Galina Leonidovna Brezhneva, whose biography becomes the subject of this article, was the daughter of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, who was born in Sverdlovsk exactly 85 years ago - on April 18, 1929, when her father was still working as deputy chairman of the Bisertsky district executive committee of the Ural region.
Her rampant lifestyle, which did not fit in with the image of the party nomenclature of the Soviet Union, numerous novels with artists, drinking parties and noisy parties, brought her notoriety. And although all her antics were not covered in the Soviet media, they were always the subjects of discussion and gossip in society.
Galina's mother is Victoria Petrovna Brezhneva (1907-1995). Victoria Petrovna's maiden name is Denisova, although there were many rumors that her real name was Victoria Pinkhusovna Goldberg or Olkhovskaya. Victoria Brezhneva herself actively denied her Jewish origin.
Galina had a younger brother - Yuri, who was born on March 31, 1933 in the city of Dneprodzerzhinsk. He rose to the rank of Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade of the USSR.
Even at the very beginning of the biography we are analyzing, Galina Leonidovna Brezhneva (in her childhood and youth) often accompanied her father on his business trips.
She passionately dreamed of becoming an actress and wanted to enter the acting department in Moscow. But her father was against this and demanded that this stupid idea be thrown out of her head, and Galina had to go to the philological faculty of the Pedagogical Institute in the city of Orekho-Zuyevo. Later she graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Chisinau State University.
She worked as a costume designer in a circus in the group of her first husband, Yevgeny Milaev. In different years of her biography, Galina Leonidovna Brezhneva worked at the Novosti press agency, in the archival department of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an adviser-ambassador, and also at Moscow State University.
She was a very kind and helpful person, always ready to help. Many people around her abused this readiness to help people, to solve other people's problems. Galina's use of the position and name of her high-ranking father, insincere and flattering, bordering on servility, the attitude of those around her spoiled her in her early youth.
She had problems with alcohol. Reckless Galina was seen in connections with criminal elements.
Personal life
Her relationships with men were the subject of gossip in society. Throughout her biography, Galina Leonidovna Brezhneva was officially married three times. All of Galina's husbands had a dizzying career after marrying her. They received extraordinary titles, awards and other honors due to the connections and position of their wife.
Evgeny Milaev was the first husband of Galina Brezhneva. They met in 1951 in Chisinau, where the acrobat-strongman Milaev came on tour as part of a circus troupe. Galina was only twenty-two years old, and he was twenty years older than her. In those years, Leonid Ilyich was the head of the Moldovan Central Committee of the CP (b).
Galina fell in love with a handsome, stately athlete, who easily lifted a pyramid of ten people into the air. For the beauty in the circus he was called "master". Having bought tickets for all his next performances, after one of the performances she nevertheless met him. Milaev was a widower with two children. Together they lived for ten years, she took care of the children and the household. Here it is worth noting an interesting moment in the biography of Galina Leonidovna Brezhneva - she got a job as a dresser in her husband's room.
Thanks to his marriage to Galina Brezhneva, Milayev rapidly climbed the career ladder. From an ordinary acrobat, he became the director of the Moscow Circus, received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. A fleeting affair with a young circus performer ruined a ten-year marriage.
Galina met the illusionist Igor Kio when she was in her thirties. He was much younger than her, barely eighteen years old. Having met him, Galina decides to quickly file a divorce from her husband. Galina realized that this marriage would not be approved by her father, and secretly from him she married Igor and left with him for Sochi. She left a short note to Leonid Ilyich: “Dad, I fell in love. He's 25."
Brezhnev was angry. The KGB officers sent for the runaway lovers took away Igor's passport, and Galina herself was taken to Moscow. A few days later, Kio's passport was returned, but there was no longer a page with a stamp on marriage with Galina Brezhneva - it was torn out. Their official marriage lasted only ten days, but the romance developed rapidly for another three years. Meetings in hotels on tour, apartments and dachas of friends continued until 1964, when her father was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
At a party in the popular restaurant of the Moscow House of Architects in January 1971, a handsome military man invited Galina to dance. It was Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Churbanov. They had a stormy romance, and literally a week later she decided to introduce Yuri to her father. Against the background of “circus” hobbies that did not quite correspond to her status, Churbanov was, according to Brezhnev, the most suitable candidate for the husband of his dissolute daughter, despite the fact that he (Churbanov) was married by that time.
Soon Churbanov filed for divorce from his wife and married Galina. She was seven years older than him; they had been officially married for twenty years.
