Brezhnev Kin Lose Pensions and Privileges

Relatives of the discredited former Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev have been stripped of “undeserved” pensions and other privileges they inherited from the previous regime, the newspaper Pravda said today.

The announcement, in the form of an interview with the Russian Republic’s minister of social security, V. Kaznacheev, was the latest blow in a campaign to blacken the reputation of the man who ruled from 1964 until his death in 1982.

“There are a great number of undeserved honors, and as a result, undeserved privileges given to a person after retiring,” said the Pravda correspondent. “Sometimes these privileges were extended to the whole clan.”

The clan included Brezhnev’s daughter Galina, long a subject of speculation about corruption, his son Yuri and Brezhnev’s brother Yakov. Even Mikhail Churbanov, the father of Brezhnev’s son-in-law Yuri Churbanov, received a special pension.

Yuri Churbanov is facing trial for abusing power during his five years as deputy interior minister and for accepting bribes equivalent to 270 years’ pay for the average Soviet factory worker.

Cut to Normal Pension

“I can inform you that our ministry has received a decision according to which all people mentioned by you have been stripped of their undeserved pensions and any other privileges,” Kaznacheev said.

Kaznacheev said they had been reduced to only the normal pension earned by their employment.

Galina Brezhnev, who was linked by rumors to smuggling scandals in the last days of her father’s rule and is reported to be an alcoholic, is believed to live in a state dacha in the exclusive area to the west of Moscow used by the communist elite.