Leonid Illich Brezhnev (19 December 1906 - 10 November 1982) was a leader of the Soviet Union. Born in 1906, Brezhnev was First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, effectively the dictator of the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982. During the Second World War, Brezhnev was a Political Commissar, supervising various military units. There, he became a friend of Nikita Khrushchev. 