Leonid, We Hardly Knew Ye
Lofton, J.D.
"Leonid, We Hardly Knew Ye" The other private organizations were almost exclusively a "who's who" of environmental activists—the Environmental Defense Fund, the Friends of the Earth, the Sierra...
...Let's be honest, open, candid, and above board and, as Lowell Weicker frequently says, let's put all the cards on the table face up: This book isn't for everybody...
...Brezhnev's life in full detail...
...I have been asked, by Professor Seabury, to join in giving some advice to your President...
...This achievement in agriculture in the republic, we are told, "vividly demonstrated the vitality of the collective-farm system and the advantages of large-scale socialist agriculture, which made the use of machinery and intensive diversified farming possible...
...The same as you, Colonel," said Brezhnev...
...In his smart-assed review of Brezhnev: Pages From His Life, Peter Osnos, a former Moscow reporter for the Washington Post, has the audacity to say that this "may...
...History will also record Brezhnev's greatest transgression: placing the ghost of Stalin in the niche left by Khrushchev's fall...
...All of us up here always worry about our reputations and about the ways people misrepresent us and what we have written...
...Questioning Leonid's version of his own upward mobility, Ulam observes: "Here we have a young graduate of an engineering school rising rapidly in the party hierarchy in the Ukraine in the late 1930s...
...I only wish Paul Seabury is professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley...
...J.D...
...What are you doing...
...Détente means definite trust and the ability to reckon with one another's legitimate interests" ? This may all be boiler-plate to you, Mr...
...We learn of Brezhnev the fun-person with a razor-sharp sense of humor, a man who worked hard as director of the Metallurgical Workers' Faculty but still "found time to join in singing and dancing" among "the people...
...Pages From His Life is perhaps the first fully-rounded portrait of the Soviet leader and is a work of extraordinary importance, scope and depth...
...It was presented to the symposium, and greeted with general amazement by all...
...Brezhnev's alleged role in doing Mr...
...Several weeks ago, the World Without War Council of Northern California sponsored a day-long symposium on U.S...
...He goes on and on like that, and I try to calm him down...
...and "I never felt so free from being robbed...
...but in an age when politics has everywhere followed explorers, it is in such obscurity that the continent of Antarctica will find whatever protection it will enjoy...
...It would seem prudent to have FAO and perhaps...
...Lofton, long-time friend of Leonid Brezhnev and cultivator of championship orchids, is a nationally syndicated columnist...
...What word do you see in the middle of this passage...
...A man who displayed constant concern for the officers and their men, for all his subordinates, Brezhnev often forgot to take care of himself...
...Footnote: I hate to end on a sour note, but I do have a small complaint about this book...
...An "interesting" table in one of the displays in the Museum of History of the Moldavian Communist Party contains the following figures: In 1949 there were 375,000 collective farmers who made 110 million rubles in cash and kind for their work...
...Perhaps you've heard the American expression: telling-it-like-it-is...
...I guess we'll really never know though, will we...
...The Soviet Union he will leave behind will be an infinitely sadder country than the one he found upon becoming its ruler...
...To you, Mr...
...The phrase...
...Osnos, that "as a result of the complete triumph of the socialist social relations, the Soviet state, which arose as a dictatorship of the proletariat, has developed into a state of the whole people" ? Did you know that Brezhnev himself emphasizes that "Communists have no privileges save the one privilege of giving more of themselves than others to the common cause and of fighting andworking better than others for its triumph...
...Can you read, professor...
...See it: S-T-A-L-I-N...
...STALIN...
...Robert Pickus, its organizer, decided that one panel should be devoted to the thoughts which several major historical figures might convey to President Carter on this subject...
...Local boy makes good...
...Stalin, or of alluding to the purges of the 1930s and 1940s...
...Unhappily, the environmental movement is so immersed in the image of the western societies as polluters that it simply cannot perceive the vast advantages to its own purposes of international arrangements which maximize, not minimize, the influence of the industrial democracies...
