It is an enigma to me. My best take on it is that the war machine coupled with the toxic paranoia of the senile Brezhnev government has caused the eventual dem

It is an enigma to me. My best take on it is that the war machine coupled with the toxic paranoia of the senile Brezhnev government has caused the eventual demise of the USSR. The Khrushchev thaw spanning nearly a decade before that, in my personal, somewhat weakly substantiated view, was the last chance when the USSR could begin a gradual transition into opening up and becoming a Scandinavian like socialist state (I can have my own pipe dream, okay?). What followed instead was the economic stagnation focused on the preservation of the Soviet state, heavily handed suppressions of democratic movements in satellite states of the Eastern block as well as domestic policies targeting the dissent.