On 10 November 1982, Leonid Brezhnev, the third General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the fifth leader of the Soviet Union, died at the age of 75 after suffering heart failure following years of serious ailments. His death was officially acknowledged on 11 November simultaneously by Soviet radio and television. Brezhnev was given a state funeral after three full days of national mourning, then buried in an individual tomb on Red Square at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. Yuri Andropov, Brezhnev's eventual successor as general secretary, was chairman of the committee in charge of managing Brezhnev's funeral, held on 15 November 1982, five days after his death.
The funeral was attended by fortyseven heads and deputy heads of state, twentythree heads and deputy heads of government, forty heads of foreign government ministries, six leaders of foreign legislatures, and five princes. Most of the world's Communist party-led nations in 1982 were represented, while fortyseven Communist parties from countries where the party was not in power also sent representatives. United States president Ronald Reagan sent Vice President George H. W. Bush. Eulogies were given by Yuri Andropov, Dmitry Ustinov, Anatoly Alexandrov, Viktor Pushkarev, and Alexei Gordienko.
Final year
Brezhnev had suffered various cardiovascular ailments since 1974. According to historian Roy Medvedev, Brezhnev suffered a near-fatal stroke in 1976 that left him clinically dead before being revived by doctors. By 1982, the most deleterious of Brezhnev's maladies had become arteriosclerosis of the aorta and cardiac ischemia and arhythmia, all of which exacerbated by his heavy smoking, obesity, and dependence on tranquilizers and sleeping medication.
Brezhnev previously broached the subject of his retirement with Yuri Andropov and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in 1979. With no precedent or procedures existing for the voluntary retirement of a general secretary, a majority of the Politburo instead preferred the stability provided by keeping the status quo and eschewing changes to the leadership despite a minority view of the need for "a breath of fresh air". With the Politburo's request that he remain, Brezhnev did not demur: "If you are all of this opinion, then I will keep working a little longer."
The Politburo was nominally successful in keeping many of Brezhnev's ailments secret. However, the decision to forgo retirement meant that by the beginning of 1982, a number of events began to more publicly illustrate the decline of Brezhnev's health, during what would be his final year in office.
January-April 1982 At Mikhail Suslov's funeral on 25 January 1982, Brezhnev "seemed confused" by elements of the ceremony, showing uncertainty over when to salute passing troops. While other Politburo members remained standing, Brezhnev was twice seen to move behind the Lenin Mausoleum parapet to sit in a chair and drink liquid from a mug. Three weeks later, while attending the funeral of fellow Central Committee member Konstantin Grushevoi, Brezhnev was seen weeping profusely while offering sympathies to Grushevoi's widowa scene broadcast uncensoredthe first time Brezhnev was shown overcome with emotion on Soviet television.
On 6 March 1982, while at Vnukovo airport to greet visiting Polish Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski, Brezhnev's gait was shuffled and he appeared to be laboring for breath. Four days later, on 10 March, Brezhnev met with President Mauno Koivisto of Finland. At those meetings, as well as two days later at an International Women's Day gala at the Bolshoi Theatre, Brezhnev's health had noticeably improved. Brezhnev's visit to the Bolshoi was his fourth public appearance in five days.
Tashkent factory accident On 22 March, Brezhnev began a visit to Soviet Central Asia which included a particularly rigorous schedule of "medal-giving ceremonies, speeches, and visits to industrial and agricultural enterprises". On 25 March 1982 while touring the Chkalov aircraft factory in Tashkent with Uzbek Communist Party first secretary Sharof Rashidov, Brezhnev was injured when balustraded-catwalk scaffolding suddenly collapsed under the weight of a number of assembled factory workers, falling on top of Brezhnev and his security detail, giving Brezhnev a concussion and fracturing his right clavicle. The subsequent secrecy surrounding this accident led Western journalists to speculate that Brezhnev had suffered a stroke, supposedly during his return flight from Tashkent, as there was no news footage of Brezhnev's arrival in Moscow after the journey. The lack of footage was an unusual breach of protocol on the part of the Soviet press, who invariably documented the top leadership arrivals after important functions abroad. Upon landing at Moscow's Vnukovo airport, Brezhnev was removed from his Ilyushin Il-62 aircraft by stretcher and taken to the Kremlin Polyclinic where, according to Western reports, he remained unconscious in a coma in critical condition for several days. Brezhnev's injuries placed additional strain on his already precarious state of health, a circumstance which contributed to a lengthened recovery timehis broken collarbone, for exampleone injury which "subsequently refused to mend".
