Who succeeded Brezhnev as President of the USSR in 1982?
Leonid Brezhnev such diplomatic gestures, Brezhnev's regime presided over widespread military interventionism and a massive arms buildup that ultimately grew to comprise 12.5% of the nation's GNP. After years of declining health, Brezhnev died on 10 November 1982 and was quickly succeeded as General Secretary by Yuri Andropov. Upon coming to power in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev denounced his regime's pervasive inefficiency and inflexibility before overseeing steps to liberalize the Soviet Union. Brezhnev was born on 19 December 1906 in Kamenskoye, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire (now Kamianske, Ukraine), to metalworker Ilya Yakovlevich Brezhnev and his wife, Natalia Denisovna Mazalova. His parents used to
Legacy of Leonid Brezhnev initiated "perestroika" he blamed the degradation of the Soviet economic and political system on Brezhnev, and called his rule the "Era of Stagnation". Gorbachev claimed that Brezhnev followed "a fierce neo-Stalinist line", although in a later statement Gorbachev made assurances that Brezhnev was not as bad as he was made out to be, saying, "Brezhnev was nothing like the cartoon figure that is made of him now". British historian Robert Service wrote in his book, "Russia: From Tsarism to the Twenty-First Century", that "When he [Brezhnev] succeeded Khrushchev, he was still a vigorous politician who expected to make the Party