At the Moscow Olympics in 1980, the ailing Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev has to deliver some opening remarks. He begins his speech, “Ooh…Ooh…Ooh…Ooh…Ooh.” Then his aide, bewildered and embarrassed by this peculiar introduction, dares to walk up quietly to Brezhnev, and whispers in his ear: “That’s the Olympic logo, General Secretary”.
This is but one of many Soviet witticisms, which exemplified the Soviet citizens’ cynical humor that characterized their attitude towards the Communist Party and had Ronald Reagan fall in love with them. Owing to his extensive contacts with Gorbachev, the Republican had deftly amassed an impressive collection of these uplifting riddles. Reflective of the Communist system’s deficiencies, and yet simultaneously carefree and optimistic, they vindicated George Orwell’s renowned assertion that “every joke is a tiny revolution”. If you happen to share Reagan’s penchant for Eastern European jokes, I suggest you saunter through this article by the National Post. It contains some genuine treasures that are, at least in my view, worthy of incorporation into the pantheon of our beloved president’s most iconic sayings alongside my all-time favorite “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem” and the Cold War classic, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”.
However, this disquisition on Reagan’s comic predilections is beside the point; nor do his charm and electoral prowess require regurgitation. After all, Americans rarely eschew scrutinizing his biography, especially considering his contribution to ending the Cold War in his country’s favour and his astounding re-election landslide against Walter Mondale in 1984, which saw the incumbent garner 58.8% of national suffrage and carry all but his rival’s native Minnesota. He might be alive in our memories, his phrases congealing with our quotidian vocabulary and attracting considerable public interest today, but the upcoming 2020 election has nothing to do with the Cold War, let alone the USSR. The world has changed drastically since his departure from office, and many of his lessons, prima facie, seem admirable, but not entirely amenable to productive imitation.
But that grotesque depiction of Brezhnev’s senility is not as bereft of context as the rest of the Cold War background, in which it originated. The American voters risk electing their own Brezhnev at the ballot box as the Democratic Party stands determined to counterpoise Donald Trump with someone whose go-to insult is a “lying dog-faced pony soldier”. Biden resembles Brezhnev to the extent that their simulacra are no longer coincidental: he is already displaying comparable signs of mental and physical impropriety for governance and committing speech errors with the regularity, previously only observed with Trump’s tweeting. For this reason, the Brezhnev comment might well have been made about the man proudly proclaiming that “poor kids are just as bright as white kids”. Arguably, there are plentiful uncanny similarities between Sleepy Joe and Brezhnev. Worse still, these far-reaching parallels are overwhelmingly pernicious to the American experience’s future.
Herein, I am not talking about the gaffes you could witness him make about foreign leaders; after he referred to Theresa May as Margaret Thatcher, this would come across as neither surprising nor particularly troublesome to his reputation. Rather, what pricks my conscience is Biden’s potential not to last for the duration of his term, insofar as he might turn incapable of running the country, and his authority will either naturally devolve to, or be usurped by, his inferiors. Therefore, Biden’s Vice-President pick constitutes an important moot point, since his preferred candidate will inform us of the trajectory, in which America will head under the Biden administration, more than his own positions and policy preferences. Some analysts have voiced precisely these concerns that any potential moderateness will be rendered null and void by members of the increasingly radical Democrat party nomenclature surrounding Biden. In other words, we risk ending up in a situation, where the de-jure head of state is Joe, but the person pulling the strings is his right-hand man (or woman). Moreover, we might even see a takeover of the presidential office by the party’s powerful congressional factions, arguably at a significant cost to the Constitution and the ordinary voters’ wellbeing, though this takeover will almost certainly be strictly dismissed by the media as good synergy between the White House and the US Congress.
This is precisely the fate that befell the Soviet Union, equally a powerful, ambitious nation at the time of Brezhnev’s accession. During his tenure, considerable power was delegated to his subordinates, and whilst this gave the local politics breathing space after Khrushchev’s attempts at constructing a personality cult, it decisively failed to deliver in the long run. Internal infighting resulted in the ousting of his political opponents, including the visionary reformer Alexei Kosygin – the architect of the 1965 economic reform that introduced profitability and sales as the indicators of enterprise success and promoted decentralization over stringent economic planning. Furthermore, his associates, such as his successor as the leader, Yuri Andropov, and Mikhail Suslov, who is perceived by historians and the people alike as the party’s chief ideologue and policy author eliminated whatever miniscule checks and balances the USSR had possessed and paved the path for an era, known as the Brezhnevian Stagnation.
More specifically, Brezhnev and his coterie presided over a period of slowdown in economic growth. Although Philip Hanson rightly points out in his book, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Economy: An Economic History of the USSR from 1945, that the country’s economy continued expanding under the contemporary leadership, perpetuating the status-quo meant discarding any efforts to modernize it or maximize industrial profits. Thus, the Soviet authorities chose to maintain high military spending at the estimated level of 10-15% of the GNP and repurposed considerable investment from the developing electronics industry towards laying the foundations of what would later explain Russia’s kleptocratic tendencies – harvesting oil and gas in Siberia. Furthermore, this period saw the government divagate from supporting regional manufacturing establishments, which hitherto had been helping cities spring up across the country and their populations enjoy a relatively decent standard of living. Lastly, little was done to tackle the dynamically growing shadow economy alimented by the socioeconomic stasis in the country.
Obviously, I am not suggesting that Joe Biden would scrupulously mirror this conduct; you may hardly anticipate the Democrat establishment’s overtures towards Texan oil producers, and high government expenditure on the armed forces likewise appears out of place. That said, the overall spirit of stagnation could easily find refuge in America under his administration: intolerable government spending on some unrealistic infrastructural projects is certainly on the table, especially if Biden’s kowtowing to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez materializes in her appointment to a corresponding government post. We could also expect a further rejection of the nation’s manufacturing past and the concomitant outsourcing of factories to Third World countries away from communities in Pennsylvania or Ohio. In many towns across the United States, Democratic mayors have already been pushing for the preservation of the status-quo, frequently striving to retain their electoral bases rather than to augment the opportunities for self-improvement available to their constituents – with Baltimore being a prime example of how the supposedly reformist Democrats deform the streets and neighborhoods they once vowed to change. Perhaps, this miserable fate will turn nationwide, if Joe Biden is elected.
Whilst the Soviet Union, and not the United States, lost the Cold War and dissolved thereafter, this by no means precludes that we learn from the Soviet experience. Ronald Reagan did that, in part by hearing and compiling Soviet jokes, and he went down in history as one of the most impactful American leaders. Instead of comprehending the domestic perspective alone, he grasped the totality, i.e. the Soviet worldview as well as the one cultivated in schools and households in the US. It is in this regard that I compare Joe Biden and Leonid Brezhnev; this article might have me portrayed as a doomsayer, but its purpose is less to scare and more to inform and forebode. When you set out towards the nearest polling station on November 3rd, remember that senile leadership has not been fruitful elsewhere around the world, and thence it will unlikely to prove any different in America.
