Leonid Brezhnev
1906 – 1982 · 76 years · Moscow · Eastern Europe & Russia
Reign: 1964 – 1982 (Rus and Russia)
He led the USSR for eighteen years — a time of stability and détente with the West, but also of economic stagnation, the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968 and the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Vladimir Musaelyan · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 25 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 32 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 27 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 17 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 39 years older
- Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 20 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 28 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 28 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 36 years older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, born the same year
- Nikita Khrushchev — Soviet leader who denounced Stalin's personality cult, 12 years older
- Anna Akhmatova — poet, 17 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 25 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 8 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 12 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 45 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 64 years older
- Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 5 years younger
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 12 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 14 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 19 years younger
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, born the same year
- Kwame Nkrumah — first President of Ghana, 3 years younger
- Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 16 years younger
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 13 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 37 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 5 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 4 years younger
- Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 11 years younger
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 5 years older
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 17 years older
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 24 years younger
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 23 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 50 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 59 years older
- Jorge Luis Borges — writer, 7 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 35 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 13 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 8 years older
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 30 years younger
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 2 years younger
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 6 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1906 San Francisco earthquake — aged 0, Americas
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 2, Middle East
- 1908 Tunguska event — aged 2, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — aged 2, Middle East
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — aged 4, Americas
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — aged 5, Asia
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — aged 5, Oceania
- 1912–1913 Balkan Wars — aged 6, Europe
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — aged 6, Oceania
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 8, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 8, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 9, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 10, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 11, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 11, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 12, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 13, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 22, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 23, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 23, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 27, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 30, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 30, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 33, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 35, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 35, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 36, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 39, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 39, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 41, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 42, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 43, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 47, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 47, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 51, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 55, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 63, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 64, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 69, Asia
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 74, Whole world