Biography
Victoria Petrovna Brezhneva is the only wife of Soviet General Secretary Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev. Together they lived a long and happy life together. In total, this couple's family life lasted more than 50 years.
Victoria Brezhneva (nee Denisova) was born in 1907 into a simple working-class family in Belgorod. Father is a railway driver. The family was large: 4 daughters and a son.
Victoria Brezhneva
Some biographers say that Brezhneva was Jewish by nationality. Firstly, she has a suitable appearance, and secondly, the name Victoria is not typical for the time and circle in which Leonid Ilyich’s wife lived. There are also disagreements about the surname - in some sources it appears as Olshevskaya, in others as Goldberg. But Victoria Petrovna during her lifetime denied these rumors, calling Denisov’s surname her “native” surname. And Victoria was allegedly named because a large number of Poles lived in their area, among whom this name was common.
Victoria Brezhneva's mother was a housewife: she raised children and provided comfort. Vika graduated from high school and went to Kursk. Here she entered the medical college. After receiving her diploma, she worked for some time as a midwife.
Victoria Brezhnev and Leonid Brezhnev
Victoria's fate was decided when she was a technical school student. One day she and her friend went dancing. There she met Leonid Brezhnev, an agricultural student. According to her, he was not handsome. And he didn’t know how to dance. He looked like such a simpleton and a lump. That's why his girlfriend refused to dance with him. And Victoria felt sorry for the guy and went.
Since then they have never separated. They got married in 1928. At first we lived modestly - we rented a room in a dorm. Victoria Brezhneva worked in a hospital. But when her husband began to rapidly climb the career ladder, she left her job and devoted herself to her family.
Secretary General's Wife
She was a simple woman, homely and economical. She cooked deliciously while caring for her husband and two children: in 1929, the couple had a daughter, Galina, and 4 years later, a son, Yuri. Later, when her husband became the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Victoria Petrovna took care of her husband’s wardrobe.
Servants and personal chefs appeared in their house. Brezhneva taught them to cook the way her husband liked it. But the woman did not suffer from star fever: she always remained in the shadow of Leonid Ilyich, avoided noisy companies in which the wives of party officials shone with fashionable outfits and hairstyles, and extremely rarely accompanied her husband on official trips.
Victoria Brezhnev and Leonid Brezhnev with their daughter
Victoria Petrovna Brezhneva behaved very modestly. None of her contemporaries had ever seen a woman in expensive clothes or jewelry. She never interfered in the intrigues of high society and her husband’s work, and was not caught in gossip or “undercover” games. She was not a “first lady” in the current sense of the word.
Leonid Ilyich called his wife Vitya in everyday life. Perhaps due to some speech impediment that Victoria Brezhneva had. She was the only one who knew how to listen to him, calm him down and give unexpectedly practical advice: simple and at the same time wise. The loyal and balanced “half” was the second “I” of the Secretary General.
Galina Brezhneva and Evgeny Milaev
Daughter Galina Brezhneva was the complete opposite of her mother: bright, with an explosive temperament, a fashionista who adores luxury and expensive jewelry. There were a lot of men and romances in her life, which her mother did not like. But the woman was even more worried about alcohol abuse and the scandals that accompanied Galina all her life.
Officially, Galina got married three times. Her first husband was Evgeny Milaev, a circus artist and strongman acrobat. He was 20 years older than the girl, had two twin children, whose mother died during childbirth. Brezhneva lived in this marriage for 10 years; the couple had a daughter, Victoria, whom Galina named after her mother. Evgeny Milaev quickly made a career, becoming the director of the Moscow Circus and Hero of Socialist Labor. There is evidence that he beat Galya, and she repeatedly told her father about it. Brezhnev knew that his daughter was unhappy in her marriage to Milaev, but he said “be patient.” The reason for their divorce was Eugene’s betrayal.
Victoria Brezhneva with her husband and grandson
Brezhnev's granddaughter Victoria spent more time with her grandparents, since her parents were constantly on tour. As she herself said in an interview, nothing was forbidden to her and she was always given freedom of choice.
Brezhnev categorically did not approve of his daughter’s second marriage. Galina was 33 years old at that time; she fell in love with illusionist Igor Kio, who was 18 years old. They secretly registered their relationship, but after 10 days they were given new passports without marriage stamps.
Yuri Churbanov and Galina Brezhneva
The third marriage was with the military man Yuri Churbanov. And the parents, who were already tired of their daughter’s adventures, were incredibly happy to have such a serious person in Galya’s life. Their marriage lasted 20 years.