Of course, almost immediately after his marriage, Yuri Churbanov received the extraordinary rank of lieutenant general and the post of Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR. Later, he became the first deputy minister, having received the rank of colonel general. Then the saying appeared among the people: “Do not have a hundred rams, but marry like Churbanov.”
In 1987 Yu.M. Churbanov was arrested in a high-profile "cotton" case. When he was imprisoned, Galina filed a divorce with him with the division of property. Having managed to prove that part of the property confiscated during the arrest belonged to her even before marriage, she regained her Mercedes, antiques, chandeliers and furniture, a collection of weapons, a collection of stuffed animals.
Galina fell in love easily and often. For the entire biography of Galina Leonidovna Brezhneva, she had several stormy and short novels. Galina met with journalists Oleg Shirokov from the newspaper Sovetskaya Kultura and Alexander Avdeenko.
Its connection with famous dancer ballet by Maris Liepa.
She often went to his performances, he courted her beautifully, but Maris was not going to divorce his wife. Galina helped him move up the career ladder. Finally, after five years, realizing that he was not going to leave his family for her, she herself left him.
The most fatal for Galina was her scandalous relationship with the actor and singer of gypsy origin Boris Buryatse. Galina was still married to Churbanov when she met Boris. Fifty-year-old Galina quickly made the singer from the gypsy theater "Romen" a soloist Bolshoi Theater, who never sang a single part on the famous stage.
Boris had a weakness for jewelry, especially diamonds. In 1981, he was accused of stealing jewelry from the apartment of the famous Soviet artist Irina Bugrimova. And, although the investigation failed to prove Buryatse's involvement in the theft, he was nevertheless sentenced for speculation for five years. It was rumored that the deceived husband, Yuri Churbanov, took an active part in this. Brezhneva unsuccessfully tried to help her lover, but she could not do anything.
After the death of his father, Galina, on the orders of Yu.V. Andropov was kept under house arrest in her dacha near Moscow, which she later managed to sue from the state when M.S. Gorbachev tried to confiscate it. They also tried to accuse her of stealing diamonds, but could not prove anything.
Photos from the Kashpirovsky session -
AT last years of her biography, Galina Leonidovna Brezhneva drank a lot and unrestrainedly, drank away almost everything that she could sue at the time from the Soviet state, handing over jewelry from her extensive collection to consignment stores. In her huge apartment, she gathered crowds of drunks and homeless people who organized ugly drinking parties and fights there. Galina cohabited with an illiterate alcoholic who was twenty years younger than her, indulging in drunkenness all day long, invariably ending in a fight.
Galina Leonidovna was born in 1929 in the family of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev. The secretary general's daughter was incredible kind person, responsive, no one refused to help. Everyone loved her. When the father brought the front-line wife into the house, Galina empathized too much with her mother. After all, she had to come to terms with her husband's betrayal, pretend that nothing had happened, that they were still doing well. And all your further antics Galina as if she reproached her father: "Who are you to judge me?!" And such a model of behavior, as you know, does not lead to good ...
She realized very early that she was allowed a lot. Too much. about children and youthful years Galina Leonidovna only knows that she categorically refused to join the Komsomol. Her dad, already being the first secretary of the Moldovan Communist Party, went to university, asked teachers and fellow students to influence his daughter. To no avail.
Galya could not decide for a long time which profession to choose. After school, she entered the Dnepropetrovsk Pedagogical Institute, then, when her father began working in Moldova, she transferred to the philological faculty of the University of Chisinau. She was a bad student, she was hardly seen in class. Later, when Brezhnev became the first person in the state, sycophant subordinates awarded Galina the degree of candidate of philological sciences.
Galya made her first adult act at the age of 22 - she ran away with a big top circus. Her heart was captivated by the strong man Yevgeny Milaev, who in an acrobatic act held ten people on his shoulders. The escape ended in a secret marriage. The husband was almost twice as old, he had two children from his first marriage (his wife died in childbirth).
Milaev, in fact, taught her to luxury - expensive gifts, flowers. Galina accompanied him on tour - she was recorded as a costume designer, then a make-up artist. She took care of her husband and his children.
Per year living together the couple gave birth to a daughter, named after grandmother Vika, and got tired of each other. Galya returned to her parents' house (she officially divorced her husband only eight years later). But Milaev, until the end of his days, provided himself with the attention of the party and the government: he became people's artist USSR and took over as director of the new circus on the Lenin Hills. Died in 1983.