...But he has a terrible temper, nevertheless...
...He writes of Mr...
...Well, it's all right there on pages 109-112...
...It was bad enough, he says, when some Russian characters took him for a ride, but then came all those Chinese who completely turned upside down everything he has written...
...I didn't see no guns...
...Already the negative nabobs are beginning to natter...
...And, a few days later, also in Moscow, a young Soviet citizen, undoubtedly elated over being no more plain and simple than Mr...
...Now, to the more general thrust of your comments, Mr...
...Okay, Mr...
...The last of the unemployed got a job back in the early 1930s...
...August 30, 1946...
...Let's smoke these Nazis out of these damned barracks together...
...This book is a story of your average, run-of-the-mill, man-of-the-people who is a combination of Socrates, Desiderius Erasmus, Christ, Florence Nightingale, St...
...It is easy to imagine environmentalists pressuring the United States and similar governments...
...First of all, the statement that Stalin is never mentioned in this book is a flat lie...
...It having slipped your mind, have you ever turned to a friend or loved one and asked: "Do you remember the date that the tabloid newspaper of the Dzerzhinsky steel mill in Kamenskoye, the Ukraine, ran the story about old Leonid being among the top four engineer graduates at the Arsenichev Metallurgical Institute...
...arms control and disarmament policy...
...No hitchhikers, not one beggar [and no] bad, bad poverty...
...Of course they refused to indulge in the name-game or the numbers-game as regards this purge business...
...The text which follows is a faithful transcription of his remarks and is published with his permission...
...Second, and more interesting, there seems, to be a general feeling among the interested environmentalists that "international participation" in these decisions ought to be broadened...
...But, if you're saying this, you're wrong—w-r-o-n-g...
...This headline-making book represents a major contribution to Soviet-American understanding...
...Don't get excited, Colonel...
...How come...
...In October of 1950, soon after Brezhnev was elected to the leading post in the Moldavian Communist Party, the sixth plenary meeting of the Central Committee was held, at which Brezhnev "put forward proposals for further measures to strengthen the 14 The American Spectator August/September 1978 republic's collective farms politically, organizationally, and economically...
...I were able to be with you personally on this occasion, but in any event Professor Seabury has kindly made available to me the opportunity to record my remarks on what he calls tapes...
...Brezhnev's personal views on major international questions—detente, disarmament, co-existence—and his meetings with various Western leaders, including American Presidents, France's Giscard d'Estaing, and such Socialist leaders as Fidel Castro, are given in detail...
...You Americans The American Spectator August/ September 1978 15...
...well be the least revealing book about a personality of such importance ever published by an American book company...
...This caused a Colonel Volkovich to exclaim to him: "You have no right to be here...
...Text of a full-page Simon and Schuster ad in the New York Times Book Review, April 30, 1978...
...Marshall Georgi Zhukov, who came to the Novorossiisk area with a special assignment from the Supreme Commander in Chief, Stalin, regretted that he had missed seeing Brezhnev at the Army Field Administration...
...Simon & Schuster...
...Now the suppressed premise of such proposals, for the environmentally concerned, must be that less environmental damage will resultfrom a regime administered by the United Nations, Yet one might better argue the contrary proposition: that the "developing nations" are less sensitive to environmental concerns as such and, more important, the environmental effort will prove itself more effective in the open societies of the parliamentary democracies...
...In April of 1943, during heavy fighting on the Little Land, Brezhnev uttered a "winged phrase" which passed from mouth to mouth among the soldiers...
...Have another goblet of ambrosia, I say to him...
...Brezhnev has but one prescription for the Soviet Union's malaise: more vigilance against foreign influences and more ideological discipline...
...by 1951 there were 3,388,000 collective farmers who earned 567 million rubles...
...the "developmental interests...
...You can kill a Soviet man, but you cannot defeat him...