Afterwards she had stormy romances with the gypsy actor and singer Boris Buryatsya, and ballet dancer Maris Liepa.
But the son of Victoria Petrovna and Leonid Ilyich followed in his father’s footsteps and devoted himself to politics. In 1979-1983 he served as First Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade of the USSR. He had one wife, Lyudmila, with whom two sons were born - Andrei and Leonid. Yuri died in 2013 from brain cancer.
Family life
Victoria and Leonid got married in 1928. At first they lived modestly and rented a room. Later, Brezhnev began to occupy serious positions and life improved. However, Victoria preferred to stay at home and take care of her family.
The woman was also not interested in politics. She took care of the house, cooked and looked after her husband’s wardrobe. After Brezhnev became General Secretary, he had cooks and servants in his house. Victoria herself taught the servants how to cook the dishes that her husband loved.
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It is worth saying that Victoria Petrovna was not the first lady in the concept to which we are accustomed now. She rarely accompanied her husband at official events. The woman dressed incredibly modestly; she did not like to have fun or attend noisy companies.
Victoria Brezhneva was never a beauty, just like her husband. The couple valued each other not for their external characteristics. Inner peace was much more important. Leonid Ilyich called his wife Vitya.
Personal life
If Leonid Ilyich’s memoirs materialized in the form of the trilogy “Malaya Zemlya”, “Renaissance” and “Virgin Land”, which, by the way, he himself read only after their publication, then based on the results of Galina Leonidovna’s life in 2008, Vitaly Pavlov’s dramatic series was filmed “ Galina." Judging by this film, Leonid Ilyich’s daughter allegedly disliked her father all her life because of his betrayal of her mother.
Today it is difficult to say whether the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee was faithful to his wife. There was talk about several of his novels. For example, with singer Anna Shalfeyeva. Allegedly, the official met her during the Great Patriotic War.
Victoria Brezhneva with her husband
Also in 2020, the year of the 110th anniversary of the birth of Leonid Ilyich, an interview was published in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper in which Galina Brezhneva’s friends spoke about the personal secrets of the Secretary General and his family.
Former actress and now public figure Victoria Lazich recalls that Galya said: when her father went to the front, they lived in poverty. And his return brought not relief, but shock. Leonid Ilyich came home and announced that he was leaving the family. At this time, his front-line girlfriend Tamara was standing outside the door. Victoria Petrovna reacted to this news boldly, she said that she would ruin his career and write a complaint against him to the party committee. Lazic says that Galya allegedly believed that her mother managed to save the family only through blackmail.
Victoria Brezhneva with her husband and grandchildren
More is known about another woman who was with the official for a long time. This is his nurse Nina Korovyakova. Some biographers write that Korovyakova behaved defiantly towards Victoria Brezhneva and had influence on Leonid Ilyich. From the memoirs of the niece of the Secretary General Lyubov Brezhneva (his brother’s daughter), he admitted that Nina resembled his front-line love Tamara.
Nevertheless, Victoria Brezhneva’s personal life, according to people who knew her, turned out happily. During the years of their life together, the spouses respected each other and did not quarrel. At least that's what it looked like to outsiders.
Death
Victoria Petrovna was distinguished by stronger health than Leonid Ilyich himself and outlived him by almost 13 years. Immediately after the death of her husband, former party comrades did not spare his faithful wife and took away most of the woman’s property. She lived out her life quietly and modestly, in a small Moscow apartment and in complete solitude.
In the last decade of her life, the woman suffered from diabetes and was forced to constantly inject herself with insulin. This disease was the cause of her death. Victoria Petrovna was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.
Victoria Brezhneva
Both the life and death of Victoria Brezhneva turned out to be quiet and not covered in the media, unlike the life and death of her daughter. When Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev died, his daughter became even more interested in alcohol, and eventually ended up in a psychiatric hospital in the Moscow region, where she was treated for alcoholism. There she died of a stroke in 1998, outliving her mother by only three years. The woman was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery next to her mother’s grave.
She suffered the same fate as Victoria Petrovna. During Gorbachev's reign, they tried to confiscate Galina's inheritance, but, unlike her mother, the daughter of the former secretary general did not give up so easily. She managed to win the trial. And the real estate, antiques, and cars remained with her.
Grave of Victoria and Galina Brezhnev
The fate of her daughter Victoria was no less tragic. Having tried to sell the remaining apartments, she encountered scammers and did not receive any money. After the incident, they stopped communicating with their daughter Galya, the great-granddaughter of Victoria Petrovna and Leonid Ilyich. Galina Filipova was never able to find herself in life, the woman wandered the streets, lived in hallways. At 33, she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Her mother did not visit her and did not answer her letters.
