backward Russia into a nuclear-armed power died in this way.
Although the people were saddened by the loss of Stalin, life was still going on, and the Soviet Union soon established a Central Presidium with a total of 10 members, including Molotov, Beria, Malenkov, and Khrushchev.
Khrushchev was neither conspicuous nor at the bottom of the rankings. At Stalin's funeral, Malenkov, Molotov and Beria spoke separately, and he could only watch from the audience.
At that time, the most vocal was Molotov, who was mainly responsible for Soviet diplomacy during the Stalin era. Another strong competitor is called Beria, a smiling tiger who wears a pair of round vintage glasses.
He looks suave, but in fact he is ruthless, and he is the head of the KGB of the USSR. There was also a story about Beria that was widely circulated, and once Stalin said Beria, I couldn't find my cigarettes.
Less than 10 minutes later, a staff member found the pipe in a drawer, and Beria received a call from the leader and was told that the cigarette had been found, but he replied on the phone: Everyone I just arrested has confessed.
It can be seen that Beria is a ruthless man, and such an efficient execution ability also makes Stalin appreciate him very much. Malenkov, who was third on the list of 10, was originally Stalin's chosen successor, but he felt that he was too cruel to keep.
Before the Game of Thrones began, the competition between these competitors had already entered a white-hot stage, and no one expected that the inconspicuous Khrushchev would have the last laugh.
The latter had two advantages: first, it was in charge of all the organs of the CPSU in the federal states; Secondly, Marshal Zhukov, who made great contributions during World War II, was friends with Khrushchev.
In June 1953, at a meeting, Zhukov broke into the door with more than 10 generals, arrested Beria before he could react, and later secretly executed him.
This move shook the mountain, and Khrushchev directly sat on the post of the supreme leader of the Soviet Union. Because of his previous feud with Stalin, Khrushchev completely repudiated his former leaders while building up his own descendants, and it was at this time that Brezhnev rose to prominence.
After Khrushchev came to power, Zhang returned the Crimean peninsula to Ukraine, a decision that caused dissatisfaction among Russian veterans, after all, this place was fought in bloody battles back then.
In addition, he broke the cadre responsibility system, and many vested interests were very dissatisfied with this, and when the Soviet Union held a high-level meeting in 1957, many people challenged Khrushchev.
In order to stabilize the situation, Khrushchev thought of a way to turn the situation around by expanding the number of participants and including those who supported him.
Among them, Brezhnev's performance was particularly prominent, and he also won the trust of Khrushchev, and soon became the second secretary of the CPSU.
The Soviet high-level planned to force the palace, and the second secretary secretly reported the news
Khrushchev sat in the Soviet leadership for 11 years, and a former high-ranking Soviet official once recalled:
Khrushchev wanted to show the crowd his collection of paintings, and he ordered Brezhnev to retrieve them. The second secretary did not complain, like a servant who was extremely loyal to his master, and personally took the oil painting.
From this trivial incident, it can be seen that the reason why Brezhnev was appreciated was that he took a "loyal".
In September 1964, when the Soviet leadership conspired to depose Khrushchev, Brezhnev trembled and said: Once he (Khrushchev) knew that we were finished, he would shoot us all.
In October of the same year, when Khrushchev went on vacation to the seaside, and the Kremlin was leaderless, these people thought that this was a good time to force the palace and began to deploy all the plans and details, but Brezhnev quietly called to report the news.
Khrushchev, who received the news, was very confident that most of the problems were in his own hands, not to mention that there was such a loyal subordinate as Brezhnev who penetrated into the enemy.
At that time, Khrushchev was still comforting the other party on the phone, saying: They can't do anything, don't worry.
After a vacation by the sea, Khrushchev returned to Moscow on a special plane, and after getting off the plane, he ordered himself to return directly to the Kremlin.
After dinner on October 12, the CPSU held a plenary meeting of the Presidium, and everyone knew very well in their hearts that this meeting was a war without the smoke of gunpowder, and that either you would die or I would die.
At the beginning of the meeting, Khrushchev was full of confidence, thinking that this time it would be like being surrounded seven years ago, and the "beautiful man" Brezhnev stood up to fight the crowd, confidently believing that the political storm would soon pass.
Unexpectedly, as soon as he walked into the conference room, he was pressed to a small chair at the door by everyone, and the first person to attack him was actually Brezhnev.
