Galina Brezhneva

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Galina Leonidovna Brezhneva (Russian: Галина Леонидовна Брежнева; 1929-1998) was the daughter of the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

Galina Brezhneva grew up the privileged child of a cadre, and was infatuated with the circus. At age 22, she ran away with a circus acrobat. Her first husband was a strongman whose most famous feat was to lift a dozen people at once. Her second husband was a star circus magician. Rumors of her licentious behavior with trapeze artists and lion tamers wafted to the west and her father had her divorced and confined while he picked out a new husband for her. The new man was a low-ranking army officer. She refused to settle down, and was reported as having an affair with another circus man known as Boris the Gypsy. Boris was implicated in a smuggling scheme in 1982, causing grave embarrassment to Leonid Brezhnev, who died that same year. A few years later, Galina's army husband was convicted in a trial that exposed corruption at the highest levels of the Kremlin. Galina divorced him while he was in prison.

She liked to race her father's Mercedes and she lived flamboyantly, swilling the finest champagne to excess and at one point attempted to make off with an antique diamond-studded crown from a museum in Tblisi. She had no children.