KRASNODAR, Russia, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- A Russian city of Novorossiisk Wednesday decided to erect a monument to former Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, Interfax news agency said Wednesday.
The monument will be erected on the next anniversary of the city's liberation from Nazi occupation during World War II, known to Russians as the Great Patriotic War, Interfax said.
The decision to raise it was made by Novorossiisk Mayor Vladimir Sinyagovsky at a meeting with senior advisers and officials, the mayoral secretary Roman Shelest told Interfax.
The Ukrainian-born Brezhnev led the Soviet Union as general secretary of the Communist Party and then president for 18 years from 1964 to 1982. Although the long economic decline of the Soviet Union began during his later years in power, he presided over a greater degree of material progress for ordinary Soviet citizens than in any other period of the 74-year history of the state.
