MOSCOW: He is the grandson of a Soviet tyrant who wants to reunite Russians as workers and equals. Yet he is also a successful businessman, who owns an American-style bar on a fashionable Moscow street and sends his children to a private school in Britain.
Soon he could be the new face of communism in Russia.
Andrei Brezhnev, 41, whose grandfather, Leonid, was first secretary of the Communist Party and iron-fisted leader of the former Soviet Union between 1969 and 1982, is head of the New Communist Party, which wants to become an alternative to the old, divided, but still popular, communists.
“Business and wealth in Russia today is about several clans stealing from each other,” he told The Observer. “We need a fundamental new social structure.” A rotund man who has been spared his grandfather’s bushy eyebrows, Andrei Brezhnev directs his campaign from Bar Alex, surrounded by Jim Bean posters and a Grolsch sign — the trinkets of western hedonism.
“I never spoke about communism with my grandfather,” he said ruefully. “I was 20 years old and always regarded the old order and communist ideas with derision.
“Leonid never spoke about work at home. He talked about nature magazines, history and fishing.
It was only later in life that communism proved inspiring, he says. Brezhnev is wary of his grandfather’s legacy. While he says that surveys show Russians found Brezhnev’s uninspired rule calm and peaceful, and that the name has helped to inspire interest in his party, he adds: “I do not want to be associated with that [old] image. I want to be appreciated for my ideas, and not his legacy. I did not change my name as I am proud of my family,” he says.
Russian law restricts the number of political parties, and Brezhnev managed to merge with two other communist factions to register the New Communist Party officially on 13 June. A businessman, who some feel is more interested in publicity than Marx, he advocates a new brand of communism.
“For 70 years communism was associated with a concrete system of management,” he explains. “We do not want to create a monolith. Now we have in Russia something like that which existed a hundred years ago, when communism was just a series of discussions and studies. We can have different factions within the party. We have not made any policy decisions yet. We are just beginning the dialogue.” But analysts are dismissive of his aspirations. —Dawn/The Observer News Service.
