So I studied Soviet politics. Which was a pretty useless thing to have a degree in for a long time. Since late 2015, however, it has become disconcertingly more relevant, and today - well today has been positively Brezhnevian. https://twitter.com/jasonleopold/status/1312933135793885184

As far as General Secretaries of the Communist Party in Soviet Russia go, Brezhnev was a fairly unremarkable bureaucrat except for 3 things: the Brezhnev doctrine, the length of his tenure (18 years second only to Stalin) and his death.

Brezhnev doctrine was essentially the Soviet policy version of domino theory (threats to communism in any Soviet bloc state needed to be contained). Horrible policy that resulted in misery, torture, death for many. Peak Soviet. Putin joined the KGB while Brezhnev was in power.

But by far the most remarkable thing about Brezhnev was his death. (Of which there may have been two but more on that in a bit). There was a four year editor of significant decline during which the Kremlin said - he’s super good. Read familiar?

The disinformation was so thorough that what he had is still unclear. There are theories he suffered something debilitating, possibly even a clinical death, as early as 1978, and was revived, but profoundly incapacitated. Others say it was dementia. Rarely seen. WILD speculation.

By 1982 he was hardly seen at all. With so little information, every appearance, every statement, every change to the Communist Party leadership ranks was scrutinized and pored over and analyzed to death. The party continued to insist he was fine, just fine!

Three major differences from what is happening today: time compression = chaos is one. We’ve essentially seen four years of Brezhnev speculation and canned “image-saving” proof of life appearances compressed into 4 days. And it is not over yet.

#2: control. In Soviet Russia Party + Politburo always called the shots, esp with an infirm Brezhnev. Trump is calling the shots, and it’s not disciplined Party messaging, or scenario planning, it’s total complete chaos. US leadership currently less stable than Soviet Russia.

#3: efficacy. Trump’s and the Soviets goals are the same: project strength and bolster that projection by any means necessary. The Soviets succeeded in managing a perceived political threat (it was actually much smaller than they thought) with carefully managed appearances and

statements. Trump did the worst possible things he could have done basically. If not for a free press, we’d all be in the same situation information-wise as the Soviets. In 2020. In America. The mind reels.

Back to Brezhnev’s death. 24 hours between when he died 1982/11/10 and its official “acknowledgement”. A cascading set of programming changes was so stressful that people when things would return to normal. An anchor cried on air.

Update on this thread: we are deep in Soviet Russia territory, but so poorly executed! Russian docs had actual medical degrees + stories straight. Updates are incoherent. Announced but not experienced sightings (he’s in the Oval!) do not build confidence. Staggeringly bad comms.

There’s no narrative, there’s nothing consistent, at this point in time no one genuinely knows if the president is well or not well, governing or not governing, but you can presume a lot from the fact he is not visible. This president ... is visible.