WORLD : Brezhnev Stripped of WWII Award
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MOSCOW — It’s finally official--former Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev did not play a vital role in winning World War II.
The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet today stripped Brezhnev of the Order of Victory--the country’s highest military award--saying he did not deserve it, the official Tass press agency reported.
Historians and war veterans have long mocked the award bestowed in 1978 for Brezhnev’s role in a minor battle on the Black Sea coast in 1943.
Brezhnev’s own account of the battle, in which he was officially said to have come close to death, won the top Soviet literary prize. A song written about it was once the most frequently played tune with a war theme on Moscow radio.
In fact, Brezhnev was a political commissar in World War II, one of thousands of party personnel--who were civilians, not soldiers--attached to the armed forces.
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