For all the obvious similarities between Vladimir Putin and Soviet dictators—from stage-managed party congresses to farcical “elections”—the regime in Moscow was at least shy to admit the likeness publicly. No longer, it seems. In a television interview last week, Putin’s press secretary, Dmitri Peskov, not only accepted the comparison of his boss to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, but readily embraced it. “Brezhnev was not a negative for our country’s history,” Peskov opined to his interviewers’ disbelief, “He was a huge positive.”
