Themes: Leaderships

The comparison of leaderships makes up a large part of the analysis of political change.

Stalin
- strong, decisive leadership which commanded respect
- ideology
- brutal, dictatorial, paranoid, resistant to change
- rigid control and denial of outside influences
- death toll & purges
- economy strong but extremely rigid and controlled
- no dissent because no dissent tolerated

Khrushchev
- popular, accepting of reform and more humane
- unpredictable, coarse and indecisive
- dismantled Stalinism
- peaceful co-existence
- ignored party responsibility for crimes
- economic failures

Brezhnev
- stable, reliable
- poor judgement, conservative, corrupt
- abuse of system
- cult of personality
- treatment of peasants
- stagnation
- ideology lost meaning

Gorbachev
- more liberal and Western
- recognised need for change
- indecisive, inconsistent, hesitant
- opened society
- more realistic defence and foreign policy
- contribution to break-up
- not an economist

I was going to put pictures of the leaders on this post, but I thought it might scare away my readers. Eeek...

Interesting thought: Russian leaders alternate - bald, had hair, bald, had hair etc

Lenin - bald
Stalin - had hair
Khrushchev - bald
Brezhnev - had hair
Andropov - bald
Chernenko - had hair
Gorbachev - bald

That's... um, interesting, right? And, um, of course, highly significant to their leaderships...

- HistGrrl?