Leonid Brezhnev was a Communist Party official and a statesman of the former Soviet Union. He served as the leader of the Soviet Union for eighteen years. Due to his initiatives, the Soviet Union acquired an equal position with the US in the field of strategic nuclear weapons. Under his leadership, the Soviet Union achieved remarkable success in its space programme. Unfortunately, the agriculture, consumer-goods industries and health care sectors experienced shortage of funds due to excessive importance given to defence and aerospace industries. He played an active role in the removal of Khruschev from power. It was the same Khruschev whom he regarded his mentor in politics. The praiseworthy feature of his character was that he was a team player and used to take political decisions after consulting with his colleagues. He played a crucial role in normalizing relation between West Germany and maintaining a peaceful relation with the United States by employing his policy of détente. He is blamed for marking the beginning of an era of economic stagnation in which serious problems were overlooked which ultimately led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It is assumed that his political activities were responsible for spreading corruption and discrimination within the Soviet bureaucracy during the later parts of 1970s and early 1980s.