Galina Brezhneva

Galina Brezhneva Галина Брежнева
Personal details
Born	Galina Leonidovna Brezhneva (1929-04-18)18 April 1929 Sverdlovsk, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Died	30 June 1998(1998-06-30) (aged 69) Dobryniha, Moscow Oblast, Russia
Nationality	Soviet and Russian
Political party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Spouses	Eugene (Yevgeny Timofeyevich) Milaev ​ ​ (m. 1951; div. 1961)​ Igor Kio ​ ​ (m. 1961; div. 1963)​ Yuri Churbanov ​ ​ (m. 1971; div. 1993)​ Unknown ​ ​ (m. 1993)​
Relations	Yuri Brezhnev (brother)
Children	1 biological and 2 step-children
Parent(s)	Leonid Brezhnev (father) Viktoria Brezhneva (mother)

Galina Leonidovna Brezhneva (Russian: Галина Леонидовна Брежнева; 18 April 1929 – 30 June 1998) was the daughter of Soviet politician and longtime General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and Viktoria Brezhneva.

Galina Brezhneva was born on 18 April 1929 in Sverdlovsk as the first child of Leonid Brezhnev and Viktoriya Petrovna Denisova. Within the family she was called "Galya".^[1]

In 1929 her father joined the Communist party.During the time her father was working as a land manager for the party and Galina was one year old she and her parents moved in with her paternal grandparents on the ulitsa Pelina in Kamenskoye. Her father being a student was then granted a room in a student hall where in 1933 Galinas younger brother Yuri was born. Her father working several day jobs as stoker, steam engine lubricator and fitter to support his family and by night studying to become a metallurgist. Her mother who had been a midwife before marriage tended to their children and their home.

During this period in time the country was affected by famine and rationing but her fathers being a party functionary (albeit a low- ranking one) allowed the Brezhnev family sufficient access to food as not to starve.

Between supporting his family and his engagement on behalf the party he would be away from home often and rarely see his children.

In the July 1941 Russia was invaded by the German army, and the hometown of the Brezhnev family was bombed by German artillery forces . Galinas family stayed until being forced to evacuate in August to Almaty in Kazakstan. Galinas father left his wife,children along with her paternal grandmother behind to go and fight on the frontline.

After the liberation of Dnepropetrovsk in November 1943 the family were able to return to their home but Galina would not see her father again until 1945^[1].

In June 1945 her father was promoted to chief of the political administration of the Fourth Ukrainian Front. In connection with Moscow Victory Day Parade held to celebrate the end of WWII, he was allowed to send for his family and spend a week with them.

Later the same year Brezhnev was tasked by Stalin to implement the sovietization of Ruthenia and Bucovina. He flew to Dnepropetrovsk to fetch his family and they settled in Chernovtsy before moving Zaporizhzhia where Galina would attend school and graduate from there in 1947.

As a teenager, she refused to become a member of the Komsomol.

In 1950 her father who had steadily been rising through the ranks of the party became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Moldova. Therefore he and his wife moved to Kishinev l Sadovaya ulitsa while Galina and her brother stayed behind in Russia.

Galina began studying towards a history degree in Dnepropetrovsk, later, she refused to continue her studies^[2] Instead in 1951 she joined her parents in Kishinev.

Galina then became a student at the philology faculty at Chișinău State University^[3] where she studied literature and philosophy and graduated from the university^[4].

But her time there was not positive experience however, as everybody knew whose daughter she was and none her classmates dared even to talk to her. Bored, she decided to gather her own company and they drank frequently. Once she and her friends took a taxi to a secret military base in Chișinău, but as the guards recognized her as Brezhnevs daughter and did not want to get into trouble they turned a blind eye. ^[3]

She married for the first time to circus artist Yevgeny Timofeyevich Milaev (1910–1983) in 1951. They had first met in Dnepropetrovsk when Milaevs company visited, since Galinas father loved the circus the family went to many of the performances^[1].

Milaev had twin children, Alexander "Sasha" and Natalya "Natasha" (born 1948) from his first marriage to Natalya Yurchenko who died from blood poisoning during childbirth. They had one daughter, Viktoria Yevgenyevna Milaeva (1952–2018). After her divorce Galina lived in the same house as her parents on Kutuzovskiy prospekt^[1]. Brezhnev arranged for her to move into the apartment next to theirs, and had the wall between them knocked through and the entrance bricked up. This was becayse he wanted to know who was going in and out and whose company his Galina was keeping.

