Almost twenty five years after the fall of the Iron Curtain in the late 80s and early 90s, a few countries emerged from the shadow of the former eastern bloc such as Estonia and Poland have quite successfully transformed themselves into modern democracies while others seemed to have simply failed to do so. The Russian Federation, the successor state of the Russian SFSR, is a particularly interesting case.
Despite the vigorous reforms and turbulence transition that happened during the Yeltsin-era Russia, many now believe that the old-fashioned communist system or the ‘power vertical’ rather has somehow reincarnated under the rule of Putin. From David Miliband calling Vladimir Putin a ‘ruthless dictator’ to Masha Gessen’s ‘The Dictator’ in the New York Times, I asked myself why they have chosen such vocabulary to describe the man. Is Putin really a dictator?
The word ‘dictator’, originated from Latin, is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as ‘a ruler with total power over a country’. Nonetheless, is he really someone with ‘total power’ over the Mother Russia as reckoned by many in the West?
Born and raised in an ordinary working class family in Leningrad, now known as St. Petersburg, young Putin had certainly given the impression of himself being a troublemaker. His childhood dream of becoming the type of glamorous Soviet spy that appeared in state propaganda movies had led Putin to join the KGB, an organisation that many believed had far-reaching influence on him than merely shaped his cynical attitude towards NGOs. In 1996, Putin made his first step into the Kremlin as the Chief of the Presidential Property Management Directorate. Unexpected for many yet hardly a surprise for few, within just four years, he became the presiden...
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...onsible for all the corruptions, frauds, and other crimes that he was blamed for. Given the influence of Russia on today’s integrated world where we see more collaborations and co-operations between countries, a better understanding of her leader not only gives us clues to why certain situation arises in Russia and beyond but also increases the chance of having more constructive dialogues. Not to mention that he came the first on Forbes’s list of ‘The world’s most powerful people’ in 2013. Even if you do not want to put up with him, I guess it is still worth remembering what Sun Tzu suggested in the Art of War: ‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.’
Works Cited
‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.’
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1771.Sun_Tzu
Joseph Stalin said, “Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don 't let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?”. Stalin was a dictator of the USSR from 1929 to 1953. Under his dictatorship, the Soviet Union began to transform from a poor economy to an industrial and military based one. While still a teen, Stalin secretly read Karl Marx 's book the “Communist Manifesto”, and became more interested in his teachings. When Stalin gained power, he ruled his nations using terror and fear, eliminating those who did not comply with his governance.
Vladimir Putin is the elected president of the Russian Federation. The former member of the KGB is known to some as a torturer, a tyrant, and a murderer and is known to have plans to recreate the Soviet Union. While saying that letting Crimea become a part of Russia is giving in to Putin’s communist ideals, Crimea is largely Russian, and is not strategically important to the European Union’s goals. Yanukovich’s (The former Prime Minister of Ukraine) security forces fired upon and killed dozens of protestors. He was ousted ...
Insightfulness is a key trait of President Putin. His understanding of the neoconservative foreign policy of the United States has led him to the conclusion that watching another legitimate government fall at the hands of CIA backed terrorists is a crime which must be
Putin is a ruthless leader that has been able to successfully maintain control over his military and political power. When he appears to the public, he preserves that horrible, strong masculinity. He makes sure that he does not appear weak in front of the masses; there are not even many pictures when he is smiling. He seeks to strengthen Russia’s military power and hopefully restore the old pride in Mother Russia. According to Machiavelli, it is important for a ruler to be able to win over his people by entertaining them.
"For hundreds of years, dictators have ruled Russia. Do they still? In the late 1980s, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev launched a series of political reforms that eventually allowed for competitive elections, the emergence of an independent press, the formation of political parties, and the sprouting of civil society. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, these proto-democratic institutions endured in an independent Russia" (McFual). However history has shown how Russia has always been an anti-democratic country; power having shifted to authoritarian rule under both the Communists and the Russian Tsars. Under the previous authoritarian rule, Russian citizens were stripped of their rights and freedoms, but in t...
Before the word for the usual brutality of a leader came about, called Communism, Ivan IV was born on August 25,1530. His abnormal behavior started to show after the death of his parents; both deaths occured before he hit the early age of 9. Ivan bore witness to a lot of horrible things like murder and beatings of people who didn't comply to the Boyars requests. He was molested along with his deaf-mute brother, Yuri. Ivan took out his anger on animals by "ripping hair and feathers off, piercing the eyes, and slitting open their bodies. When he became ruler, he sent 100,000 troops to beseige the Tartar and not too long later he launches an attack on Novgorod. His Oprichniki rode around wearing black and on black horses abducting priests and even murdering them in front of their congregation. He turned on his daughter-in-law and attacked her because she was "immodestly dressed" and caused her to miscarry her baby. When his son stood up to protect her, Ivan killed him. His son was the heir to the throne and now Ivan didn't have an heir. Finally his reign of terror ended when he had a heart a attack while waiting to play chess.
Khrushchev also indicts him of fabricating cases against honest Bolsheviks. That is his major blame of Stalin. How could he ...
Czarist Government: Czarist government is similar to an autocratic or dictatorial way of government. This is how Russia was ruled in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. This method of government was important to the Russian revolution because the revolution “really came out of the failure of the czarist government to reform in the several decades that preceded the 1917 events” (Russian revolution).
Richard Overy’s, The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia parallels these two regimes and their societies. Overy evades queries of labeling, but it seems that he disapproves of the totalitarianism theory. His book proposes that Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia had more in common, with regards to their methods of reigning than they did as individuals. These commonalities comprised the conformist scrutinizing the extensive facets of society and politics. Overy utilizes a prospect of the two states examining the court system, literature, labor, public opinion, party groups, nationhood, terror and sanctioned imagery. Upon reading and examining reviews of Richard Overy’s The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia,
... Lenin never would have imagined to what extent the General Secretary would go to assume control over the State as a whole.
"From Autocracy to Oligarchy." The Structure of Soviet History: Essays and Documents. Ed. Ronald Grigor. Suny. New York: Oxford UP, 2003. 340-50. Print.
Therefore, totalitarian dictatorship was evident through Russia’s history and in Animal Farm. In both cases, these dictators did not care about the welfare of their civilians, they only cared about themselves.
Vladimir Putin is one of quite a few contemporary rulers who display the attributes that Niccolo Machiavelli advised for rulers to have, but the Russian is said to be the one that has been the most successful. Niccolo Machiavelli was a politician, historian, philosopher, as well as a diplomat from the Renaissance that wrote The Prince, which was basically a guide to how Machiavelli believed a prince had to act to successfully rule his state. It is clear in Putin’s actions that he has some inspiration from the advice that Niccolo provided nearly half a century ago. “He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.”
Were Lenin alive today, he could stand up and truthfully say, “Without me, a nation would not exist.'; He singularly shaped the course of history. Russia was floundering, and Lenin was the totally committed visionary that it took to bring it back from the brink. He laid them foundation for what eventually became a world superpower, and had he lived longer, Russia could have been even stronger. It is no wonder Lenin became a Russian national hero.
Navalny, Alexey A. 2014. How to Punish Putin. NY : The New York Times, 2014.