Redpill me on Leonid Brezhnev /his/, was he the crappiest Soviet

>>2926556

Basically you need to know is that he was less authoritarian than Stalin, but more authoritarian than Khrushchev. He undid a lot of the cautious liberalization that took place during the Khrushchev-era, basically reverting the Soviet Union to a position that you could call Stalin-Lite. Andropov and Chernenko continued his policies and made no changes worthy of note.

>>2926556
He was a jovial good hearted fellow, not very smart. He was allowed to get the top job because he wasn't really ambitious or had any plans or policies. He just let the other party bosses rule collectively and be corrupt without the fear of being shot or put in prison.
He was just a figurehead.

>>2926556
>Soviet leader
>anything but crappy

G A R B A G E
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R
B
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G
E

should've employed the great terror like uncle joe did to prevent the rise of a gerontocracy in the soviet union. good at awarding himself medals.

>>2926606
He became figurehead, only after clinical death in 1976

>>2926750
0,2 $ was added on your account

>>2926556
No. There are 4 good reasons why one could say that Brezhnev is ultimately responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

1. He abandoned the 1965 economic reforms. Whether one uses official Soviet numbers, CIA numbers, or Khanin's numbers, it's clear that the 1965 reform was a success and that Brezhnev's abandonment of it lead to the "Era of Stagnation".
2. He was needlessly harsh towards the Czechoslovaks, which alienated the rest of the Warsaw Pact. This made Albania outright leave the Warsaw Pact and align with China. Others, like Romania, were more subtle and started "normalizing" relations with America. Nixon met with Ceaucescu, for example.
3. His implementation of the "Gerontocracy" (aka keeping bureaucrats in place long after they should have retired) meant that one generation later, there weren't enough experienced, middle-aged, bureaucrats to run things. Thus, really old ones replaced them. For example, when Brezhnev died in 1982, he was replaced by Andropov, a very old man. From 1982 to 1985, the Soviet Union had four heads of state (Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and Gorbachev).
4. The Afghan war. That war was a major reason why the USSR went broke, and Brezhnev started it. Before you say "warm water ports", Afghanistan is landlocked, and it's not clear that Pakistan or Iran (both aligned with America in 1979) would grant the Soviets port access.

>>2927389
oh btw, my main source for this is "The Soviet Experiment" by Grigor Suny

File: brej.jpg (67KB, 461x400px) Image search: [Google]

67KB, 461x400px

Brezhnev = stagnation (including cultural)
he also got the country hooked on the oil needle, that reverberates to this very day
he is an epitome of the old geezer that doesn't understand a thing

I've read somewhere that in his last days he was on so many pills he couldn't even speak coherently so he was just a puppet figure.