...What, pray tell, do you call it when this book officially characterizes as progress the fact that the income of farmers in Moldavia actually declined under Brezhnev's rule in the early 1950s...
...Osnos, that Brezhnev believes "the Soviet Union stands firmly for non-interference in the internal affairs of all states, for respect of their sovereign rights and of the inviolability of their territory" ? And can you say, Mr...
...Ranking right along side this immortal utterance is another Brezhnev rallying cry, made to a unit of Kazakhs, Azerbaijanians, Ukranians, and Russians: "This land will be a memorial to friendship among peoples, as indeed the whole war we are now fighting will be...
...So, who is it for...
...it is hard to envision their pressuring, with equal effect, a United Nations bureaucracy ultimately responsible to a United Nations majority not much given to heeding the voice of the "public...
...Ali says it is a "lie" that there is no freedom of religion in the Soviet Union because he saw houses of worship for Moslems, Jews, and Catholics...
...First, the environmental groups display a predictable concern with the ecological problems of the Antarctic...
...If your answer to all these questions is "yes," then this book is for you...
...The answers to the above questions are: The American Spectator August/ September 1978 13 February 2, 1935...
...No crime...
...There are many, many other revelations in this book about which I would be extremely surprised to hear you say honestly: "Oh, I already knew that...
...Everybody's plain and simple...
...he not only survived, but prospered...
...Now, to be sure, there are going to be some criticisms of this book...
...But so what...
...Brezhnev, demonstrated his exuberance by axing to death a couple of elderly Swedish tourists...
...But there is also another phrase that might be used more accurately to describe these heretofore unrevealed revelations...
...However busy he was, he would ask the charwoman at the Regional Committee about the health of her grandson, inquire of an official of the Regional Committee about the news from his son in the armed forces, or congratulate a girl from the typists' pool on her marriage" ? And last, but certainly not least, Mr...
...Of course the USSR Academy of Sciences authors put no "light stuff' in this book...
...I tell him that, although eternity is not fair to him, it is unfair to me also...
...Brezhnev [who is] as cute as ever...
...During World War II, to go to the area known as Little Land was a journey of extreme peril, yet Brezhnev went there often and even found time to joke: "One day as Brezhnev was inspecting the landing places, which were constantly being shelled by the enemy, he noted how fearlessly the sailors were keeping them going and said to the soldiers: 'The sailors merit your respect, for without these heroes you would not have held that bridgehead.' And he added with a smile [and undoubtedly impeccable timing—J .L.]: 'True, they give us infantrymen a bath now and then, but that is not their fault.' " —Speaking of World War II, this book is full of never-beforetold tales of Brezhnev's personal courage which, quite frankly, makes one wonder why the rest of the Red Army was really necessary...
...Even Mr...
...Lofton Leonid, We Hardly Knew Ye A special book review essay of Leonid I. Brezhnev: Pages From His Life by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR...
...He claims his reputation has been hijacked by a bunch of gangsters (as he calls them...
...One of these was Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), the brilliant Prussian strategic writer...
...11.95...
...It is not obvious whether this was a tactic of "preemptive environmentalism" from the Department or an open invitation to these groups to respond adversely to any suggestion for large-scale exploitation of Antarctic waters...
...An excellent question which I would prefer to answer this way...
...The subject continues to dwell in an obscurity it perhaps does riot deserve...
...This book is also for Muhammad Ali, who recently returned from a ten-day trip to the USSR to inform us that in Russia: "There's no big shots...
...My friend Karl Marx is always upset...
...Not atypical were the views one of them offered at a State Department Open Meeting on the Antarctic last December...
...It was prepared as a direct result of an approach by Simon and Schuster to the Soviet Union and covers Mr...
...Right there on page 53, in black and white, is this passage relating to Mr...
...Unfortunately, Ali's glowing account of life in the Soviet Union was somewhat marred by the fact that on the very day he held his New York press conference, back in Moscow Vladimir Slepak was being sentenced to five years internal exile for the heinous crime of having hung a sign from his apartment balcony reading: "Let us join our son in Israel...
