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MOSCOW - Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev is enjoying posthumous popularity among his countrymen who mark the 100th anniversary of his birth today.
"Brezhnev has been rehabilitated in the national consciousness and instils nostalgic feelings among Russians," said political commentator Boris Kagarlitsky of Brezhnev's 18 years in power from 1964 until his death in 1982. "Under Brezhnev the secret police did not force open the doors of the Soviet people, as happened under Stalin, and criminals did not force them open, as they would later under Yeltsin."
Brezhnev's high-profile successors Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin became celebrities in the West, but are blamed for creating chaos at home. Brezhnev is synonymous with stability in Russia.
After Brezhnev's two decades came the reforms of the late 1980s and the economic collapse of the 1990s, which caused a massive fall in living standards. Today nearly 39 per cent of Russians have positive feelings about the Brezhnev years, with only one in 10 feeling animosity, according to a survey earlier this year.
- AFP