Everyone who came across Galina Brezhneva in the mid-60s remembers her with the liveliest sympathy. She was simple, not arrogant, without disgusting nomenklatura arrogance. As a human being, very responsive. She gave someone 100 rubles for their birthday, helped Vladimir Polyakov open a theater in the Hermitage Garden. She generously gave tips in restaurants, made cute presents to friends and acquaintances. In the APN, where from 1963 to 1968 Galina Leonidovna worked as an editor, she was happy to arrange collective holidays. And she herself drank very little, and even then dry wine.
She married a second time in 1962. This time her lover was 18-year-old illusionist Igor Kio, 14 years younger than her. Igor Emilievich himself told about this story.
"That year, the circus went to Japan on tour. Galina, who loved nomadic life, willingly went there with Milaev. Either oriental exoticism influenced us so much, or Galina was already tired of her husband, only unexpectedly we fell passionately in love with each other.
She really was extraordinary: seductive, self-confident, beautiful, well-groomed, somewhat mannered. She immediately informed her husband that she wanted a divorce."
Nobody knew about the marriage of Igor Kio and Galina Brezhneva. Having sealed their union with seals, the newlyweds drove off to Sochi, where Kio gave regular tours. She wrote a note to her family: "I'm getting married, and leave me alone."
The news of the second circus marriage of his beloved daughter led Brezhnev into a frenzy. His feelings were shared by Yevgeny Milaev, who lost too much from a divorce from Galina.
When Milaev found out that the divorce certificate was issued to her two days ahead of schedule, he suggested that Brezhnev find the fugitive in Sochi and declare her new marriage invalid. In search of a couple in love, the best forces of the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs were mobilized.
The next morning after arrival, - said Igor Kio, - in the lobby of the hotel, the general, shaking with fear, was already waiting for us. He was terribly worried about the possible consequences. What if Galina reconcile with his father and complain to him about the Sochi police?!
Documents were taken away from us, Galina was escorted to Moscow under heavy guard. A week later, I received a package: it contained my passport with a torn-out marriage registration page and someone's sweeping signature: "Subject to exchange." That was the end of our nine-day marital epic.
She was my first love, which I will remember all my life, says Igor Kio.
Over the next three and a half years, they met in fits and starts: Galina visited him in the cities where the tour took place.
Once in Odessa, after another meeting, Igor Kio was called by the head of the city KGB and demanded to write an explanatory note about what kind of woman, for what purpose and for what money she came to him from the capital. He left a blank sheet of paper on the table and locked the artist for six hours.
Then a high-ranking security officer tried to convince Kyo to give up Galina for several more hours.
We are all worried about the health of Leonid Ilyich, - said the KGB officer. - And why are you not worried about the well-being of your father? - Usually on Sundays, Kio flew to Moscow to visit his parents - after Brezhneva's visit, they simply did not let him out of Odessa.
Once we were walking along the embankment of the Moskva River, - Igor Kio recalls, - and I asked Galina if there was a person in the world who could convince her father. "Yes, there is such a person," she laughed. Galina.- This is Khrushchev.
To protect his daughter from the young circus performer, Leonid Ilyich ordered Kyo to be sent to the army. But he suffered from chronic lymphadenitis - a disease that precludes military service. On instructions from the Central Committee, a council was specially convened to make an "adequate diagnosis." A whole group of Chekists accompanied Kio to the medical examination. Fortunately, the doctors confirmed the previous diagnosis.
Galina acutely experienced all these life vicissitudes of her lover. But she couldn't do anything. She continued to live under the same roof with her parents, who were more afraid of her antics than death.
She quenched her passion for adventure in foreign travel. Brezhnev categorically refused to take her on official trips. Only once she accompanied her father to Yugoslavia, but aroused such a burning interest there with her outfits and extravagant behavior that Brezhnev swore to go anywhere with her daughter. Then Galina made friends with Anatoly Kolevatov, director of the country's circus department. And he designed her for foreign circus tours as a make-up artist.
Galina Leonidovna was under forty when she finally found family happiness. Her third marriage was approved by her parents. Police lieutenant colonel Yuri Churbanov, who served as deputy head of the political department of the places of detention of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, was eight years younger than his wife. For the sake of this stellar marriage, he divorced his first wife and left two children.
A "golden rain" of all kinds of benefits and Soviet deficits fell on the newlyweds. They were completed, like a toy set "Barbie with her husband", - an apartment, furniture, a summer house, two cars. Yuri Mikhailovich began to grow rapidly in the service. Four years later, he was already a lieutenant general and deputy minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
But how could quiet petty-bourgeois happiness satisfy his temperamental wife?! Later Galina Leonidovna She said that her husband's surname fully corresponds to his essence. Living with him was boring: after work, Yuri Mikhailovich dined, watched football or read a newspaper.
