That is not correct. Brezhnev was in fact an advocate of stability and "trust in cadres." I would argue that Andropov was the most dangerous of the bunch.
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Replying to @RadioFreeTom @danvon1 and
Interesting—wasn’t he (for a time) Gorbachev’s key sponsor?
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Replying to @arnonmishkin @RadioFreeTom and
I think more than for a time. He was his sponsor. Curious what Tom says. But my understanding has always been that Andropov’s dangerousness was rooted in his knowledge of the decay of the system and efforts to change that. In his own way was a reformer too.
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Replying to @joshtpm @arnonmishkin and
Yes, Andropov helped bring Gorby to Moscow. But Andropov was a rigid ideologue, and thought "reform" meant "work harder and drink less." He was also kind of paranoid about the US and the encirclement of the USSR.
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Replying to @RadioFreeTom @arnonmishkin and
My understanding was that the throughline was understanding that the economic stagnation of the Brezhnev era was unsustainable. So reformist in that sense. Find ways to build productivity that can undergird competing militarily with the west.
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Replying to @joshtpm @RadioFreeTom and
Strange but true: Eugene Genovese, shortly before his hard turn to the right, said he really regretted Andropov's early death because he seemed like a guy who could fix the system.
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Replying to @HeerJeet @RadioFreeTom and
Genovese's life arc and scholarship is one of the greatest indictments of Marxism.
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He starts teaching at Rochester when Larry Kudlow is a senior history major there (and deeply involved in SDS), which says ... something.
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Replying to @A_NeedhamNYU @HeerJeet and
there's that great quote in Novick's book about putting down the SDS types by force once and for all.
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Yep, at AHA meeting Genovese called for old guard to smash the New Left: "put them down, put them down hard, and put them down for once and all."
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ironic because i think he got booted from the CPUSA over Hungary? but clearly had the crackdown mojo in his blood.
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