Nobody with such magnificent eyebrows could be all bad. At least that’s what I thought – as a young child – when Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev appeared on TV. Just like Denis Healey, the avuncular, charming and eminently popular UK Labour chancellor of the exchequer of the day, Brezhnev seemed a cuddly teddy bear.

And he was clearly a very brave man – why else would he have so many medals? – someone who fought against the Germans and helped to defeat fascism. As my father never ceased to remind me, the Russians had lost 20 million people in the war, so why would they want another one?

Brezhnev never seemed all that scary. He looked like the kind of guy who could loosen up after a few snorts of Stolichnaya and become quite pally. He even kissed his friends on the cheek. And as if to prove all the sabre-rattlers wrong, he was even making peace and conducting negotiations, first with president Richard Nixon (whom he called ‘Dick’ – see the Russians were human, after all) and then with presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

True, he looked a little unsteady on his feet. Rumours circulated that Brezhnev was none too well. Was it heart attacks, strokes or leukaemia – or all three? But he proved surprisingly resilient. That in itself boosted my opinion of the Soviet Union. Obviously, their medical services were far advanced.

Detente
By the early 70s the Russians were not exactly our friends – we knew that communism was a very different system from ours – but there was a palpable easing of Cold War tensions, as they say in diplomatic parlance. I was only about eight years old but people kept talking about salt, SALT 1 and then SALT 2. These were either movies or something to do with the dining table. Either way, they seemed to make everyone happy, so why quibble?

Even some of the most reactionary figures in America seemed to be losing their bite. John Wayne, interviewed on the Parkinson show in 1974, voiced his support for senator McCarthy (wait, wasn’t he a bad man?) but adopted a gentler tone when talking about communism. "It’s ok for them over there, but we don’t have to live like that." So, it was ‘ok’ for them over there?

And then someone emerged to spoil the party. Margaret Thatcher, that belligerent and strident woman, made a speech in early 1976 in which she accused the Russians of being bent on world domination: "The men in the Soviet Politburo do not have to worry about the ebb and flow of public opinion. They put guns before butter, while we put just about everything before guns...Soviet military power will not disappear just because we refuse to look at it," Thatcher said.

Thatcher’s intervention won her the sobriquet "the Iron Lady" from the Soviets. My father, although no communist, also thought she came across as a bit of a warmonger. But what did it matter? With a Labour government in power in Britain and a Democratic president in the White House, World War 3 would never be unleashed.

Disenchantment
Then in December 1979 Russia invaded Afghanistan. Those hoping for a permanent detente were devastated. President Carter called it "a callous violation of international law and the United Nations charter...a deliberate attempt by a powerful atheistic government to subjugate an independent Islamic people". By Carter’s standards, that was some condemnation.

Meanwhile, Brezhnev was beginning to resemble a stuffed monkey. Intense secrecy always surrounded the health of ailing Soviet leaders. Pravda news agency always told us that Brezhnev was suffering from "a heavy cold" but, strangely, the people I knew who had heavy colds never looked so ill.

One day in November 1982 there was that sombre music that was to become all too familiar over the next couple of years. Brezhnev was gone. My wife, then a 10-year-old Bulgarian at school in Sofia, was ushered outside with her classmates and regaled with a long list of his achievements. Others recall being told that "if they wanted to cry" they could do so.

Two days after Brezhnev’s death, Yuri Andropov became the first former head of the KGB to become General Secretary of the Soviet Union. The West received news of his appointment with some nervousness. Andropov looked a nasty piece of work, just the kind of steely-eyed interrogator you’d most like to avoid in Room 101.