Leonid Bronevoy

Leonid Bronevoy, one of Russian cinema's most famous faces who survived the traumatic experience under dictatorship of Stalin during his childhood, is now a film star and a hero in popular jokes. He was born Leonid Solomonovich Bronevoy on December 17, 1928, in Kiev, Ukraine, Soviet Union (now Kiev, Ukraine). Young Bronevoy was fond of music; he was inspired by his grandfather, a fiddler, and studied violin at Kiev Conservatory School of Music, and his future looked bright. His father and uncle were high ranking officers in the secret service of NKVD (predecessor of KGB) in Kiev. His uncle was shot in his office by an unknown person. His father was arrested in 1937, and exiled for 10 years during the repressions known as the "Great Terror" under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. Leonid Bronevoy was a young 9-year-old boy, when he was separated from his father. Bronevoy and his mother, Bella Lvovna, were forcefully uprooted from their native city of Kiev and were exiled to the remote