Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: 10 years later, Brezhnev era is the stuff of jokes Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 16:10:35 EST Message-ID: \SE A;WORLD \HD 10 years later, Brezhnev era is the stuff of jokes \BY Gerald Nadler \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES \DT MOSCOW MOSCOW - Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union for nearly two decades, achieved strategic parity with the United States, and began and then destroyed detente. Despite his 18 years in power - second in longevity only to Josef Stalin - the 10th anniversary of his death earlier this month was barely noted in the uncensored post-Soviet press. Russians still debate the awful legacy of Stalin, although for the majority of citizens his reign is ancient history. But there is little talk about the leader every Russian over 20 grew up with and watched become a living mummy, the butt of jokes and derision. "We are now witnessing not so much the dismantling of the 'Brezhnev cult,' which they [the Communist Party] tried to foster without success for so many years, but his political extinction," writes Roy Medvedev, a former dissident historian and now a leading proponent of reform communism. "The extinction of Brezhnev the politician is proceeding much faster than it took for him to burn out physically," Mr. Medvedev contends in a new biography of Brezhnev, "A Person and His Epoch." "Today, Muscovites walk past . . . the house where he lived with complete indifference and nobody except his relatives places his flowers on his grave." During Brezhnev's rule, which ended with his death on Nov. 10, 1982, his ghostwritten memoirs, "Malaya Zemlya," or "A Small Place," were printed in millions of copies. They were obligatory reading in school. Made into a film, his life story played every movie house. The books have been pulped. The movie would be shown now only as a joke or as part of a documentary film. If Russians recall Brezhnev now, it is in anecdotes from their own youth: "Have you heard that Brezhnev just had an operation? . . . Really? You don't say. . . . What kind? . . . They enlarged his chest to make room for more medals." Brezhnev's chest dripped with five military stars that made him a marshal of the Soviet Union, medals of his oft-awarded status as a hero of labor and decorations from foreign countries. Last week, only three newspapers devoted major space to the 10th anniversary of Brezhnev's death, one of which, Vechernaya Moskva, turned the event into a parody. The independent Nezavisimaya Gazeta recalled the end of the Brezhnev era as a spiritless time of uncontrolled alcoholism and corruption, where no one any longer believed in socialism (technically, "developed socialism") or anything else. But even though Brezhnev had to be propped up - literally, toward the end - few analysts, including Western experts, foresaw that Brezhnev's demise was the beginning of the end of the Communist era, the newspaper said. "By the time of Brezhnev's death, the state of society and the government was so lethargic that no one had even bothered to prepare for this long-expected event," Nezavisimaya Gazeta said. "Now everybody can see because it is so clear. But nobody then could see that it was a great divide, the beginning of the end. Now of course everybody understands this well. "Surely scores of Sovietologists and all-perceiving dissidents should have thought that at that time. Hurrah, we have won! Not anything of the kind," the newspaper continued. "Neither did the much-vaunted democratic West notice the imminent divide despite all their forecasting think tanks." Brezhnev's death ushered in a brief interregnum, first of former KGB chief Yuri Andropov for 15 months and then Konstantin Chernenko for 13 months, both of them practically dying when they took over. Finally, Mikhail Gorbachev was given the leadership in March 1985. By the time he was forced out on Dec. 25, 1991, both the Communist Party and the Soviet Union had collapsed. The scandalous Moskovsky Kosmolets gave its readers what they like - details on the fate of the Brezhnev brood and a story of coups and countercoups in Brezhnev's last months in power. Some details: * Brezhnev's son-in-law, Yuri Churbanov, whom he made deputy interior minister, is today serving his prison sentence for taking bribes. * Mr. Churbanov's wife and Brezhnev's daughter Galina, known for her cavorting with circus performers and scandals involving diamonds, still lives a bohemian life in a flat on fashionable Aleksei Tolstoy Street in Moscow. * His wife, Viktoria, 75, recently became ill and was hospitalized. She is still alive and still the subject of gossip among the anti-Semitic Pamyat group because she is half-Jewish. * Brezhnev's brother, Yakov, recently returned to his Moscow apartment. Brezhnev's son Yuri, grandson Andrei and two great-grandchildren also are capital dwellers. Of all the treatments of Brezhnev's life, only Mr. Medvedev's book seriously analyzes the Brezhnev era - the Soviet Union pulling even with the United States in strategic weapons, its navy extending its sway into the world's oceans, the birth of detente with SALT I and II, and then its demise with the December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Earlier, Brezhnev crushed the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia and considered sending troops into Poland to crush Solidarity, finally relying on Polish Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski to do the job. But by the end, Brezhnev and the entire country were sleepwalking. His drooping jaw and slurring words became a national joke, his awarding himself medals galling, and his love of hunting and collecting foreign cars from world leaders regarded as the activities of a buffoon. The Nezavisimaya Gazeta article described the era as one lived through by eccentrics. The plaque on 24 Kutuzovsky Prospekt, the Brezhnev home, was taken down more than three years ago, just as everything that bore Brezhnev's name shed that association like a snake sloughing off its skin. Foremost was the city of Brezhnev on the Volga, whose residents rejoiced at the return of the old name, Naberezhny Chelny. The Brezhnev area of Moscow was renamed - not that its residents had ever stopped calling it by the beloved and quaint Cheremushki, or bird cherry, site of one of the capital's most lively free markets. A gallows-humor anecdote of the era that did not even mention Brezhnev perhaps summed it up best: The telephone at the Central Committee of the Communist Party rang, and the caller said: "I want to be general secretary." "Are you crazy?" the Central Committee operator asked. "Is this also a requirement?" the "applicant" asked. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. 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