Brezhnev's granddaughter died on January 5, 2020 from oncology, presumably from brain cancer.
What happened to the widow of Leonid Brezhnev after the death of the Secretary General
Victoria Petrovna Brezhneva (nee Denisova) was the only legal wife of the Soviet party leader, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee - Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev and the mother of his two heirs: daughter Galina and son Yuri. They lived a long life together - more than half a century, but, despite the fact that the spouses were almost the same age, Victoria Petrovna outlived her husband by almost thirteen years.
Unlike her predecessor Nina Petrovna Khrushcheva, who was directly involved in her husband’s political activities, Brezhnev’s wife went down in the history of the Soviet Union as the most modest and somewhat homely lady, avoiding public events and not tolerating hype. The life of the former first lady of the USSR after the death of the Secretary General can hardly be called happy. Part of her property was taken away from her, and the elderly woman spent her last years completely alone and in oblivion, modestly living out her life. In this article we will tell you the story of Brezhnev’s widow and the fate that befell her after the death of her influential husband.
Photo: biographe.ru Leonid Brezhnev with his wife
Victoria Brezhneva: biography before meeting Leonid Ilyich
Victoria Petrovna Denisova was born in Belgorod, in 1907, on the eleventh of December, in a large family of a railway driver and a housewife. She grew up with three siblings and a brother. The girl received a rather unusual name for that time and area, but later she herself explained that her parents named her in the Polish manner, because nearby there lived a large settlement of Poles with whom they communicated.
However, there were many different rumors and speculations regarding the Jewish origin of the first lady of the USSR, due to her characteristic appearance and peculiar name. In particular, a number of sources claimed that Victoria Petrovna’s real name is Goldberg. Although she herself denied this information.
After graduating from school, the girl went to Kursk, where she entered a medical college. She lived in a student dormitory, together with her friends she went to dances that were popular among young people of those years, and on one of these evenings, Victoria’s future fate was decided on the dance floor.
Victoria Denisova and Leonid Brezhnev: a love story
Young Victoria and Leonid first met in 1925 at a dance. Both of them were not yet twenty years old at that time. The young man was a third-year student at the land reclamation technical school, and initially he was not attracted to Victoria at all, but to her friend, with whom she came. He tried to ask the girl to dance, but she immediately refused. But Denisova liked the rustic and slightly clumsy young man at first sight, so she herself volunteered to give him a couple of lessons on how to move to music.
Photo: wikipedia.org Victoria Petrovna and Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev in their youth
From that day on, communication began between the young people, which quickly developed into romantic feelings, and they were no longer separated. Brezhnev and Denisova officially legalized their relationship at the end of 1927, organizing a modest wedding celebration. At first, they rented a miniature room in a hostel, Victoria got a job as a midwife in a hospital, and her husband worked as a land surveyor.
In the spring of 1929, a daughter was born into a young family, who was given the name Galina, and four years later Victoria gave her husband a son, Yuri. By that time, Leonid Ilyich’s career was already confidently going uphill, so his wife left her job at the hospital and was able to devote herself entirely to the family and raising two heirs. The woman cooked well, skillfully managed the household, maintained perfect order in everything, and also took care of her husband’s wardrobe so that Brezhnev always looked beautiful and respectable.
The war years and the crisis in the relationship between spouses
When the Great Patriotic War began, Leonid Ilyich took part in the mobilization of the population, as well as the evacuation of industry. But already in the summer of 1941, he himself received a summons and went to fight. The long separation from his family did its job then - the future secretary general began an affair with a nurse named Tamara Nikolaeva, who, so to speak, became his field wife. He returned home with her and even tried to get a divorce from Victoria Petrovna, and this after almost two decades of marriage.
Photo: stuki-druki.com Victoria Petrovna and Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev
But his wife turned out to be not so simple, and flatly refused to get a divorce. Instead, the woman created a real scandal, threatening her husband that she might make public the situation in their family, which would have an extremely negative impact on his career, even to the point of its complete collapse. After these words, Brezhnev, once again thoroughly weighing all the pros and cons, decided to stay in the family. However, if you believe the words of the Secretary General’s niece, her uncle once admitted to her father that he had long stopped loving his wife, but continued to live with her only for the sake of their common children and saving his career. However, in this matter, he most likely was dramatizing and lying, because he could only dream of a better wife for himself.
