Leonid Brezhnev got into the Guinness Book of Records as the most awarded person in the world. In the 1991 edition, the list of his awards contained 15 orders and 18 medals of the USSR, as well as 29 medals and 49 orders of foreign states.
In the future, the numbers were subject to adjustment, but, in general, it is clear why this weakness of the secretary general caused ridicule.
Before Brezhnev became the head of the party and state, the awards he received did not exceed the minimum that was determined by the nomenklatura position.
Deserved in battle
Leonid Ilyich began his ascent up the career ladder in 1927, after graduating from the Kursk Land Management and Reclamation College, and he met the Great Patriotic War as secretary of the Dnepropetrovsk Regional Committee for the Defense Industry. Already in 1945, his merits in the evacuation of enterprises were awarded the medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945."
Brezhnev went to the front with the rank of regimental commissar, ended the war as a major general, that is, he advanced only one rank. In terms of posts, he actually staggered in one place: at the start - the deputy head of the front political department, at the exit - the head of the army's political department. True, a month after the surrender of Germany, he rose to the level - to the head of the political department of the 4th Ukrainian Front, reorganized into the Carpathian Military District.
Leonid Ilyich was under fire exactly as long as was required by his position, but was required quite often. The bridgehead near Novorossiysk, nicknamed Malaya Zemlya, has been visited more than 40 times. When the seiner on which he was sailing was blown up by a mine, Brezhnev appeared in the water. When repelling one of the attacks "physically affected" the frightened machine gunners, thanks to which the attack was repulsed.
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His first award, a high one - the Order of the Red Banner, Brezhnev received for his participation in January 1942 in the not very successful, but still offensive, Barvenkovo-Lozovskaya operation near Kharkov. Then there was the medal "For the Defense of Odessa", to which he was related as a political worker of the Southern Front. In March 1943, for participation in the defense of the Caucasus, Leonid Ilyich received the Order of the Red Star, and a year later - a medal established in memory of those events.
For Malaya Zemlya he was awarded a personalized "Mauser" and the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree. Brezhnev's participation in the liberation of Ukraine was marked by the second Order of the Red Banner and the Order of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, II degree. Plus a mass medal "For Military Merit".
The military path of Brezhnev in Europe was marked rather modestly - with three mass medals: "For the liberation of Warsaw", "For the liberation of Prague" and "For the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." But his allies did not forget him: the Poles awarded him the Order of the Grunwald Cross of the II degree, medals for the Odra, Nisa and the Baltic Sea, Victory and Freedom, and the Czechoslovakians - the Order of the White Lion "For Victory" of the 1st degree, two military crosses 1939 years and the medal "For courage before the enemy."
However, Brezhnev received foreign awards after the end of hostilities, so that, marching in the parade as the political officer of the consolidated regiment of the 4th Ukrainian Front, he did not stand out too much for his "iconostasis".
Nomenclature "marks"
Subsequently, Brezhnev was most proud of three chapters of his biography, immortalized in the titles of the books for which he was awarded the State Prize - "Small Land", "Renaissance", "Virgin Lands".
It has already been said about the Small Land. By "Renaissance" is meant the administrative activity of Brezhnev to revive the industry destroyed by the war as the first secretary of the first Zaporozhye and then the Dnepropetrovsk regional committee. Here he really showed himself to be a good business executive, and the awards received do not look excessive.
The highest Soviet order - the Order of Lenin - was awarded to Leonid Ilyich in 1947 for the restoration of the Zaporizhstal metallurgical plant - the pride of the Ukrainian industry. A bonus to this order was the mass medal “For the restoration of the ferrous metallurgy enterprises in the South”.
The leadership of Moldova (1950-1952) was not awarded a single award, but Stalin introduced Brezhnev and several other young leaders to the expanded composition of the highest party body - the Presidium of the Central Committee. But soon Stalin died, and his eminent associates dispersed the youth to the backyards. For a short time, Brezhnev generally dropped out of the highest nomenklatura cage, but managed to get a job in the political department of the Ministry of Defense and even received the rank of lieutenant general.
Soon Khrushchev decided to take him to his team and in August 1955 sent him to lead the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. This republic has become the arena of a virgin epic - a large-scale all-Union project started by Nikita Sergeevich. Brezhnev, as the executor of the project, justified the trust, which was awarded in 1956 with another Order of Lenin, complete with a mass medal "For the development of virgin lands." In 1957, two more mass medals fell on his chest - "40 years of the Armed Forces of the USSR" and "In memory of the 250th anniversary of Leningrad."
And in 1960, Brezhnev became the formal head of state - the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. It was the prologue to the "starfall" that had hit him.
Grandiose "Starfall"
The highest award of the USSR was the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and the insignia attached to this title - the Gold Star medal. Somewhat lower was quoted, but formally equal in status to the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the attached gold star "Hammer and Sickle". Moreover, both titles and both Gold Star medals were awarded simultaneously with the highest Soviet Order of Lenin.
In 1961, Brezhnev was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor for the first and only time, which was logical, since his predecessor as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Kliment Voroshilov, was both a Hero of the Soviet Union and a Hero of Socialist Labor at the same time. Brezhnev was awarded on the basis of a combination of merits, which can be considered a sign of a vicious practice taking root. After all, earlier the title of Hero was given for specific achievements, and did not celebrate the already awarded merits in the aggregate. Krivotolki started later, when Brezhnev headed the party. At first, like Khrushchev, he was called the first secretary of the Central Committee, but at the 23rd Congress (1966) he became secretary to the general, which more clearly emphasized his position, not the first among equals, but the one and only.
