Viktoria Brezhneva

We've dived deeply into Soviet Jewish-related lore over the years, but somehow we have not talked about one of its biggest rumors: Brezhnev's supposed Jewish wife.

Leonid Brezhnev: the man, the myth, the eyebrows (not pictured: rest of Brezhnev). A career bureaucrat who took over from Khrushchev in 1964 and led the Soviet Union through two decades of stagnation. And behind every great(?) leader is a great(?) love story.

Honestly, there is not much there. The Soviet first ladies were that in name only; they stayed out of the limelight, rarely allowed into public view. Perhaps it's that aura of mystery that helped spark the rumor... and apparently, that name didn't help either.

Viktoria! There is nothing Jewish about Viktoria, unless you remember that 75% of Russian women are named either Tatiana, Natalia, or Elena, so anything that seems even remotely foreign sets off alarm bells. Couple that with Viktoria's supposedly "characteristic" looks (What characteristic was that?) and you get a long-standing Jewish rumor.

She denied it.