After Leonid Ilyich became the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Victoria Petrovna chose to remain in his shadow. The woman supported her husband as best she could, but never got involved in politics, tried to stay away from public events and, even more so, did not appear in any scandals. She only occasionally accompanied her husband on work trips and appeared with him where her presence was necessary. The rest of the time, the “first lady” was a modest and inconspicuous housewife.
Leonid Brezhnev: health problems
Over the years, Leonid Ilyich accumulated many serious health problems, which developed mainly due to nervousness, and also due to his regular use of potent sedatives and sleeping pills. In addition, the Secretary General had a weak heart, and his first heart attack occurred during the reign of Stalin. His wife tried as best she could to support him, listen and calm him down, but even she did not always succeed.
Photo: beam-truth.livejournal.com Victoria Petrovna and Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev
The leader of the state himself, as a rule, tried to travel outside the city during non-working hours in order to escape from the everyday work that was exhausting him. The best rest for him were his favorite hobbies: hunting, cars, going to circuses and theaters or sporting events. Over time, he became heavily addicted to sedatives, without which he simply could no longer work productively or sleep normally. By the way, taking sleeping pills also soon became a habit, as a result of which a stable addiction arose and the Secretary General found it increasingly difficult to transition from sleep to wakefulness.
Brezhnev sometimes could not pull himself together, did not understand well what was happening around him, and before important meetings or public speeches, his personal doctor gave him peculiar “energy drinks” to bring the Secretary General to his senses. By the way, the doctors who monitored his health did everything possible so that no one knew about the real condition of the leader of the state. If Leonid Ilyich found himself in a hospital bed, then even members of the Central Committee were not allowed to see him.
Over time, he only got worse, and at some point the Secretary General simply stopped coping with his duties. He was constantly disoriented, had difficulty moving and spoke slurred, so he only read the decisions of the party apparatus from pieces of paper. He developed asthenic syndrome due to uncontrolled use of sedatives and hypnotics, and also regularly experienced hypertensive crises. As his grandson Andrei later recalled, in the late 70s his grandfather was eager to retire and go to a well-deserved retirement, but he was not allowed to do this.
Photo: 24smi.org Victoria Petrovna Brezhneva with her husband and grandchildren
Leonid Brezhnev: cause of death of the Secretary General
Shortly before his death, the elderly leader of the CPSU Central Committee was so ill that even doctors did not make any predictions, and family members were well aware that he had very little time left. The Secretary General died at the state dacha in 1982, on November 10, at the age of 75. When his wife was informed about what had happened, she began to sob, but quickly managed to control her emotions and wanted to enter the room where her husband’s body, which had not yet cooled down, lay, however, Victoria Petrovna was not allowed there. She saw Brezhnev only two days later, during the farewell ceremony.
It is curious that, unlike the widow, who, as we noted, was not allowed to see her husband’s body, his successor, Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, had the opportunity to see the already deceased Leonid Ilyich. That evening he took with him a briefcase with documents, which the Secretary General practically never parted with and which allegedly contained significant incriminating evidence on many members of the party apparatus. Andropov was extremely excited and immediately hurried away, expressing his farewell condolences to the widow and promising to support Brezhnev in every possible way. He subsequently never kept his promise.
Life of Victoria Brezhneva after the death of her husband
When Leonid Ilyich died, difficult times came for his widow. Almost immediately after the funeral, a significant part of Victoria Petrovna’s property was taken away, including her favorite country dacha, which the elderly woman treasured very much. In this regard, the former first lady of the USSR was forced to live out her life in a modest apartment in the capital, where she became practically a recluse. Brezhneva spent most of her time alone, without leaving her home.
Photo: kulturologia.ru Leonid Ilyich and Victoria Petrovna with their heirs
While her husband was still alive, the woman was diagnosed with diabetes, which is why she was forced to inject insulin. However, while the Secretary General was alive, Victoria Petrovna had a personal nurse who gave her the necessary injections and monitored the health of the wife of the leader of the state. But after Brezhnev’s death, such luxury became unavailable to his widow. The elderly woman gave herself injections, and her illness gradually progressed and worsened. It was diabetes that ultimately became the main cause of death of the widow of the Secretary General.
Victoria Petrovna passed away in July 1995; she outlived her husband by almost thirteen years. At the time of her death, the woman was 88 years old. In recent years, her life was hidden from others, and her death went virtually unnoticed by anyone. This sad event was not covered in the media, and almost everyone forgot about the former first lady herself. The woman was buried at the Moscow Novodevichy cemetery, next to the graves of her parents.
Photo: foto-history.livejournal.com Victoria Petrovna Brezhneva
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