Literary genius of the General Secretary: Who wrote books instead of Leonid Brezhnev

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The trilogy of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee was published in such circulations that even the most popular modern publications did not dream. The books "Small Land", "Virgin Lands" and "Vozrozhdenie" could be found in any library not only in the Soviet Union, but also in friendly socialist countries. Leonid Brezhnev received the Lenin Prize for his literary work. But even then, it was clear that someone else was the real author of the books.

Most Awarded Person in the World

By the end of his life Leonid Ilyich became unusually sentimental. Soviet citizens, watching the next ceremony of awarding the secretary general on television, could often see real sincere tears of gratitude rolling down Leonid Brezhnev's cheeks. Leonid Ilyich was generously presented with awards not only in the Soviet Union, but also in the socialist countries with which the USSR was friends. Before the idea of writing the memoirs of the Soviet leader was born, people around him began to notice that the secretary general very often began to indulge in memories of his life. He often talked about his childhood, about the people he met on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, about the period of the country's restoration.

Then a colleague of General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko had an idea to systematize the memories of the first person of the state, to formalize them in literary form and publish them in the form of books. The awarding of the literary prize was not the main purpose of writing books. Party ideologists put at the forefront of raising the prestige and strengthening the authority of the head of state, whose health has been too shaken in recent years.

However, it was not Leonid Ilyich himself who had to write the memoirs, but professional journalists. At the same time, it was practically not possible to communicate with the "literary slaves" with the secretary general.

Leonid Zamyatin, who at that time was the general director of ITAR-TASS, was supposed to form a team of writers, warning everyone that his authorship would not be mentioned anywhere. However, then the authors did not yet know that they were not entitled to any material dividends for their work either. Leonid Zamyatin, recalling the day when he was summoned to the general secretary, said that Leonid Ilyich himself only asked to perpetuate the memory of the soldiers who died during the defense of Malaya Zemlya. Probably, the idea to publish materials about the heroic deeds of the soldiers in the form of the memoirs of Brezhnev himself appeared somewhat later.

Leonid Zamyatin and his deputy Vitaly Ignatenko personally selected a team of authors to create a literary masterpiece on behalf of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev.

Literary team

As a result of strict selection, the team for writing the memoirs of the Secretary-General included quite well-known journalists of the Soviet era. So, "Tselin" was written by Alexander Murzin, who served in the newspaper "Pravda" and specialized in materials on agriculture. Malaya Zemlya was written by Arkady Sakhnin, a journalist for Izvestia. Arkady Sakhnin himself categorically denied his participation in writing the memoirs of the secretary general and even threatened to sue those who talk about it.

Vozrozhdenie was born thanks to Anatoly Agranovsky, who was the unofficial title of “journalist number one” in Soviet times. Agranovsky was also entrusted with the function of finalizing the entire trilogy.

However, in all the sources about the real authors of Leonid Brezhnev's trilogy, the word "alleged" is prudently used, since there is no documentary evidence of the fact that the Secretary General's books were written by other people. There are only memories of people who collected the command or the words of those who worked on the text.

Other memories

There is an opinion that another book by Brezhnev should have been published, which would describe his activities as Secretary General. However, a serious illness and then death did not allow these plans to come true.

Memories of Brezhnev's childhood, his student years and the beginning of his career were published in the magazine "New World" during the life of Leonid Ilyich. After Brezhnev's death, three more parts of the Secretary General's memoirs were released. All of them were later published in the form of one book, which included the famous trilogy.

The established fact is that the essay "Space October" came from the pen of the most famous journalist at that time, covering space topics in the Soviet press - Vladimir Gubarev.

The journalist then got down to work with great enthusiasm. He hoped that his work, written under the name of the first person of the Soviet state, would allow him to honestly tell about the heroes of astronautics. However, everything that the then Minister of Defense Dmitry Ustinov considered a state secret was mercilessly cut out. As a result, in the final version of the text there were many omissions and inaccuracies due to the lack of part of the text. After the death of Leonid Brezhnev, interest in the literary work of the Secretary General very quickly faded away, most of his books were sent to waste paper.

In fact, Leonid Brezhnev was far from the first to use the work of other people on his works. For example, Alexandre Dumas had several authors, in collaboration with whom he created his works.