She was married briefly to Igor Kio, a union that lasted only ten days.^[5] By 1971, her father Leonid Brezhnev had become displeased with the way things were going in Galina's life. He wanted to arrange a marriage for her, after having her second marriage annulled. She ended up selecting Yuri Churbanov from a number of suitors. Churbanov was chosen even though he was already married and had children. By the end of Brezhnev's life, Galina was much less visible, and during the leadership of Yuri Andropov, she disappeared from the public eye altogether. Brezhneva made a public comeback during Konstantin Chernenko's short rule, and appeared in a conference commemorating International Women's Day. At the conference, she wore only one piece of jewelry, the Order of Lenin that she had been awarded by Andrei Gromyko in 1978 for her fiftieth birthday.^[6]

Later, after Churbanov had been arrested on charges of corruption, Brezhneva divorced him. She married for a fourth and final time at the age of 64, to a 29-year-old man. Before her death, Brezhneva was a guest on British television to talk about life in the USSR.^[2] In her later life, Brezhneva gradually became a heavy drinker, and her daughter placed her in a psychiatric hospital where she died on 30 June 1998, aged 69.^[7]

Historian Larisa Vasil'eva wrote in her book that "Galina Brezhneva was an all-too-typical product of what came to be known as the Era of Stagnation". Brezhneva was a heavy drinker and was known to be heavy-tempered. She was promiscuous and had little self-discipline, and had a seemingly natural tendency toward self-gratification.^[8] She was known for her passion for jewellery and diamonds.^[9] Why and how Brezhneva received her diamonds was unknown to the majority at the time, though according to a former director of Yuvelirtorg, the state-run jewellery company in the USSR, all jewelry and valuables seized from criminals were given to members of the nomenklatura. Many rumors circulated in Soviet society about Brezhneva, most notably during Leonid Brezhnev's tenure as General Secretary; these rumors have been colloquially termed "diamond legends".^[10] In one such story, Brezhneva, during her visit to the Georgian SSR, visited a museum where she noticed two relics on display. She then demanded the two relics to be given to her as a gift. The museum director refused to comply and instead called the First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party, Eduard Shevardnadze, to discuss the matter with General Secretary Brezhnev. Shevardnadze told Brezhnev that given her Georgian national heritage, her behaviour was unacceptable; Brezhnev agreed and ordered his daughter back to Moscow. Others stories included personal favors provided by Brezhneva to Soviet and other communist politicians, including Erich Honecker together with his wife Margot Honecker, Dimitri Ustinov, Wojciech Jaruzelski, Viktor Kulikov, Fidel Castro together with Raúl Castro and Che Guevara, Sergei Gorshkov, Alexei Leonov, Jiang Qing, Todor Zhivkov, Lê Đức Thọ, Alexei Kosygin, Nikolai Tikhonov, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Egon Krenz, Vladimir Shatalov, Zhu De, Andrei Gromyko, Gustáv Husák, János Kádár, Heinz Hoffmann, Souphanouvong, Anatoly Dobrynin, Kim Jong-il, Erich Mielke, Ali Nasir Muhammad, Babrak Karmal, Nikolai Ogarkov, Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal, Samora Machel, Valentina Tereshkova, Daniel Ortega, Zhou Enlai, Pavel Kutakhov, Maurice Bishop, Jacqueline Creft, Willi Stoph, Nicolae Ceaușescu together with his wife Elena Ceaușescu, Lê Duẩn, Nikolay Krylov, Walter Ulbricht, Lin Biao, Pavel Batitsky, Hilde Benjamin, Võ Nguyên Giáp and Gus Hall.^[10]

Stories such as these greatly affected Leonid Brezhnev. He said once to a party colleague that "The world respects you, but your own family causes you pain".^[10] At the height of perestroika, a reform initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, many of the rumours about Brezhneva became increasingly wild and questionable; new details and information, possibly apocryphal, were increasingly included in the rumours. In popular culture, these rumours helped depict the Brezhnev era as an "Era of Stagnation".^[10] Many of the rumours stemmed from the fact that most of Brezhneva's friends and colleagues had earlier been arrested, and the majority of them had been linked to some sort of corruption or vice.^[11]

In January 1982, as part of Andropov's anti-corruption campaign while Leonid Brezhnev was still alive, several prominent jewellery smugglers who all had links with Brezhneva were arrested, some of them even receiving the death sentence.^[12] It was later proven that Brezhneva was smuggling jewellery out of the Soviet Union on such a scale as to threaten the business of De Beers Consolidated Mines, a group of companies focused on the mining of diamonds.^[13] Brezhneva was detained by the authorities, being summoned in one instance to the KGB headquarters for questioning. Her being the daughter of Leonid Brezhnev resulted in dismissal of the charges against her; she was, however, internally exiled by the Andropov administration.^[13] When Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary, the criminal investigations against Brezhneva and her brother, Yuri Brezhnev, were resumed. Her brother, a former First Deputy of the Ministry of Foreign Trade, and her husband, Yuri Churbanov, were both arrested on charges of corruption. However, investigators were never able to produce any solid charges against Brezhneva for her post-1982 criminal activities. In her later life, Brezhneva had become an alcoholic and usually signed statements without reading them properly.^[6]

Bibliography

• Vasil'eva, Larisa Nikolaevna (1994). Kremlin wives. Arcade Publishing. ISBN 1-55970-260-5.