fitzk.bsky.social

The man on the right (with the eyebrows) is Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It is 7th November 1982. In 3 days, he will be dead. He does not know this. Or perhaps he does, and simply cannot stop the machinery now. A 🧵 about ageing disgracefully, 1/?

Brezhnev and his successors didn't destroy the USSR. What they did was use up time. Decades that could have been spent adapting, reforming, reckoning were spent instead on the performance of strength. On living in cloud cuckoo land. On always choosing the safe old face over the scary new idea.

The man on the right (with the eyebrows) is Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It is 7th November 1982. In 3 days, he will be dead. He does not know this. Or perhaps he does, and simply cannot stop the machinery now. A 🧵 about ageing disgracefully, 1/?

...decisions made for optics not outcomes, a population that has stopped expecting coherence and started expecting performance and a set of allies and client states who are increasingly divided and looking elsewhere for protection. It is performing somewhat better in terms of war and growth.

The man on the right (with the eyebrows) is Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It is 7th November 1982. In 3 days, he will be dead. He does not know this. Or perhaps he does, and simply cannot stop the machinery now. A 🧵 about ageing disgracefully, 1/?

Anyway, who cares? The USSR was a one-party authoritarian state. The USA, for example, is a collections of democracies with functioning institutions, press freedoms, and regular elections. These are not the same thing and the differences matter enormously. However... 13/?

The man on the right (with the eyebrows) is Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It is 7th November 1982. In 3 days, he will be dead. He does not know this. Or perhaps he does, and simply cannot stop the machinery now. A 🧵 about ageing disgracefully, 1/?

Mikhail Gorbachev is 54 when he takes power. He looks, to everyone, like a completely different kind of thing. Oh yes. 11/?

The man on the right (with the eyebrows) is Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It is 7th November 1982. In 3 days, he will be dead. He does not know this. Or perhaps he does, and simply cannot stop the machinery now. A 🧵 about ageing disgracefully, 1/?

The gap between the official reality and the actual reality becomes a huge chasm. Everyone inside the system can see it. Nobody inside the system will say it. Meanwhile, the Warsaw Pact has started to buckle, Afghanistan is a quagmire and there has been no growth to speak of in almost a decade.

The man on the right (with the eyebrows) is Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It is 7th November 1982. In 3 days, he will be dead. He does not know this. Or perhaps he does, and simply cannot stop the machinery now. A 🧵 about ageing disgracefully, 1/?

The man who replaces him is Konstantin Chernenko. Chernenko is 72 and has COPD. He wheezes throatily through his own nomination speech. At one point he cannot turn the page of his prepared remarks. A aide's hand enters the frame and turns it for him. 7/?

The man on the right (with the eyebrows) is Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It is 7th November 1982. In 3 days, he will be dead. He does not know this. Or perhaps he does, and simply cannot stop the machinery now. A 🧵 about ageing disgracefully, 1/?

Brezhnev dies on November 10th, 1982. The man who replaces him is Yuri Andropov, former head of the KGB, considered the "reformer", the sharp mind who will finally get the USSR's house in order. He is 68 years old and his kidneys are failing. Nobody says this out loud. 5/?

The man on the right (with the eyebrows) is Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It is 7th November 1982. In 3 days, he will be dead. He does not know this. Or perhaps he does, and simply cannot stop the machinery now. A 🧵 about ageing disgracefully, 1/?

The people around Brezhnev, i.e. the nomenklatura who have spent decades building careers on his continued existence, have an extraordinary investment in the performance of his competence. So that is what they perform: press releases go out, appearances are staged etc. The show must go on. 3/?

The man on the right (with the eyebrows) is Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It is 7th November 1982. In 3 days, he will be dead. He does not know this. Or perhaps he does, and simply cannot stop the machinery now. A 🧵 about ageing disgracefully, 1/?

Hail! Hail to thee, o, immovable pain! The young grey-eyed king had been yesterday slain. This autumnal evening was stuffy and red. My husband, returning, had quietly said, "He'd left for his hunting; they carried him home; They found him laid under the old oak tree's dome.

I pity the queen. He, so young, passed away!... During one night her black hair turned to grey." He looked for his pipe on a warm fire-place, And quietly left for his usual race. Now my young daughter will wake up and rise -- Mother will look in her dear sad grey eyes...

Is Jesus Christ indeed a bunker, as Maduro claimed last night? Only one way to find out!