For Brezhnev's a Jolly Good Fellow
BRUMBERG, ABRAHAM
Perspectives FOR BREZHNEV'S A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW BY ABRAHAM BRUMBERG Gather round, dear readers, and I shall tell you the story of a man you have all heard so much yet known so little about?the...
...This, of course, is incorrect...
...15 Surely you will agree that this was no mean accomplishment...
...S&S?with remarkable frankness he gives his opinions on such vital and important questions as Soviet youth, the role of trade unions in Soviet society" and last but not least, "the role of the Head of State"-that is, himself.5 I think you will agree that with such an impressive imprimatur, any further quibbling about the authorship would be pointless...
...3 It may, of course, be that the historians of the IMLCPSUCC are also employed by the AASUSSR...
...Wouldst that our writers and statesmen could deal with issues with such devastating guileless-ness-e.g., "Many people in the USSR think that Leonid I. Brezhnev-pages From His Life, is going to sell in the West like hot cakes...
...June 28...
...Isaac Deulscher, Bertram D. Wolfe, Merle Fainsod, E. Fi...
...its absence from the pages of Brezhnev's biography is rather dismaying...
...You remember the Great Purge, dear readers...
...Ib,d, p. 53 35...
...For Stalin, see foot note 6. Abraham Brumberg, a veteran contributor, is currently at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of the Woodrow Wilson International Center...
...etal...
...Take this observation, quoted in toto in the briography: " 'As far as I know, many people in the West do not have a clear idea about our political system,' Leonid Brezhnev said...
...becoming, in time, agriculture secretary of the Regional Party Committee32 and then secretary for the defense industry.33 I should like to tell you more about Brezhnev's activities during the years when the Soviet Union was allied with Nazi Germany, but I am afraid that on this chapter of his life, too, my source is devoid of data...
...Collectivization, in short, was a rather grim affair: Famine and cannibalism stalked the land, and hundreds and thousands of bezprizor-nye-children of "liquidated" kulaks -turned into savage little criminals in their frantic and itinerant search for food and shelter.20 What of Leonid Ilyich during those fateful years...
...It was in full swing when the suntanned Leonid Ilyich came back to the Ukraine, and it had already claimed millions of victims in 1938 when the upwardly-mobile young man was appointed "to a responsible post" with the Regional Party Committee in Dniepropetrovsk, eventually becoming its "propaganda secretary...
...They discussed at length the trends in the Western European art and literature then in vogue, and each time Kotsko was amazed by the general's erudition in the history of literature and the arts...
...34 Furthermore, it turned out that Brezhnev was no slouch in more lofty domains either...
...rW, p 34...
...on [he Isles its title is Brezhnev-a Short Biography...
...Brezhnev?The Masks of Power...
...tive farms...
...Third, I find that Brezhnev has a knack for expressing ideas pithily, forcefully and with disarming simplicity...
...Indeed, what would he tell the people in the idiom of his art...
...Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev-or, as he was known to his close friends,6 Lonya -was born in the town of Kamen-skoye (later renamed Dneprodzer-zhinsk) on December 19, 1906, into a family of poor steelworkers with sturdy revolutionary credentials.7 Already at an early age Leonid evidenced some 4. Op.cii., jacket, front flap and back flap...
...35 The long pages on Brezhnev's wartime exploits are notable for still another reason: It is there that one finds the only two references to Joseph Vi-sarionovich Stalin-that is, as Commander-in-Chief...
...Engels made this remarkable observation: the moment socialism became a science it had to be treated as a science...
...All the work done by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its General Secretary is consonant with precisely this constructive, scientific attitude to questions of building socialism, based not on voluntaristic decisions but on a profound theoretical understanding of the phenomena and tendencies of life...
...Oclobcr 11, 1952...
...You may wish to rend Chapter 14 in lurever Mowing, by the Soviet writer Vasily Grossman (New York, Harper & Row, 1970) for a description of this period...
...1972...
...The Washington Post's current Moscow correspondent, Kevin Klosc...
...42: Ibid, p. 128...
...Ibid, p. 31...
...Academy ol Sciences, tt/nii., p 9 President of the country...
...After all, we know, don't we, that "it is safe to say"-In the Soviet Union?that all current achievements of the Soviet Union are associated with Brezhnev,"38 and it is hardly news that Gus Hall, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States, "confirmed the significance of the consistent struggle for peace that Brezhnev had constantly advanced...
...2. London...
...8. Ibid...
...22 Leonid joined the Komsomol23 in 1923, and entered the Party in 1931...
...The latter, referred to in the Soviet press as the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class," is particularly relevant to our story, for it coincided with Leonid Ilyich's rise within the ranks of the new Soviet officialdom...
