Galina Brezhneva - Personal Life and Rumours

Personal Life and Rumours

Historian Larisa Vasilʹeva 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 had little self-discipline, and had a seemingly natural tendency toward self-gratification. She was known for her passion for jewelry and diamonds. Why or how Galina received her diamonds were unknown to the majority at the time, however, according to a former director of Yuvelirtorg, the state-run jewelry company in the USSR, all jewellery and valuables seized from criminals were given to nomenklatura members. There were many rumors circulating Soviet society about Brezhneva, most notable during Leonid Brezhnev's tenure as General Secretary; these rumours have been colloquially referred to as "diamond legends". In one such rumor, Brezhneva, during her visit to the Georgian SSR, visited a museum where she noticed two relics on display. Brezhneva 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 behavior was unacceptable; Brezhnev agreed and ordered Brezhneva back to Moscow.

Stories such as this one greatly affected Brezhnev. The General Secretary said once to a party colleague that "The world respects you, but your own family causes you pain". At the height of perestroika, a reform initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, many of the rumors about Brezhneva became increasingly wild and questionable; new details and information, possibly apocryphal, were increasingly included in the rumors. In popular culture, these rumors helped depict the Brezhnev era as an "Era of Stagnation". Many of the rumors 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.