There’s something about Trump that draws comparisons with Communism. The one I’ve heard most is the Cultural Revolution, where Chairman Mao incited a rebellion against the state he ostensibly led, with the Great Leap Forward (rapid economic transformation through absurd magical thinking) as a close second. Mao does not exhaust the field, however. There is a rich vein of ironic parallels to be found in the career of Mikhail Gorbachev. Here I am drawing on Vladislav M. Zubok’s Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union, which I discussed at greater length here.

There are any number of parallels that immediately leap to mind — such as their strange trust in their country’s historical enemies (Reagan for Gorbachev, Putin for Trump), their tendency to indulge in personal projects instead of governing (writing Marxist theory for Gorbachev, golfing for Trump) or even the fact that both have a bizarre visual feature on their head (the birthmark and the combover, respectively).

More informative, though, are the parallel dynamics of their careers. The first is that both shocked the political establishment with their radicalism. In both cases, establishment figures assumed they would be a fresh outsider face (Trump as a political novice, Gorbachev as the first Soviet leader born after the Russian Revolution) who could be controlled. In fact, in the case of Gorbachev it was likely that the need to control him didn’t even occur to most of the relevant power brokers, since he had previously been such a “go along to get along” kind of guy. But both Gorbachev and Trump 2.0 moved much faster and made much bigger changes than anyone was anticipating. In Gorbachev’s case, the establishment was too blindsided to do much of anything prior to the abortive coup attempt (famous for the Soviet TV station’s decision to play Swan Lake on repeat for the duration rather than report on events), and this time around it doesn’t seem like much of anyone with institutional power is making serious plans to counter Trump.

The nature of those rapid changes also bears comparison. Perhaps most notably, Gorbachev’s decision to simply leave the Eastern Bloc countries to their own devices was as shocking to Soviet insiders as Trump’s omni-trade war has been to their American counterparts. This decision is representative of a broader trend — their rapid changes tended to be strangely self-undermining. Gorbachev seems to have believed he would gain some moral authority and shed an economic burden by abandoning the Warsaw Pact, just as Trump claims to be righting a major wrong in the world trade system by fighting back against our allies’ supposed parasitism. In practice, though, both moves seriously undercut the sources of the respective superpower’s sway on global events.

The same was true domestically. Gorbachev styled himself as a new Lenin, instituting a renewed revolution to fully actualize socialism in its ideal form — including an eventual transition to democracy. Ironically, though, he ruled more purely dictatorially than most post-Stalin Soviet leaders, even as he continually undercut the sources of his own power. Key to his plan to democratize the Soviet Union was the ambition of reenvigorating the individual republics and their local “soviets” — moves that wound up stoking nationalistic fervor that had mostly lain dormant, which (shockingly!) proved to be counter to Gorbachev’s socialist goals. And though this analogy is admittedly a bit strained, both also made changes to the “official” history of their countries that hurt their legitimacy — Gorbachev by belatedly admitting the truth that the Baltic states had been annexed by force (morally good, tactically stupid) and Trump by hamfistedly imposing a white supremacist narrative to counter the scourge of “woke” (morally evil, also tactically stupid).

Similarly, the attempted reform of the Soviet economy took on a DOGE-like “move fast and break things” tone, as the few people who still had some idea how the planning system worked were sidelined and the functioning systems were gummed up. The attempt to make the constituent republics “real” again also had the effect of severely disrupting supply chains, similar to Trump’s antics. Contrary to the hagiography by which Gorbachev wisely oversaw the inevitable dissolution of the Soviet Union, the events of his rule were chaotic and unpredictable to almost everyone involved, due to the unique combination of naivety and recklessness he brought to the table.

In summary, both were aspiring revolutionary dictators, aiming to revive an idealized heroic national past, and both relentlessly destroyed the state capacity necessary to carry out their stated goals. Both responded to economic discontent by heedlessly making things even worse. Both abandoned allies and cozied up to long-time enemies who did not actually have their nation’s interests at heart.

Where the parallel begins to break down is that Gorbachev’s intentional stoking of intra-Union nationalism wound up creating independent power centers that ultimately dissolved his country out from under him. A few months into the Trump administration, we don’t seem to be very far down that road — though arbitrarily witholding federal funding to “blue” states could do for state-level identification what Trump’s abominable threats have done to Canadian nationalism. Maybe Gavin Newsom will turn out to be America’s Boris Yeltsin, withdrawing the single biggest constituent unit from a tottering federal structure (though of course California is proportionally nowhere near as dominant as the Russian “Republic” was within the USSR).

And of course, for most Western readers, the parallel rankles because Trump is bad and Gorbachev was good. Personally, I’m not so sure that dissolving a major world power, permanently racheting down the life prospects of everyone in the successor nations, and abandoning a major region of the world to what amounts to mafia rule was an unalloyed good. If the choice were between the continued existence of the USSR and the constituent republics becoming nice, normal, prosperous liberal democracies, obviously the latter outcome holds considerable appeal — but it is not remotely what happened, nor is there really any reason to imagine that option was on the table. Meanwhile, judging from the early days of Trump’s second term, the world may well regard the dissolution of the United States with relief by the time he’s done.

If that sounds impossible to you, well, the dissolution of the Soviet Union would have sounded impossible to everyone in the early 80s — from Gorbachev and Reagan all the way on down. A superpower doesn’t just destroy itself! That would be crazy! But sometimes crazy things happen. We unfortunately seem to be living through one example — hence the value of thinking through a previous case.