The party elite revived the practice of "leaderism", but in a comparatively mild form, when the main "leader" was proclaimed a person without too vivid authoritarian habits. They tried to extinguish these habits, indulging Brezhnev's vanity, which manifested itself in the reward sphere.
On his 60th birthday, they wanted to give Leonid Ilyich the title of Hero of Socialist Labor for the second time, but through the "Dnepropetrovsk" Nikolai Podgorny he voiced his cherished dream to other members of the Politburo - he wants a Hero of the Soviet Union. And in December 1966, his dream was fulfilled, and then he was awarded the Gold Star medal three more times: for the 70th anniversary (in 1976) and for no reason at all (in 1978 and 1981) - simply “for outstanding merit ".
Mania or Fair Valuation?
It is these four awards that give grounds to speak of Leonid Ilyich's painful craving for awards. After becoming four times Hero of the Soviet Union, Brezhnev caught up with Marshal Georgy Zhukov, which inevitably caused unflattering comparisons for the secretary general.
Probably, in the soul of Brezhnev, the unfulfilled commander was dozing, and the race for Zhukov turned for him into a kind of fix idea. In 1974, Leonid Ilyich received the rank of General of the Army, and in 1976 the rank of Marshal, to which was also attached a gift - an honorary saber made at the Zlatoust plant with a gold image of the state emblem. Zhukov, who died in June 1974, must have turned over in his grave. And then he turned over again, when in February 1978 Brezhnev received the highest commander's Order of Victory.
This award was presented only to the commanders of the Second World War - the last, 16th, became a cavalier in September 1945, the Yugoslav Marshal Josip Broz Tito. Brezhnev was given the order with the wording "for the great contribution to the victory of the Soviet people and its Armed forces in the Great Patriotic War, outstanding services in strengthening the country's defense capability, for the development and consistent implementation of the Soviet state's foreign policy of peace, which reliably ensures the country's development in peaceful conditions." True, Brezhnev had only one Order of Victory, while Stalin, Zhukov and Vasilevsky had two each.
If we omit the epic with the Order of Victory and the Gold Star medals, other awards are not outrageous.
Brezhnev had eight Orders of Lenin, but five of them came as "bonuses" to the Gold Star medals, and the other three can be considered well deserved, including the Order of 1971 - following the results of the successful eighth five-year plan. For comparison: Marshal Vasily Chuikov, as well as Colonel-Generals Alexey Dementyev and Vasily Ryabikov each had nine Orders of Lenin, aircraft designer Andrey Tupolev - ten, and Marshal Dmitry Ustinov - eleven.
Two Orders of the October Revolution and various commemorative medals are nothing outstanding. Two more gold medals were attached to the titles of laureate of the International Lenin Prize and the International Peace Prize. Joliot-Curie. Signs like an honorary citizen of Chisinau, Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk or Baku are hardly worthy of serious mention. But not the last place in the list of awards was occupied by various kinds of exclusives - for example, the only one cast from pure gold, not silver, the honorary badge "50 years in the CPSU" or the badge "Honorary cadet of the 1st tank company of the armored school of the Trans-Baikal Military District" (where in 1936 Brezhnev received the rank of lieutenant).
Celebrating his 75th birthday on December 19, 1981, Brezhnev set a personal record - 13 awards from 8 states. It was the apotheosis of the "starfall".
A separate article is devoted to foreign awards.
There was no gold ring
From the anecdote: “Brezhnev after being awarded another star:
-Comrades! They say that I have won many awards for myself and never refuse them. This is not true. For example, I recently turned down the highest award of the state of Mauritania - a gold nose ring!"
The practice of exchanging orders and medals is traditional for diplomatic practice. In tsarist times, no one saw anything unusual in the fact that when visiting Russia, the Persian Shah presented the Order of the Lion and the Sun of I degree to the king, II degree to the minister of finance, and III degree to the chief of the guard of honor.
At the time of Brezhnev, there were five times more independent states on the world map than at the beginning of the 20th century, and Moscow tried to build some kind of relationship with all of them. Of course, more often the allies were awarded and received awards from them, and the awards themselves were timed to coincide with the meetings of state leaders.
Brezhnev had one highest Argentinean, Afghani, Guinean, Yemeni, North Korean, Peruvian, and Ethiopian order. Not that Afghans, North Koreans or Ethiopians were greedy, but with high orders for such an eminent ally they did not have much.
Leonid Ilyich received two orders from the governments of Hungary, Indonesia, Laos, Romania, Finland, and Yugoslavia. Indonesia looks strange in this company, but the first award - the Order of the Star of the Republic of Indonesia - Brezhnev received in 1961, when the Kremlin-friendly President Sukarno was in power. Then he was overthrown, the communists were cut, the order was taken away from Brezhnev in absentia. In 1976, relations began to be restored and, just in case, the secretary general was awarded the Order of the Star of the Republic of Indonesia, 1st degree for the second time.
Comrades from Bulgaria (two Gold Stars of the Hero, three orders, four jubilee medals), Vietnam (Gold Star of the Hero and two orders), the GDR (three Gold Stars of the Hero, four orders and a medal), Cuba (Gold Star of the Hero, three orders, two medals), Mongolia (two Gold Stars of the Hero, four orders, five medals), Poland (three orders), Czechoslovakia (three Gold Stars of the Hero and five orders).
Brezhnev had more Foreign Hero Stars (nine) than Soviet Stars (five). It looks paradoxical, but considering how much Moscow did for the allies, there is a certain logic here. Moreover, Leonid Ilyich always strove to "give away", and not only with awards, but also with money, weapons, gas, equipment.
One can argue with the assertion that Brezhnev's tunic with all the awards weighed six kilograms, but given that the total number of orders, medals and badges of honor was close to two hundred, the figure looks convincing.
Dmitry MITYURIN