Misha Japaridze / AP Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov laying flowers at the grave of Leonid Brezhnev. Tuesday marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Soviet leader, who died in 1982 after 18 years in power. ----
On the eve of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Leonid Brezhnev, Communists laid flowers at the Soviet leader's tomb while ultranationalists blamed him for mistakes that, they said, precipitated the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Brezhnev was born in Ukraine on Dec. 19, 1906, and died of a heart attack in 1982 in Moscow.
"Brezhnev made an enormous, positive contribution to the development of the Soviet Union," Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov told Interfax on Monday, after he and his comrades placed laurel wreaths and heaps of flowers at Brezhnev's tomb on Red Square.
Zyuganov erroneously stated that Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union for 16 years. In fact, he took over in 1964, after Nikita Khrushchev was ousted from power, and stayed in office until his death -- 18 years later.
Under Brezhnev, the Soviet Union's GDP doubled, the country's atomic-energy industry was born and "practically every year saw a new rocket system emerge," Zyuganov said.
The Communists also planned to hold an event commemorating Brezhnev on Tuesday at Moscow's Electric Lamp Factory House of Culture.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, had a somewhat different take on Brezhnev. The outspoken, ultranationalist State Duma deputy said Monday that Brezhnev had spent too much money on defense, propping up satellite regimes and railways in scarcely populated areas, Interfax reported.
Brezhnev's biggest mistake, Zhirinovsky said, was the Soviet Constitution, which was adopted in 1977. The constitution included a clause allowing Soviet republics to secede from the union.
Zhirinovsky was speaking at a roundtable discussion on the 100th anniversary that had been organized by his own party; the discussion took place at the State Duma.
He also faulted Brezhnev for paying too much attention to the West, overreacting to chess moves made in foreign capitals. This tendency, he said, led the Soviet Union not only to spend too much on its armed forces but also to launch a disastrous war in Afghanistan, sapping the state of critical resources.
Zhirinovsky blamed Brezhnev and his cronies for overseeing a period of widespread theft and poor personnel policies that "turned the Soviet Union into a stray doggy while all the well bred bulldogs had died out in the country."
Law enforcement was so ineffective, Zhirinovsky said, that "everyone was stealing." In fact, he confided to Interfax, "I was stealing stationary."
Despite the criticism, Brezhnev remains one of Russians' favorite former leaders.
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2006/12/19/010.html
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