Mika Brzezinski announced today on Twitter that her father, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had been an advisor to Lyndon Johnson and national security advisor under President Jimmy Carter, died last night at the age of 89.
My father passed away peacefully tonight. He was known to his friends as Zbig, to his… https://t.co/LU7X7kzjTH
— Mika Brzezinski (@morningmika) May 27, 2017
Brzezinski was born in Warsaw in 1928. His father Tadeusz was a Polish diplomat who was posted to Germany from 1931 to 1935, and to the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938, when he was posted as consul general in Montreal. When Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and jointly invaded Poland, the family remained in Montreal, where Brzezinski graduated from McGill University in 1950, and then from Harvard with a doctorate in 1953.
Although he is generally associated with the Democratic Party, he broke with the party over the McGovern wing’s pacifism and endorsed George H. W. Bush for president in the 1988 election. He was then a vocal critic of the George W. Bush administration and opposed the Gulf War. He then endorsed Barack Obama for president in 2008, and supported the Obama administration’s intervention in Libya.
Brzezinski is survived by his wife Emilie, a sculptor, sons Ian and Mark, and daughter Mika.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member