On November 8, 1978, Soviet newspapers reported the publication of Leonid Brezhnev's book "The Virgin Land".
It was the third part of the trilogy of Brezhnev's memoirs. The first two - "Small Earth" and "Renaissance" - were released a little earlier. Each part was published in a huge edition of 15 million. So, having finished the trilogy, "Dear Leonid Ilyich" became the most published writer in the Soviet Union.
Brezhnev set another "record", becoming the first Soviet leader whose memoirs reached the people. Lenin and Stalin left no memoirs, but Khrushchev's notes were published in the US. However, it later turned out that the trilogy was written by journalists Arkady Sakhnin, Anatoly Agranovsky and Alexander Murzin. However, it was the general secretary who received the fabulous salary - 179,241 rubles.
In the summer of 1987, these books were taken out of the bookstores and written as waste paper.
"If there is bread, there will be song... ".