Leonid Brezhnev New Years Address (1979) Subtitled

In late December 1979, Leonid Il ich Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR sat in front of a television camera in a makeshift Moscow studio to record a New Year s Address to Soviet Youth. At the time, Brezhnev had been de facto head of the world s second superpower for some fifteen years. Seventythreeyears old, seriously overweight, addicted to alcohol and sleeping pills, an