The next big test for Brezhnev was over the founding of the independent trade union, Solidarity, which was established in Poland in September 1980 When by the following year Solidarity boasted a membership of 10 million, Brezhnev was keen on the Polish authorities’ acting quickly On December 13, 1981, the Polish government imposed martial law and declared the Solidarity trade union illegal Its leader, Lech Wałe˛sa, was arrested and his release only days after Brezhnev’s death clearly indicated Brezhnev’s role in the crackdown When Brezhnev died on November 10, 1982, in Moscow, he was buried in Red Square Apparently the team that had embalmed Lenin and had looked after Lenin’s body for decades expected to be asked to embalm Brezhnev, but this was not the case For many years Brezhnev had been a familiar figure on the international stage He had also received more public honors than most Soviet leaders, including the Lenin Peace Prize in 1973, the title of marshal of the Soviet Union in 1976, the Order of Victory (the highest military honor) in 1978, and the Lenin Prize for Literature (for his memoirs) in 1979 In hindsight, however, the Brezhnev era was regarded as one of economic stagnation Although published economic figures showed that the economy was improving, and that economic growth had accelerated, the truth was that the Soviet infrastructure was wearing out, and its military was unable to keep up with new technology being designed in the United States The Brezhnev years represented a decline in initiative, and the economy was largely maintained through the country’s massive natural resources Brezhnev’s successor as general secretary of the CPSU was Yuri Andropov, who, although he had been head of the feared KGB, was determined to overcome the malaise that had taken place during the 1970s He had been the man who had actually carried out Brezhnev’s policies of putting dissidents in mental asylums and forced internal exile In a surprise move, Andropov immediately launched a crackdown on official corruption Andropov also tried to repair relations with China, but died after only 15 months as general secretary He was replaced by one of Brezhnev’s staunchest supporters, Konstantin Chernenko On Chernenko’s death after 13 months as general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the CPSU Further reading: Anderson, Richard Public Politics in an Authoritarian State: Making Foreign Policy During the Brezhnev Years Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993; Brezhnev, Leonid I Memoirs Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982; Dallin, Alexander, ed The Khrushchev and Brezhnev Years New York: Garland, 1992; Gelman, Harry The Brezhnev Brown v Board of Education 73 Politburo and the Decline of Détente Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984 Justin Corfield Brown v Board of Education The unanimous May 17, 1954, U.S Supreme Court decision known informally as Brown sent shock waves through a deeply segregated nation and strengthened the growing African-American Civil Rights movement Intended to end the racial segregation of public schools, the Brown decision made important inroads, but educational equality for minorities remained elusive By 1948 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense and Educational Fund, headed by lawyer Thurgood Marshall, was focusing on dramatically unequal public schools Eventually they would bring to the nation’s highest court a group of five lawsuits initiated by African-American parents from South Carolina; Virginia; Washington, DC; Delaware; and Topeka, Kansas The Brown case was named for Oliver Brown, the pastor father of Linda, a seven-year-old third-grader She daily navigated a Topeka rail yard and busy roads to attend an all-black school although a white school was nearby Compared to other school systems in the Brown case, Topeka provided relatively equal facilities to its tiny black population; community activists emphasized that racial separation made black children there feel inferior The combined cases reached the Supreme Court in 1952, but its ruling was postponed in anticipation of a rehearing By then the Court had a newly appointed chief justice, Earl Warren, a former Republican governor of California Brown would become the first of many cases that made the Warren Court a byword for judicial activism on behalf of America’s disenfranchised Warren read the 11-page decision aloud It invoked the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment in support of equal protection for minorities It marshaled sociological and psychological evidence showing that racial separation, especially of children, rendered them “inherently unequal.” And Brown invalidated Plessy v Ferguson, the 1896 ruling that had affirmed the doctrine of “separate but equal.” In 1955 with a decision dubbed Brown II, the Court urged federal judges to undo school segregation “with all deliberate speed.” By then a forceful white backlash had emerged Although some southern and border states began to