Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai represented a nation that had always been culturally pre-eminent in its region. Its leaders were aloof, self-assured, composed. Brezhnev represented a nation that had survived not by civilizing its conquerors but by outlasting them, a people suspended between Europe and Asia, with a culture that had destroyed its traditions without yet entirely replacing them. He sought to obscure his lack of assurance by boisterousness, and his sense of latent inadequacy by occasional bullying. To be sure, no one reached the top of a Communist hierarchy except by ruthlessness....
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