I love art - after drinking, complained about life Brezhnev- and my husband is a general.
Her new lover was a gypsy, an artist of the Romen Theater Boris Buryatse, a tall, plump brunette who walked in jeans, cowboy boots and a wide-brimmed hat. He was 29 years old, she was 44. When she greatly pestered him with jealousy, he told her that it was time to go home to her husband, otherwise dad and mom would be angry.
She gave him all of herself without a trace: she bought an apartment on Chekhov Street, a Mercedes, antique furniture. Feasts were held in the house, both very famous and very dubious personalities gathered here.
When they met, Buryatse, like the current Lyubertsy authorities, walked with a massive gold chain around his neck, but under the influence of Galina, he replaced the chain with a gold cross adorned with a large diamond.
Passion for precious stones brought them together. According to numerous eyewitness accounts, appearing at some reception in the Kremlin or in Western embassies, Galina Leonidovna shimmered with diamonds, like a Christmas tree - with glass balls.
Jewelry was given to her, something fell from her father, she was a regular customer of many jewelry stores. According to rumors, she even took things on credit, against receipt. She "borrowed" some other valuable exhibits, but simply took them from the Gokhran for eternal use.
With the wife of the Minister of the Interior, Svetlana Shchelokova, she pulled off money frauds, buying up jewelry on the eve of the next increase in gold prices, and then reselling them at exorbitant prices.
True, it is not clear why all this was necessary. The Soviet Union was not a country where the beauty of diamonds could be appreciated. Actually, and high society as such, and, having put on all his jewels, Galina Leonidovna I could only go to the circus to see another performance.
The pursuit of diamonds amused Galina Brezhneva, again, as a process full of dangers, another adventure. There was something from the books of the 19th century in this passion of hers. Galina Leonidovna built life not according to the classics of Marxism, but according to The Count of Monte Cristo.
But every adventure novel has its own “H” time, when the terrible and irreparable happens. The spiral of unhappiness began to unwind a few years before death Brezhnev.
In early 1982, the famous trainer Irina Bugrimova was robbed. The thieves were soon arrested, and they pointed to Boris Buryatse as a gunner.
Buryatse came for interrogation to the investigator in a mink coat, with a small dog in his arms. Immediately after the interrogation, he was taken to a cell. The only thing was that they were allowed to warn his relatives, he called Galina Brezhneva. But this time, she just couldn't save him.
Just at this time, Suslov died. The completely weak Brezhnev was unable to keep track of affairs, power gradually passed to Andropov. And he, clinging to the robbery of Bugrimova, unleashed a whole show trial on bribery and embezzlement. Anatoly Kolevatov, head of all the country's circuses, went to prison. The director of "Eliseevsky" Yuri Sokolov was arrested, Sergei Noniev, the director of another large store - the Smolensky grocery store, committed suicide - they were all regulars in the house of Buryatse and Brezhneva. Yuri Brezhnev, brother of Galina, was removed from the list of candidates for membership in the Central Committee.
Later, Sokolov was sentenced to death, Kolevatov received 15 years in the camps. The Shchelokovs committed suicide. Buryatse went to prison for five years, and so he disappeared there. And before often drinking Galina Leonidovna I completely lost control of myself.
It was last published on March 8, 1984. Chernenko, who ruled for a short time, invited her to a reception at the Kremlin. On a modest suit, Brezhneva flaunted the Order of Lenin, quietly presented to her in 1978 as a gift for her 50th birthday.
But Chernenko died. In 1988, Yury Churbanov was arrested and eventually received 12 years in a strict regime. Galina I didn't even come to the courtroom when the verdict was announced.
In 1990, she filed a lawsuit against family property confiscated following her trial. ex-husband. An experienced lawyer proved that fur coats, vases, furniture and other utensils do not belong to Churbanov. We managed to sue a Mercedes, a collection of weapons, stuffed animals, and 65,000 rubles in an account with Sberbank.
Churbanov spent five years in prison and was released early under an amnesty. I only found out when I was free Galina divorced him.
Up until 1995 Galina Leonidovna lived in her large Moscow apartment, in the quiet center. She opened the door to everyone who called her. Drunk, downtrodden, more picturesque than any Moscow bum, she was a fertile nature for domestic and Western photojournalists. Her last boyfriend, Ilyusha, an illiterate mechanic, was 20 years younger than her. The lovers' only amusements were drinking and fighting.
