It seems everything old is new again. Wikipedia on Kremlinology[1]:
During the Cold War, lack of reliable information about the country forced Western analysts to "read between the lines" and to use the tiniest tidbits, such as the removal of portraits, the rearranging of chairs, positions at the reviewing stand for parades in Red Square, the choice of capital or small initial letters in phrases such as "First Secretary", the arrangement of articles on the pages of the party newspaper Pravda and other indirect signs to try to understand what was happening in internal Soviet politics.
[...]
In the German language, such attempts acquired the somewhat derisive name "Kreml-Astrologie" (Kremlin Astrology), hinting at the fact that its results were often vague and inconclusive, if not outright wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RYAN The East could be just as mental - e.g. they were apparently convinced the first strike was coming because the lights were on in Whitehall later than usual (As you may have already guessed it was the cleaners)
And to anybody moderately knowledgeable of how the Union worked, and I mean people who lived there, it sounds more that RYAN was Andropow selling his political clientele the idea than it being purely a delusion, but who knows.
The few hawks (the army was probably the most pacifist part of the system, ironically) in the Union's army were more happy to hear that a war, and demise are coming, and be reassured of their continued usefulness to the regime, than being stated the obvious fact that the country is more likely go belly up because of Union's permanent economic crisis getting ever more severe.
To such people starting a war, and a collective suicide was preferable, and a more comfortable thing to think about, than to face the reality of the need to replace the political leadership, and this is the real insanity.
