kyiv strips Ukrainian-born Soviet leader of honorary citizenship — RT Russia and the former Soviet Union
Leonid Brezhnev, who led the USSR for nearly two decades, was born in what is now Ukraine’s Dnepropetrovsk region.
The Kyiv City Council has decided to strip the late Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, of Ukrainian origin, of the title of honorary citizen of the Ukrainian capital.
In Thursday’s vote, the decision was backed by 82 out of 120 MPs, the city council said in a statement posted on its website.
“This decision is another step towards eliminating the legacy of the former communist regime,” the statement read, adding that it was made in accordance with the country’s policy “decommunization”aw of 2015.
In 1964 Brezhnev replaced Nikita Khrushchev as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and also became Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in 1977. He held the country’s two highest posts until his death at the age of 75 in 1982.
The Soviet leader received honorary citizenship of Kyiv months before his death, after inaugurating the 62-meter-high Fatherland Monument, dedicated to the USSR’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, in the capital of the then Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. .
Brezhnev was born in 1907 in the Russian Empire, on the territory of present-day Ukraine. His hometown was Kamenskoye, located near the town of Ekaterinoslav, now known as Dnepropetrovsk.
During his rise to power, Brezhnev also served as secretary of the Dnepropetrovsk regional committee of the Communist Party. It is believed that he propelled many Ukrainians to high positions in the Soviet state during his reign.
Along with Brezhnev, several other Soviet military commanders and politicians, as well as the Vietnamese revolutionary Truong Chinh, were also stripped of the titles of honorary citizens of Kyiv.
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