Lyubov Yakovlevna Brezhneva (russian: Любовь Яковлевна Брежнева) is a niece of Soviet leader

Leonid Brezhnev Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev; uk, links= no, Леонід Ілліч Брежнєв, . (19 December 1906– 10 November 1982) was a Soviet politician who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between 1964 and 1 ...

(an illegitimate but acknowledged daughter of Leonid's brother, Yakov Brezhnev). She was hounded by the KGB for many reasons including being somewhat liberal in her political philosophy and for being in love with a colonel from the army of

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In t ...

. She wrote a book about her experience called, in the English-language edition, ''The World I Left Behind'' (russian: Племянница Генсека, meaning ''Niece of the General-Secretary''). She describes the hypocrisy of the Soviet system from the point of view of a member of the privileged elite or

nomenklatura The ''nomenklatura'' ( rus, номенклату́ра, p=nəmʲɪnklɐˈturə, a=ru-номенклатура.ogg; from la, nomenclatura) were a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key admin ...

. She also says that they were prisoners of the

system A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and express ...

. The most poignant part of her memoirs deals with the cruelties which happened during the

Russian Civil War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Russian Civil War , partof = the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I , image = , caption = Clockwise from top left: {{flatlist, *Soldiers ...

(1918–1922) and collectivization of agriculture (1927–1933), large-scale events which devastated the Cossack communities from which the Brezhnev family came. She did not experience those events personally, having been born after they occurred, but heard of them from family members. Brezhneva begged her father to protect her from the KGB, which both hated the fact that she had a German boyfriend and also wanted to attack her father (and his corrupt and black marketeer hangers-on), but her father could do nothing and eventually the KGB beat her so severely as to cause a miscarriage. She describes in her memoir the two-tier (in fact multi-tier) system of shops, goods and services (including healthcare) available to members of the Soviet elite (members of the Nomenklatura), in contrast with the barren shops available for the ordinary person. She describes the aimless job she worked, at an office where rooms full of people had nothing to do but file their fingernails. Some of her friends were sent to hard labour in internal exile or detention simply because they could not stand being part of the system. She eventually married an Armenian. They had a child and lived for a while during the 1980s in Boumerdes,

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , relig ...

, about 56 km from

Algiers Algiers ( ; ar, الجزائر, al-Jazāʾir; ber, Dzayer, script=Latn; french: Alger, ) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. The city's population at the 2008 Census was 2,988,145Census 14 April 2008: Office National des Statistiques d ...

, her husband having been posted there as a Soviet "specialist" advising the Algerian government. She later fled to a Soviet satellite state and from there emigrated in 1990 to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

(to California) where she still lives. Brezhneva now writes and publishes books for children, and is based in San Mateo, California. She also takes an interest in world politics.

References

External links

Review of her book

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brezhneva, Lyubov Russian memoirists Soviet emigrants to the United States American people of Russian descent Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Lyubov Brezhneva

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Further reading

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