That was a delightfully weird rabbit hole, and thank you for that. It’s almost as if his eyebrows were a metaphor for the health of the USSR.

My grandfather’s clock was too large for the shelf,

So it stood ninety years on the floor;

It was taller by half than the old man himself,

Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.

It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born,

And was always his treasure and pride;

But it stopp’d short — never to go again —

When the old man died.

Like that song, except with eyebrows.