...The reader is thus denied the full appreciation of how clever, as well as lucky, Brezhnev must have been: at a time when people in the party hierarchy were being liquidated right and left...
...In my copy of Brezhnev: Pages From His Life pages 161-192 were repeated whereas pages 193-224 were missing altogether...
...In it, Mr...
...I must say that such incredible distortion of what's in this book makes one wonder if you really read it...
...Not one homosexual...
...In conclusion, Dornberg says: It is a fact that the Brezhnev era has been characterized by persistent reStalinization for which Brezhnev himself must take major responsibility...
...Picky, picky, picky...
...All this is extremely old hat...
...Meantime, the Antarctic consultative parties decided to reconvene in Buenos Aires in July to continue work on their fisheries management project...
...With a special introduction by President Brezhnev for the American people and over 50 photographs...
...For example, a Mr...
...Embassy in Moscow saying they would not leave until they were allowed to emigrate...
...Culturally, intellectually, and in terms of human freedom, the USSR has regressed under Brezhnev's rule....Under Khrushchev the labor camp gates opened and the prisons emptied....But under him [Brezhnevj, a tentative thaw has turned into a new freeze...
...They have a confidence in the future and know that the right to work recorded in the Constitution is a reality" ? Were you truly aware, Mr...
...November of 1947...
...It is, as Leonid tells us in his special introduction, a modest, low-key account—a story of how "only Soviet power enabled me, the son of a worker, to rise to the leadership of a glorious manymillions-strong party and of history's first socialist state...
...Osnos...
...No prostitutes...
...A word is in order about the origins of the following, astonishing piece...
...Osnos, I say: hogwash...
...Paul Seabury Clausewitz: Visions of a Nuclear War War is still a continuation of politics by other means—even nuclear war...
...Since then the Soviet people have completely forgotten the labor exchange and what it means to be dismissed...
...We all know about this stuff already...
...I mean, you were there and know what you saw, right...
...their publications have begun to allude to it, although hardly with great frequency...
...The plain fact of the matter is that whether you or I like it or not, the whole so-called purge thing has been done to death, as has Mr...
...Have you ever been in a heated debate about Leonid's life and found yourself stumped and humiliated when your opponent put his nose against yours asking, as a sneer rippled across his upper J.D...
...Two things are apparent...
...First of all, let me say that it is a unique honor to be asked to make some words of advice for your President...
...I will be sharp...
...Thus, in 1949 the average collective farmer was paid less than 300 rubles a year, but in 1951 under Brezhnev's reign, when the Moldavian countryside "took a big stride along the road of socialist reorganization," the average collective farmer was earning less than 200 rubles a year...
...I saw] only one policeman...
...Before reading his book, could you say, without qualification, that you were already fully cognizant of the fact that he believes "the edifice of detente cannot be allowed to collapse under the onslaught of the protagonists of the cold war and the arms race...
...August of 1955...
...Détente means readiness to settle differences and disputes not by force, not by threats and saber rattling, but by peaceful means, at the negotiating table...
...My main point is about the problem of war...
...Quote, unquote...
...It was no job for the pusillanimous...the information that is available leads Western observers and the few emigrants from the republic to the consensus that Brezhnev's reign was draconian and represents one of the darkest periods of his career...
...For example, did you really know that "a characteristic feature of Soviet reality is that there is no unemployment in the Soviet Union...
...The following examples are chosen at random: —We learn of Brezhnev's finely-tuned perceptiveness, how in 1915 at the age of nine, during several strikes at the Kamenskoye steel mill, "he sensed the determination of the workers and their exultation when they managed to wrest concessions from the knillowners...
...The prisons have begun to fill again and the camp gates are once more being slammed shut on desperate thousands whose only crime has been to speak their own minds...
...Once, after machine-gunning a group of entrenched Nazis, Brezhnev was forced to hit the ground in a hail of return fire...
