Its all about the cult of personality that leaders establish.
We've seen it with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, the Jong Il's and we're watching it happen now with Trump, Putin and Jinping. You can look throughout history and find powerful leaders who do whatever they can to attain power and then shape the country around what they value.
The one thing I admire Stalin for is the way he transformed Russia from poor farming country at the end of WW1 into a world power by the end of WW2. I'm not saying I admire the brutality of how this happened, just his conviction that Russia could be something more than it was.
|