...First, 1 do think that Brezhnev is doing himself a disservice when he presents his views on detente without making it clear that he regards a reduction in tensions as a part of the "class struggle" and "peaceful coexistence" as concomitant with the "intensification" of the "ideological struggle" against the capitalist system-Indeed, as part and parcel of the "increasingly more acute form of the struggle between the two social systems" in general.401 trust the Academy of Sciences of the USSR or the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, would not want to lead either the British or the American people astray as to the totality of Brezhnev's views on so weighty a subject-therefore I hope that in their next edition, if they are fortunate to have one, they will correct this unhappy oversight...
...p. 17...
...For these were tumultuous times: first the Civil War, then the New Economic Policy, then the fierce struggle among Lenin's heirs'6 that ended with the rout of Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zino-viev, Nikolai Bukharin, et al...
...1978...
...Not surprisingly, his fellow-workers and students "found him a fine, considerate comrade, always ready to offer businesslike and comradely assistance...
...Ibid...
...You see, the British edition, published a short while ago by Pergamon Press2 identifies him (her, them, it) as the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, CPSU Central Committee...
...Ibid...
...As he matured, his associates noted that he also had "a buoyant personality,"'2 that he "found the time to join in singing and dancing,"13 that he "showed commitment to principle, firmness in upholding his convictions, efficiency and patience," and that "above all, he respected his comrades...
...And with footnotes in the bargain...
...better treatment...
...1978.$11.95...
...Why did he not tell the authors of the volume to include, for example, the following excerpt of his speech to the 19th Party Congress: "Thanks to the wise domestic policy of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government, and thanks to Comrade Stalin's constant concern for the future of the Moldavian people, the working people of Bessarabia were liberated from the colonial yoke...
...First Secretary of the Moldavian CP, to a spacious apartment in Moscow...
...Academy of Sciences, op...
...This historic event will never be erased from the Moldavian people's memory...
...As you may recall from other sources, dear readers, collectivization consisted of thousands of "class-conscious workers," Komsomol members" and Army units descending upon the villages, uprooting their inhabitants, slaughtering, imprisoning and deporting over 5 millon of them to Siberia and the arctic north (where most perished of hunger and cold), and forcing the reht into collective farms-to be sure, fi>r their own good and for the good of Socialism as a whole...
...In any case, we have the word of Simon and Schuster that the book "gives perhaps 1. NewYork...
...From that point on, the future leader of his country was "always in the thick of life...
...Ibid, p. 30...
...The Soviet censors didn't like il, so no Soviet edition exists...
...p. 2...
...On the other hand, the volume bristles with numerous accounts of Brezhnev's activities during the War years, when he rose from colonel to major general and head of the Army's Political Department (that is, chief of all the political commissars...
...Ibid, pp 81-82...
...London...
...A rather sleight of hand, since the entire Ukrainian Central Commiltee had been "liquidated" in September 1937...
...Erroneous views are expressed...
...from generation to generation through the centuries the Moldavian people will glorify and pass on the name of their liberator, the great Stalin...
...and the consolidation of Stalin's reign18?the break-neck industrialization drive and the collectivization of the countryside...
...Ibid, p. 26...
...I don't think, my dear readers, that I shall bother to summarize them, important though they undoubtedly are, since my report is already getting too long and I fear that some of you may find the material rather old hat...
...There are, for instance, no references to him in the chapters that trace Brezhnev's success story in postwar Ukraine, when he climbed from one post to another, finally ending up, at the 19th Congress of the CPSU, held in October 1952, as one of the secretaries of the Central Committee of the CPSU and a candidate member of the new Party Presidium (a promotion that, inter alia, enabled him to move from Kishinev, where he resided in the late '40s as...
...Well, that is not altogether clear...
...He was decorated several times and proved himself, as one of his subordinates was later to recall in his memoirs, a man of "inexhaustible resourcefulness, high exactingness, kindness, sincerity, unassuming manner", and, above all, "modesty...
...Could I have made that statement to the editor of The New Leader and gotten away with it...
...But I think a statement such as the one by Engels?the moment socialism became a science it had to be treated as a science"-possess an almost hypnotic quality, and I am not surprised that his admirers quote and emulate him to this day...
...cil., p. 19...
...All right, then, let us proceed...
...27 I suppose that in his new capacity he must have rubbed shoulders with Ni-kita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, who in January 1938 had been elected First Secretary by the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party,28 but if so, there is no mention of it in the book-as, indeed, there is no mention of the terror of those years...
...For Lenin, see Mausoleum, Red Square, Moscow, USSR...
...Perspectives FOR BREZHNEV'S A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW BY ABRAHAM BRUMBERG Gather round, dear readers, and I shall tell you the story of a man you have all heard so much yet known so little about?the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev...
...4 Furthermore, the book is studded with sizable excerpts from Brezhnev's speeches, and is preceded by his own Foreword, in which-this again according to Messrs...
...Academy of Sciences of the USSR, op...
...Academy of Sciences, op...
...title page...
...Or the triumph of peace...
...5. Ibid...
...4 To put it succinctly, while still in his teens Leonid was, "with his inherent humanity, a man of the new socialist system...
...Andre Deutch...
...Second, the matter of style...
