Not only does he sound like his grandfather, the 37-year-old looks like him too. ``We want to reunite those who remember that when the country was led by my grandfather there were more good things than bad, that their lives were calm and predictable,'' said Brezhev of the man who ruled the Soviet Union for 16 years until his death in 1982.

The Brezhnev era was marked by a crackdown on political dissent and a tougher stance towards the West. ``Ninety-nine per cent of Soviets were happy, and only one or two per cent were discontent with not being able to read certain books or illegally change rubles against dollars,'' the young Brezhnev says. ``Obviouslymy grandfather banned the publication of works by (former Soviet dissident Alexander) Solzhenitsyn. But today, now that it's authorised, who reads Solzhenitsyn anyway?,'' he said of the 1970 Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1970 and one of the giants of anti-Soviet dissent who was finally expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974. ``He should still be thankful today to my grandfather who made a hero out of him,'' Brezhnev said. His group, the All-Russian Communist Social and Political Movement, insists that in the old Soviet days under his grandfather ``the bombing of Iraq or Serbia was inconceivable''. Officially registered as a party in September, the movement says it has 5,726 active members and insists that ``100 to 150 new members are joining every day,'' according to its number two man Semyon Kruglov.

The Brezhnev movement is already gearing up for legislative elections of December 1999 when it hopes to win over Russians who otherwise would cast their ballot for the Communist Party of GennadyZyuganov, which is tipped to win in the polls. To hear the first campaign speeches, peppered with references to Soviet patriotism and communist ideals, it is difficult to see how his party actually differs from the traditional Communists behind Zyuganov.

A specialist in foreign economic policy, Brezhnev graduated in 1983 from the prestigious Institute for International Relations, which when he was a student was reserved for children of the Soviet elite. He started his career working first at the foreign trade ministry, which was directed by his father Yuri, the only son of the late Brezhnev.

``The idea of creating a party came to me last spring when the daily Komsomoloskaya Pravda urged readers to send in their comments on the Brezhnev era,'' he said. ``I saw that of the 150 letters the paper received, only one had negative memories. Its author said that life under Brezhnev had been bad, but said that today it was even worse,'' Brezhnev said. ``If we win the elections, the number of discontents will maybebe greater than under my grandfather, but our aim is to make everyone happy,'' said Brezhnev, who inherited another trait from his grandfather -- that of reading his speeches.