Brezhnev's impassioned statement, blaming Khrushchev for the serious mistakes he had made over the past 10 years or so, began with a group attack by others.
The second to stand up was Suslov, who focused on the ideological construction of the CPSU and gave Khrushchev a big hat...... These people were afraid of long nights and dreams, and as soon as the meeting ended, they forced Khrushchev to sign an application to resign as leader of the Soviet Union.
As political enemies, they knew Khrushchev too well, and once he was given the opportunity, it was easy to turn defeat into victory.
In the face of this farce, Khrushchev, although he believed that this was only the opinion of the Soviet top and could not represent the opinion of the people, could only sign the resignation.
Under the recommendation of everyone, Brezhnev, who had no achievements in officialdom, became the new leader of the Soviet Union.
Sometimes history is a cycle, when the humble Khrushchev rose to the top of power, and 11 years later, the mediocre Brezhnev came to power in the same way.
Closely monitor Khrushchev and lead the USSR into decline
Many people evaluate Brezhnev as "mediocre in ability", although Khrushchev was stubborn and self-serving, he never forgot his original intention and devoted himself to developing the Soviet Union.
In contrast, Brezhnev was almost lying flat, getting by. Despite becoming the supreme leader of the Soviet Union, the four words "Khrushchev" were like a sword hanging over his head.
The first thing Bush did when he came to power was to restrict the personal freedom of his predecessor, remove all the original guards, replace them with his own henchmen, and install bugs in every room of Khrushchev.
When listening to the KGB's work report, he learned that there was no bugging device in the bathroom, and the person in charge of the KGB scolded him.
In such an environment, Khrushchev completed his memoirs, and Brezhnev, fearing that the news of his ascension to the throne would be known to the outside world, ordered the memoirs that had not yet been finalized to be confiscated.
It was Khrushchev who quietly wrote his memoirs and asked someone to publish them in the West, and the whole world knew the truth about his forced resignation.
At the time, Brezhnev was busy selecting officials to form his own team, and his criteria were simple and crude, and anyone who had studied at his alma mater or worked with him could be promoted.
Brezhnev has always adhered to the principle of being strict with others and lenient with himself, and quickly arranged for his sons and daughters to be high-ranking officials, and his son-in-law was also on the rise, and in less than 10 years, a junior officer was promoted to general.
During the Khrushchev era, the Soviet Union vigorously developed agriculture, and the two things Brezhnev did the most during his reign were hunting and driving, and the Soviet Union that he inherited was at its peak, as long as it developed well, this red giant could still be on an equal footing with the United States.
At that time, the Soviet Union's GDP maintained an annual growth rate of nearly double digits, and it was the world's second largest economy with the largest arable land area.
A few years after Brezhnev came to power, the Soviet Union began to hold on to the golden rice bowl and beg for food, and the grain harvest was poor every year, and it had to spend a lot of money to import grain from abroad.
In order to surpass the United States in all aspects, Brezhnev did not hesitate to engage in a large-scale army race, and in the 80s, he also launched the war in Afghanistan, which can be described as a waste of money and labor.
In the late 70s, the ideology of the Soviet Union also underwent great changes, and a group of Soviet intellectuals who had been brainwashed by the West came to the stage of history, smearing their own national heroes and promoting Western culture and way of life to the younger generation of Soviets.
Overnight, disco and hippies became the popular culture of the younger generation of the Soviet Union, and addicts were all over the streets, and Moscow became the crime capital of Europe on a par with New York.
On November 10, 1982, Brezhnev died in Moscow at the age of 76. Andreborov became his successor, and in 1985 Gobalchev became the new and last leader of the Soviet Union.
Brezhnev's rise from the grassroots to the top leadership of the Soviet Union is indeed legendary, but it is a pity that his arms race has brought the domestic economy to a standstill, and the war in Afghanistan has exhausted the wealth accumulated in the past few decades, and the Soviet Union is inevitably on the road to decline.
By this time, the Soviet giants were already crumbling, and it only took a gentle push from someone to fall into the abyss, and Gobalchev just became the gravedigger......
On December 25, 1991, the red flag fluttering over the Kremlin quietly fell in the cold wind, and the 74-year-old Soviet Union became history.
If you look back at Brezhnev's ascent to the top, you will find that fate has already secretly marked the price of gifts, for a person, for a people, and for a country......
What do you think differently about this?