A week ago this newspaper suggested that Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister and soon-to-be president, risked going down in history as the heir to Leonid Brezhnev. Fortunately for Mr Putin, his chief spin doctor is adept at rewriting history.

In a television interview Dmitry Peskov hailed Brezhnev as a “huge plus” for his country. Those who criticised him knew nothing about history, he said. Mr Putin is clearly happy to be compared with a man who may have extended the Soviet Union’s global influence, but at the cost of allowing the economy to stagnate, and corruption and cronyism to flourish.

Mr Putin himself has an arresting gallery of heroes. After becoming president in 2000, he restored the Soviet national anthem introduced by Josef Stalin. He also approved a textbook describing the man who dispatched political opponents to gulags and orchestrated the murder of millions of people, as an “efficient manager”. Stalin was also said to have been one of Brezhnev’s heroes. This raises the question about what other aspects of Brezhnev’s rule the prime minister intends to copy when he returns to the presidency after next year’s elections.