...Oh, I almost forgot...
...No revelations...
...Brezhnev's military record: "At this critical time Brezhnev was a frequent visitor on the Little Land...
...What am I talking about...
...Stalin's dirty work...
...Brezhnev: "Perhaps deferring to their subject's modesty, the authors have refrained from describing those special skills and qualities which must have enabled him to get where he is...
...In his 1974 book, Brezhnev: The Masks of Power, former Newsweek reporter John Dornberg describes Brezhnev's role in the Ukraine as follows: It was Brezhnev's responsibility to stimulate "ideological vigilance" against all manner of saboteurs, spies and enemies of the people who represented a wide spectrum of nemesis....Brezhnev also had to justify the terror and purges....Brezhnev was charged with organizing mass meetings, rallies, "spontaneous" demonstrations, parades, and celebrations to whip up popular enthusiasm for Stalin and the regime...
...And, a few days after this, eight Pentacostalists, protesting the lack of freedom to practice their religion in the USSR, sat-in at the U.S...
...Well, the authors don't believe in dwelling on unhappy episodes of the past, and carry this restraint to the point of never mentioning the name of J•.V...
...Osnos, there are Brezhnev's moving and intimately personal views on detente...
...Up here in Valhalla we were all under the impression that tapes were something which only your President had, so you may imagine how flattered I am to make use of them also...
...What the USSR Academy of Sciences is trying to do in this book is give us some hitherto unrevealed insights into Brezhnev the man...
...And why in 1950 should the Moldavian Communist Party select a Russian working in the Ukraine as its First Secretary...
...Russian Expert...
...Please, go away...
...Between 1945 and 1950 an estimated 500,000 of the republic's original 3,000,000 population were executed, sentenced to prison camps or deported....In July, 1950, Leonid Brezhnev was sent to Kishinev to complete the task...
...lip: "Okay, wise-guy, if you're so smart, can you tell me when Brezhnev was elected First Secretary of the Zaporozhye Regional Party Committee, when he was elected First Secretary of the Dnepropetrovsk Regional Party Committee, and when he was elected First and then Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan...
...Francis of Assisi, Alexander the Great, and Albert Schweitzer, all rolled into one hell of a nice guy, if I may paraphrase...
...It is a book of rare and genuine excitement...
...Communists have no special rights, save the one right of always being in the forefront, of being where things are the hardest" ? Were you fully conscious of the fact, Mr...
...It] is pure boiler-platethe sort of stuff cranked out by party publicists before their first morning tea break...
...See what I mean, professor...
...and February of 1954...
...UNESCO as full-fledged partners in the endeavor...
...The other private organizations were almost exclusively a "who's who" of environmental activists—the Environmental Defense Fund, the Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the World Wildlife Fund, and others...
...What I like most about this book is its simplicity...
...By coincidence and by a stroke of luck I was personally able to persuade Clausewitz to tape-record a brief message...
...Osnos, that you knew that in the late 1930s, when he was Secretary of the Dneprodzerzhinsk Regional Party Committee, Brezhnev "inquired into everything, even the smallest details, including how many amateur art circles there were at the palaces of culture and clubs...
...Have you ever wondered if, during the 1930s when Leonid worked in the Dzerzhinsky steel mill as "a good fitter and an even better gas purification machine operator," he was also "a good mixer and sought the company of people his own age, especially those who were bold, energetic, and eager and considered the building of the new world something close to their hearts...
...But, what the hey, Champ, these are nits that I'm picking...
...This is no place for you...
...To which Brezhnev replied: "My place is where the situation requires the earliest fulfillment of the combat task...
...Adam B. Ulam, a so-called expert on Russia who teaches at Harvard, complains in the New Republic that this book doesn't contain "much light stuff...
...Osnos, you're probably saying that this is a big book and you missed this one revelation...
...there are "100 nationalities living in peace...
Vol. 11 • August 1978 • No. 9