Most of the engagements on Brezhnev's calendar, including a state visit by South Yemeni President Ali Nasir Muhammad, were cancelled in the immediate aftermath of the accident. For the Soviet Foreign Ministry, the dual tasks of denying Brezhnev's injuries while explaining his conspicuous absences became a more complicated effort. The Ministry's initial response was to release a written statement on 5 April claiming Brezhnev was on a "routine winter vacation", but their pronouncement did nothing to stem a growing speculation that Brezhnev had died as a result of his injuries. In light of this, a fuller press conference was staged at the Academy of Sciences on 14 April, however, the choice of a substitute physicianNikolay Nikolayovich Blokhin, in place of Brezhnev's cardiologist Yevgeniy Chazovdid little to stop the rumors, with Blokhin merely parroting the Foreign Ministry's earlier claim that Brezhnev was taking a "routine winter rest".
In a further bid to project normalcy, on 16 April Defence Minister Ustinov gave the first public comments by a Politburo member since the accident when he presented an award to the city of Sochi while extolling Brezhnev's wartime record in a speech. Two days later on 18 April, a proposal which had earlier been made by President Reagan from the Oval Office on 5 April was utilized in a newer effort to negate the rumors of Brezhnev's death. Reagan had proposed that Brezhnev join him at an upcoming United Nations disarmament conference in New York in June, stating "I think it would be well if he and I had a talk." The Politburo made use of this proposal to issue a counter-proposal of their own, wherein Brezhnev, in response to a staged question posed in Pravda, suggested meeting with Reagan in either Finland or Switzerland in October instead of June, the arbitrary date of October being set far enough into the future in the hopes that it might "dash domestic and foreign speculation on the Soviet leader's health and on his viability as a functioning leader".
This motivation was noted by American ambassador to the Soviet Union Arthur Hartman, who held a meeting on 19 April with Soviet Minister of Culture Pyotr Demichev. During the meeting Demichev emphasized the importance of a summit taking place irrespective of the October date Brezhnev's answer gave in Pravda, which contrasted with Soviet media emphasis on October rather than June. According to Hartman, the variance in dates was "additional indication that the public mention of October has the ulterior purpose of reassuring Soviet citizens that Brezhnev will still be around six months from now." The rumors involving Brezhnev's death were not quashed until approximately four weeks after the accident, on 22 April 1982, when Brezhnev finally appeared in public looking "considerably thinner" at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses during celebrations marking the 112th anniversary of Vladimir Lenin's birth.
May-August 1982 Brezhnev's next public appearance was at the annual May Day festivities on 1 May 1982, where he stood on the balcony of Lenin's Mausoleum for the entire 90-minute parade, albeit displaying a demeanor which "confirmed earlier impressions of a man, for whom, public occasions were a strain." On 23 May 1982, Brezhnev spoke at the Kremlin for 30 minutes in a slurred speech where he expressed approval of President Reagan's offer of new strategic arms negotiations.
On 25 May, Brezhnev held meetings with Austrian President Rudolf Kirchschläger. The following day, 26 May, it was announced that Yuri Andropov had stepped down as head of the KGB after being appointed during a plenum meeting to a top position in the Communist Party Secretariat. Western analysts speculated that Andropov's move to the Secretariat strengthened his position among the other possible successors to Brezhnev, while noting that there was "no setback to the standing of Konstantin Chernenko", a fellow member of the Secretariat who, "by dint of his close association with Brezhnev" was "certain to figure in any succession struggle". Western analysts also stated that there was "no tangible sign of any diminution" in Brezhnev's control. However, insiders to the 26 May meeting did observe that Brezhnev "could hardly walk" and needed to be "supported by a security guard disguised as an assistant". When Brezhnev attempted to climb a riser to another part of the stage, "he almost fell and the guard had to literally drag him" to his seat, where he sat for the rest of the meeting with a blank stare, in a condition likened to that of a "living mummy".
In July, Brezhnev left Moscow for his usual summer vacation at a Black Sea retreat on the Crimean peninsula, where, in August, he was visited by Polish Prime Minister Jaruzelski, who updated Brezhnev with a "sobering account of continuing resistance" to martial law in Poland.
September-October 1982 September 1982 saw speculation from Soviet government sources on the topic of Brezhnev's retirement, when those sources suggested that Brezhnev might leave office with extraordinary honors, possibly in December 1982, about the time of celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the formal establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922. Western experts said that the reports of the impending resignation were possibly part of a campaign by Politburo members to either try to push Brezhnev out of office or to undercut the chances of Chernenko in any succession.
Despite suggestions of retirement, the month of September 1982 saw the appearance of Brezhnev continuing to work. On 14 September, Brezhnev reaffirmed support for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Remarks given on 16 September at a dinner for the visiting President of South Yemen, Ali Nasser Mohammed (rescheduled after the first visit was cancelled in the aftermath of Brezhnev's Tashkent accident) signaled Brezhnev's desire to allow the Soviet Union a greater role in any new Middle East peace process. On 21 September Brezhnev met with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in Moscow. Although the prime minister spoke with Brezhnev regarding Indian concern over increasing influence on Pakistan from the United States and China, she reportedly avoided other difficult discussions during their meetings, owing to Brezhnev's "shaky grasp of issues".