...It is asserted, for instance, that the party substitutes for other organizations, both state and social...
...Brezhnev and contains a great deal of fascinating human, personal material on the life of the Soviet leader...
...til., p. 27...
...1974...
...Ibid, p 35...
...You bet your sweet life I couldn't have, dear reader...
...w/,p.3l...
...Permit me to correct him: the Komsomol stands for the Communist Youth League...
...I regret that I can offer you merely a few lean details, for my source, authoritative though it may be, is rather reticent on this matter...
...The American edition says that the book was "Written under the Auspices of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR...
...Ibid, p. 254...
...36 I find that speech, dear readers?well, noblesse oblige...
...See works of bourgeois wrilers-e.g...
...p. 65...
...Ibid, p. 284...
...24 The forced collectivization was undoubtedly part of that "thick of life," but all we are told is that Leonid was elected secretary of the Party organization in his institute in 1933 and was around when "13 million peasant households had been united in collec19...
...I think the following passage, based on the reminiscences of Andrei Kotsko, artist and former comrade-inarms of General Brezhnev, deserves to be quoted in full: "What do you intend to paint after the War?," Brezhnev asked his host...
...39 Let me, therefore, conclude with a few brief observations...
...Committee is based on scientific theory-I.e., on the Marxist-Leninist world outlook and concept of socialist and Communist construction...
...of the sterling qualities that were to serve him well in his later years: he "listened attentively to the talk of his elders,"8 he made sure (when barely nine years old) that his life became "interwoven with the life of his contemporaries,"9 he was "an industrious pupil"10 and he was "a good mixer" to boot...
...Pravda...
...Carr...
...the first fully rounded portrait of Mr...
...Ibid...
...What irresistible logic...
...Of the horrors of war...
...Yet perhaps most remarkable was the young Leonid's uncanny ability, through all the cataclysmic events that were sweeping his country, to successfully pursue his personal career...
...Ibid, p. 295...
...26 And so, breezily, we come to the period of the Great Purge...
...They [Brezhnev and Kotsko) would then get to talking about the goals of art for the people...
...3. Leonid I. Brezhnev-pugesJrom His Life, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1978...
...6. Most of whom, I fear, were to fall victim to the Cult of Personality...
...But I disagree...
...37 The final chapters of Leonid I. Brezhnev-pages from His Life trace the protagonist's triumphs over the last 10-15 years, culminating with his unanimous election in June 1977 as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR-that is, 36...
...7. Viz...
...My source will be a volume just released by Simon and Schuster: Leonid I. Brezhnev-pages from His Life.1 Who, you ask, is the author...
...U.lbid, p. 25...
...In fact, the one reference to Nikita Khrushchev in the biography comes much later on, when "the October 1964 plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union relieved N. S. Khrushchev of his duties [which duties?] and elected L. I. Brezhnev as First Secretary of the Central Committee...
...Ibid, p. 33...
...p. 25...
...Op.cii...
...9. Ibid...
...But they are mostly concerned with detailed expositions of the Secretary-Chairman's views on a number of subjects, from youth to trade unions, from economic problems to international peace and detente...
...25 In November 1935 (the book rather disconcertingly leaves long stretches of time altogether unaccounted for), he was drafted into the Army, where he served a year, returning to his "native Dneprodzerzhinsk" in the "late autumn of 1936, suntanned, fit, and energetic as always...
...Ibid...
...This, of course, is incorrect.' "42 What extraordinary lucidity...
...The artist was unable to reply at once...
...Which is why I had to write this lengthy review...
...29 I gather this is because Brezhnev wisely paid no heed either to the disappearance of most of his comrades or to the presence of his boss, occupying himself instead with "everything that concerned the welfare of the people,"30 making sure that the workers "would listen attentively and ponder his words,"31 and IS...
...We learn only of his many youthful achievements-as a stevedore, a land-surveyor, a boiler stoker, an oiler of steam-driven machines, a fitter?and, as "his friends rejoiced,"21 of his admission to a metallurgical institute...
...4' You may, of course, disagree with that paragraph, you may even regard it as rubbish...
...You will admit that Stalin, who cut something of a figure in the history of the USSR, deserved 32...
...I think that the following paragraph, chosen entirely at random-has quite a bounce to it: "The entire work of the Central 38...
...describes the Komsomol (WP, April 26, 1978), as "cadres of the Communist Party, who arc not yet party members...
...Pruvdu...
...see 3ohn Dornberg...
...Unci 23...
...One nasty reviewer called it "glutinous...
...p. 127...
...I suppose, though, that lacunae are inevitable in any massive historical work, especially one embracing not only the life-story of one man, but-as Brezhnev so eloquently puts it himself?of the entire Soviet people...
...Ibid, p. 33...
...Certainly Brezhnev knows he owes his spectacular advances (let alone his life) to the man who ruled the USSR for a good quarter of a century...
...12 Ibid, p. 29...
Vol. 61 • May 1978 • No. 11
