The public image of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the alleged health problems he faces at the age of 73 are once again in the international news. The reason for this was a relevant article by the British newspaper “Daily Mail” which commented on his appearance and his “aged appearance” at the military parade for the anniversary of Victory Day in Red Square in Moscow last Saturday, May 9. The world “remembered” that he has been in power for more than 25 years – since 1999 – either as president or prime minister and is the country’s longest-serving leader since dictator Joseph Stalin, who had absolute control of the USSR from 1922 (and especially from 1928) until his death in 1953.
I note the comment by the Ukrainian online media outlet Crimean Wind, that “the image of the Russian president is reminiscent of historical examples of authoritarian leaders shortly before the fall of their regime or their death, while scientists link this phenomenon to chronic anxiety and fear of losing power that accelerates aging.”
I think the most characteristic of these examples is Stalin himself, who towards the end of his life became completely paranoid about his health and two years before he died of a severe stroke, began to kill…even his doctors! He had fabricated the famous “Doctors’ Case”, most of whom were Jews who were arrested and accused of…a Zionist conspiracy to assassinate Soviet leaders.
These doctors were brutally tortured to confess to…non-existent crimes and either died in the hands of their torturers or died in the deportation camps where he had exiled them. After the dictator’s death, the charges were dropped and the doctors who had survived were released.
Ultimately, Stalin died, but the totalitarian, one-party system that allowed him to act for thirty years unchecked and unpunished did not disappear with him. Because this system was not just a “Stalinist deviation”, but a constituent element of Soviet rule, as imposed since 1920.
The structures that supported the system, the prisons and labour camps where millions of innocent Soviet citizens took their last breath, continued their … “patriotic contribution” until 1991. In that year, the dissolution of the USSR emerged as an inevitable historical consequence of the self-destructive Soviet impasse and followed the peaceful revolutions of the peoples of Eastern Europe that preceded it in 1989-1990 and brought the end of the Soviet occupation and the Soviet era.
