Russia Will Always Have Brezhnevs

Russia Will Always Have Brezhnevs

I had to pinch myself. So striking was the resemblance of Andrei Leonidovich Brezhnev to his grandfather Leonid Iliych, that I felt transported back in time to the now-infamous Brezhnev Era of Stagnation. 

In reality it was still 1998. And it was just another crazy Moscow press conference. But, at this one, Andrei Brezhnev was announcing that he is General Secretary (!) of the newly-established All-Russian Communist Movement. His grampa would be so proud …

Actually, as time wore on, Andrei looked less and less like his infamous dedushka (grandfather). The eyebrows were bushy, but obviously thinner than his forebear’s. Still, just like Leonid Ilyich, Andrei could not say much without looking at his papers. But at least his diction was a bit clearer [regular RL readers will remember that Leonid Ilyich had a tendency to slur in his old age, making sotsialisticheskie strany (socialist countries), come out sounding like sosiski sraniye (s–y sausages)]. And, of course, Andrei’s jacket was absent the awards for Hero of Socialist Labor and Hero of the Soviet Union.

And, it turned out, Andrei Leonidovich and I had a bit in common. First of all, he is my age. Born in 1961, he, as I, graduated from college in 1983. And, as he confessed at the press conference, he had dreamed of traveling abroad in his student years. Me too. But he was stopped. Ditto. 

In my case, the Communist Party Bureau at my interpreter’s faculty banned me from going on a linguistic training internship at France’s Grenoble University. I was told that being the top student in the French department was not enough; my ideological and moral foundation were too shaky. During one interview with communist bosses, I was foolish enough to say that I preferred pop to classical music. Plus, on the eve of the trip, a girl (whom I had recently quit dating) studying at a neighboring pedagogical faculty reportedly made “the right signal” to the communist bosses.

Andrei Leonidovich had a different problem. He said at the press conference that he could not travel abroad because his “name was too well-known.” 

Ah, my heart goes out to poor Andryusha. I can well understand why he longs, even today, for a “return to the forgotten values of socialism.” Unfortunately, I too remember those values: empty store shelves alongside a special clothing section at GUM (only for the elite); sumptuous banquets in the cafeterias of the communist nomenklatura while the narod stood in line for milk or cheese. I still remember a time I was with some young sons of communist bosses. They pointed in the direction of the Central Committee building near Kitai Gorod and cynically rephrased the socialist credo: “He who doesn’t work here doesn’t eat.”

And I have seen Andryusha’s resume: MGIMO (Institute of Foreign Relations), Ministry of Foreign Trade, Foreign Ministry, Ministry of Trade. He served in all the most coveted Soviet agencies and ministries. This is not a guy who had to elbow his way to the top in his career. 

I can understand human feelings of longing for one’s dedushka. But that’s no reason to call for the country to return to the years of stagnation, even if, and I admit, Russia is still not a very happy place to be. So it comes as no surprise to hear that I will not be responding to Andryusha’s calls for donations to his new party. (He may be better off asking for a handout from Uneximbank boss and oligarch Vladimir Potanin, with whom he studied at MGIMO.) 

Perhaps I could, instead, feed Andrei Leonidovich’s nostalgia for brezhnevism by sending him a recipe for “socialist countries” sausage from my aunt, a veteran of a Moscow meat-processing factory – she still remembers what they used put in the sausages instead of meat during those “18 years of prosperity.”

Of course, Andrei Leonidovich certainly had a point when he spoke of President Yeltsin’s unpopularity or weak health (though physically, Yeltsin is not as bad as the living corpse Andrei’s grandfather was in the late 1980s). But he did have a stark message to deliver to those of us who could remember firsthand the awful past he cheerfully seeks. If Andrei Leonidovich’s claims are true, there are 5,000 members in his nascent brezhnevite party. How fed up with their current rulers Russians must be if a brezhnevite party can glean this many supporters. Sure, 5,000 is a fairly insignificant figure. But that makes it no less appalling. 

– Mikhail Ivanov