Finally, in 1995, the neighbors of the elite house rebelled, who were tired of the drunken showdowns of Galina, who had lost her mind. They gave an ultimatum to her daughter, and she took her mother to a psychiatric clinic. There Brezhnev and ended her days on June 30, 1998.
Galina Leonidovna was buried at Novodevichy cemetery, next to his mother, Victoria Petrovna.
Galina had everything: beauty, money, influential connections. There was only ordinary human happiness, which she unsuccessfully searched for in new and new novels ...
Galina Brezhneva was born on April 18, 1929 in Yekaterinburg. Father, Leonid Ilyich, at that time worked as deputy chairman of the Bisert District Committee of the Ural Region. Mother, Victoria Petrovna. She spent her childhood and youth following her father to his destinations. She studied at the philological faculty of the Orekhovo-Zuevsky Pedagogical Institute. When her father began to work in Moldova, she transferred to the philological faculty of the Chisinau State University, but had little interest in science and pedagogy. In 1951, she left the university altogether, leaving Chisinau with her future husband Yevgeny Milaev.
Over the years of her life, Galina Leonidovna worked as a costume designer in a circus, in the Novosti press agency, in the archival department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR as an adviser-envoy, in the Moscow state university named after Mikhail Lomonosov.
The woman was constantly popular among men, the list of her husbands and lovers has long been made public, and their names are known. Galina Leonidovna has become one of the most scandalous figures of the domestic elite. One of the most high-profile cases is connected with the name of Yuri Churbanov, Galina's third husband, who was convicted in 1988 in the so-called Uzbek case of cotton-mafia corruption, for which he received twelve years of strict regime.
After the death of her father in 1982, Galina Leonidovna actually came under house arrest at her dacha outside Moscow. However, she managed to win a lawsuit against the state, which tried to confiscate her dacha, car and other gifts from her father. The subsequent accusation of theft of jewelry only added to the scandalous fame, but had no serious grounds. Later, having retired from secular life, Galina took part in church charitable activities.
Despite the created negative image, people close to her noted positive traits: kindness, help to many cultural figures, including disgraced artists. By nature, Galina as a whole remained a kind and sympathetic person. But she could not cope with temptations, whims, got used to the atmosphere of flattery and insincerity that had surrounded her since childhood. Little by little, this led to alcohol addiction.
Galina Leonidovna Brezhneva died on June 30, 1998 in psychiatric hospital No. 2 named after Oleg Kerbikov, where she was placed own daughter from the first marriage, Victoria Milaeva. She was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery of the capital, next to the grave of her mother.
Family of Galina Brezhneva
The first husband is Evgeny Milaev, a circus performer, an acrobat-strongman. They met in 1951, when Milaev performed with the circus on tour in Chisinau. Eugene is 20 years older than Galina, had two twin children born in 1948, whose mother died in childbirth. Galina did housework and went on tour with her husband, working in his room as a dresser.
Daughter - Victoria Evgenievna Milaeva (Filippova, married to Gennady Varakuta in her second marriage) (1952-2018).
Granddaughter (Victoria's daughter from her first marriage) - Galina Filippova (born 1973), was married to engineer Oleg Dubinsky. Galina Brezhneva has no great-grandchildren.
Adopted children of Galina (children of Evgeny Milayev from his first marriage) - Alexander and Natalya Milayev. All my life I worked in the circus, including in my father's room "Equilibrists on foot ladders."
The second husband is Igor Kio, an illusionist. Galina accepted Igor's offer to become his wife, officially filed a divorce from Milaev and entered into marriage with him, putting Leonid Ilyich before a fait accompli and left with her young husband for Sochi. The daughter's act aroused the wrath of Leonid Ilyich. He sent for young employees of the state security agencies, who brought Galina to Moscow, and Kio's passport was taken away. Later he was returned new passport, no marriage mark. They were officially married for only 10 days. Divorce did not prevent Galina from meeting Igor Kio, and their romance continued for about three more years: she went on tour with him, where they met in hotels, spent time in Moscow at friends' apartments. Meetings became less and less frequent, and the romance came to naught only during the period when Leonid Brezhnev became General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.
The third husband is Yuri Churbanov, a military man. Major of the interior. After a week of their stormy romance, Galina introduced her chosen one to her father. Leonid Ilyich, tired of his daughter's extravagant love affairs, liked Churbanov. Yuri Mikhailovich divorced his wife and married Galina Leonidovna.