Brezhnev's grandson uncorks his champagne communism

The Europe pages - Observer special

The grandson of the Soviet tyrant Leonid Brezhnev wants to reunite Russians as workers and equals and he could soon be the new face of communism in Russia. Yet he is also a successful businessman, who owns an American-style bar on a fashionable Moscow street and sends his children to a private school in Britain.

Leonid Brezhnev was the iron-fisted First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and head of the former Soviet Union between 1969 and 1982. Andrei Brezhnev, 41, is head of the New Communist Party, which wants to become an alternative to the old, split but still popular Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

'Business and wealth in Russia today is about several clans stealing from each other,' he told The Observer . 'We need a fundamental new social structure.'

A rotund man, who has been spared his grandfather's bushy eyebrows, Andrei Brezhnev directs his campaign from Bar Alex, surrounded by Jim Beam posters and a Grolsch sign - the trinkets of Western hedonism.

'I never spoke about communism with my grandfather,' he said ruefully. 'I was 20 years old and always regarded the old order and communist ideas with derision. Leonid never spoke about work at home. He talked about nature magazines, history and fishing.'

It was only later in life that communism proved inspiring, he says. Brezhnev is wary of his grandfather's legacy. While he says that surveys show Russians found Brezhnev's uninspired rule calm and peaceful, and that the name has helped to inspire interest in his party, he adds: 'I do not want to be associated with that [old] image. I want to be appreciated for my ideas, and not his legacy. I did not change my name, as I am proud of my family,' he says.

Communism in Russia is at a crisis point, many argue. Recent infighting led to three of its major figures - Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov, Svetlana Goryacheva and Nikolai Gubenko - being expelled from the party, crippling its already weak position. The party faithful still parade their medals in Moscow's city centre, but the party itself is losing more face politically.

At the last election, however, communism provided considerable opposition to Vladimir Putin, and Brezhnev hopes to capitalise on dissent over his authoritarian rule.

Russian law restricts the number of political parties, and Brezhnev managed to merge with two other communist factions to register the New Communist Party officially on 13 June. A businessman, who some feel is more interested in publicity than Marx, he advocates a new brand of communism.

'For 70 years communism was associated with a concrete system of management,' he explains. 'We do not want to create a monolith. Now we have in Russia something like that which existed a hundred years ago, when communism was just a series of discussions and studies. We can have different factions within the party. We have not made any policy decisions yet. We are just beginning the dialogue.'

Brezhnev says he wants to lead an internationalist party, opposing the quasi-nationalism of the main Communists, led by Gennady Zhuganov. He wants to see worker councils spring up across Russia like they did in 1917. Private property need not be abolished, he says, so long as workers are not exploited. He sells his ideas as a new, free form of communism, organic and ready to change. He adds: 'We have a different perspective because at the beginning of the century communism was about the working class. But now we have intellectuals, state servants and medical workers involved [in our party].'

But analysts are dismissive of his aspirations. 'Brezhnev is a strange figure,' said Andrei Riabov of the political think-tank, the Carnegie Foundation, in Moscow. 'I do not see him as a true leader of new communism, more a man using PR and politics to advance his own business interests. The media are exaggerating his real influence.'

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