And paternally Jewish as well; I forgot to mention that.
The Stalin-era high elite was famous for being non-Russian. Mikoyan was Armenian, Beria was Mingrelian (a minority ethnic group in Georgia), Kaganovich was Jewish. Budyonny was ethnic Russian, even though he grew up among the Don Cossacks (his family had moved to Cossack terroritory and obtained the right to own land there; IIRC this was an unusual right for non-Cossacks that was unpopular among the native population). Malenkov was ethnic Russian, I think. Trotsky was of course a Jew (not that he was part of the Stalin-era elite).
Khrushchev was an ethnic Russian from Ukraine with some Ukrainian blood. Brezhnev was ethnic Russian with probably some Moldovan. Andropov was part Russian and part Cossack and maybe some Jewish. Chernenko I don't know about, but the name sounds Ukrainian. Gorbachev is ethnic Russian.
I don't know if you can recoginize a Georgian accent, but Stalin had a strong one. His vowels are all funny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkCXtMHCUTc
--- On Sat, 7/11/09, RicardoStarkey at aol.com <RicardoStarkey at aol.com> wrote:
> From: RicardoStarkey at aol.com <RicardoStarkey at aol.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Roma history
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Saturday, July 11, 2009, 6:03 PM
>
>
>
>
>
> In a message dated 7/11/2009 4:46:59 A.M. Pacific Daylight
> Time,
> lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
> writes:
>
>
> Lenin was Chuvash, Swedish, German, and I believe
> Kalmyk. I don't think he
> had any Russian blood.
>
> Thanks, Chris. I guess that's paternally
> Chuvash/Kalmyk and maternally
> German/Swedish.
>
> Interesting that neither Lenin nor Stalin was Ruskiy.
> Do you happen to
> know which other prominent Soviet leaders were also
> not Russian (or
> Ukrainian)?
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