Lyubov Yakovlevna Brezhneva () is a niece of Soviet leader

Leonid Brezhnev Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (19 December 190610 November 1982) was a Soviet politician who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 until Death and state funeral of Leonid Brezhnev, his death in 1982 as w ...

(an illegitimate but acknowledged daughter of Leonid's brother, Yakov Brezhnev). She was hounded by the

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

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 known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...

. She wrote a book about her experience called, in the English-language edition, ''The World I Left Behind'' (, 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'' (; from , system of names) were a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key administrative positions in the bureaucracy, running all spheres of those countries' activity: ...

. 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 open system (systems theory), environment, is described by its boundaries, str ...

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

Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...

(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 Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...

, about 56 km from

Algiers Algiers is the capital city of Algeria as well as the capital of the Algiers Province; it extends over many Communes of Algeria, communes without having its own separate governing body. With 2,988,145 residents in 2008Census 14 April 2008: Offi ...

, 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 (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

(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 Russian women memoirists

References

Further reading

External links