Is Putin Repeating the Mistakes of Brezhnev?

Mr. Putin’s nuclear posturing is intended to enliven a dreary, carefully scripted presidential campaign. Most of the candidates are familiar Kremlin stooges, such as far-right hooligan Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who has run in all but one of the country’s post-Soviet presidential elections, and communist Pavel Grudinin, who runs a farm named after Lenin.

No prize for guessing who will win.

The Russian constitution says that this next six-year term should be Mr. Putin’s last as president, but he could emulate Chinese President Xi Jinping and change the rules. At 65, he almost certainly has a decade or more of active public life ahead of him. But he’s already beat one record: This year, he overtook Leonid Brezhnev, who held power from 1964 until his death in 1982, as the longest serving Kremlin chief since Joseph Stalin.

That he should now find himself in Brezhnev’s historical company might not entirely please Mr. Putin. During Brezhnev’s final years, the Soviet Union dozed into a decade of stagnation from which it never recovered. Mr. Putin’s Russia is on a similar economic track. The Kremlin today compensates for domestic failings by posturing abroad. Mr. Putin’s popularity spiked after he annexed Crimea in 2014, and Russians appear to like their country’s military role in Syria. Polls show that 72% of them now consider their country a great power, up from 48% in 2012.

Mr. Putin has reaped the benefits of this renewed role on the world stage, and neither Russia’s business elite nor its population at large has translated their economic frustration into opposition to his continued rule. But there’s a cautionary tale in the precedent of Brezhnev, who spent his final years in the Kremlin addicted to sleeping pills.

Brezhnev’s successors, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, were aged placeholders chosen because they wouldn’t shake things up. They continued his disastrous war in Afghanistan while the Soviet economy continued to sink. When Mikhail Gorbachev took power in 1985 and tried to reinvigorate the Soviet system, it was too ossified to change, too brittle to survive. Six years later, it collapsed.

Watching Mr. Putin age and perhaps die in office is a prospect that few Russians find attractive. But what is the alternative? Mr. Putin has no succession plan. Some in Moscow speculate that he might amend the constitution to create a new role, letting him retain ultimate power while leaving the details of governing to someone else. His critics joke that he wants to become an ayatollah, replicating the role of Iran’s ruling clerics, who have a constitutionally-guaranteed status above the government.

Mr. Putin tried stepping back, at least partially, when he allowed Dmitry Medvedev to serve as president from 2008 to 2012, during which time Mr. Putin served as prime minister. Though everyone knew that he still held ultimate power, he was frustrated by his lack of direct control over the levers of government. When Mr. Medvedev’s term expired, Mr. Putin immediately returned to the presidency.

Instead of stepping back, could Mr. Putin perhaps step down? Retirement brings its own set of risks. Like every dictator, he faces a dilemma: Having obliterated the rule of law, he cannot count on his wealth or his personal safety after turning over power.

Several of his historical predecessors have had a quiet retirement after leaving the Kremlin. Others were banished to the margins of Russian society, or worse. Lavrenty Beria, the secret police chief who bid for power after Stalin’s death, was shot through the forehead. Former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov suffered a similar fate in 2015, gunned down on a bridge near the Kremlin.

For two decades, Mr. Putin has expanded his personal power on the theory that the only alternative to his iron grip is chaos. Polls say that many Russians think their country must choose between autocracy and instability. All signs suggest that Mr. Putin believes this too.

He may not be wrong. A political transition might go smoothly, in accordance with Russia’s constitution. But it might not. The last example, when Boris Yeltsin handed power to Mr. Putin in 1999, occurred without problems, but Yeltsin was ill and discredited, so he represented no threat.

Mr. Putin’s exit would be more complicated. As president, he has rolled back provincial autonomy and asserted central control. His successor, who will need to buy support from provincial leaders, may have to reverse this centralization of power. It was only 25 years ago that voters in Tatarstan, the oil-rich ethnic minority province in central Russia, approved a referendum declaring their region a “sovereign state” and demanding more autonomy from Moscow.

Many Russians are dissatisfied with the status quo, but most think that Mr. Putin’s exit could make things worse. Yet Russia’s rulers also know that delaying change is like putting a lid on a boiling pot. The political stew keeps churning. As economic stagnation grinds on, social pressure will only increase.

Russia’s youth, who have known no leader but Mr. Putin, joined antigovernment protests in large numbers over the past year, and they are less risk-averse than Russia’s aging elite. Postponing the succession question only makes the dilemma more acute. There is no need, in other words, to tune in to what promises to be Russia’s most boring presidential campaign yet. Ignore Mr. Putin’s ostentatious missile threats. The real question is: What comes next?