Lenin.
He was 100% convinced that Russia was not the right place for Communism to take control. Nevertheless, when opportunity knocked . . .
He was, of course, 100% right.
Gotta give it to him, Ulyanov had that old-school style. If you want to found a regime you could do worse than have someone who rocks it like Lenin for the commemorative statuary. Plus, gotta say good on ya for feeling no need to drape yourself in a zillion medals or promote yourself to GrandSuperDuperMarshalInChief while you merely overthrow a government, win a civil war, crush your enemies, survive getting shot in the neck, install a dictatorship and all that in six years - hard workin’ dude!
The Monster was indeed the prime example of the totalitarians of the 20th century, but it’s not being “charismatic” if people keep applauding just because the first one to stop will get it socked to him. He was just crass. Points to him for helping save the world, but he did not set out to do that, he kind of got cornered into having to do it. Points taken off for creating the model for the Kim family.
Kruschev - classic type, he looked and acted the part of “the commie” for his time. Much excitement in his time (Hungary, Sputnik, Cuba…) and that made people nervous. Launched de-Stalinization. But in the end he was shoved aside (thus becoming the first of only two to retire alive) by…
Oh, geez… Leonid. The top Rusky of my youth. Eighteen years of such banality and vainglory. Adventurism through the world but no longer even pretending to follow the principles (other than crushing the opponent) and letting the edifice rot to its foundations. He tried to exalt himself to cult status but by this time the charismatic commies folks really wanted a picture with were Fidel and the various “people’s liberation” types, he was just the guy who paid the bills and dealt punishments. Boss, but not Leader.
Andropov/Cernenko? Bah. Placeholders from an upper Party that had no idea how the heck to deal with the accumulated decay of the Brezhnev age, just extended it a few more years. Don’t count.
So in the end it was between the first and the last. Ah, Gorby! The man who finally looked around himself and said, well, if what we’ve been trying the last 20 years is leading us down the pit, how about doing something slightly different, to see if at least we stop sinking? Reforms do tend to get out of the hands of the reformers, but at least he was able to dislodge the old Brezhnevites enough to allow the transformation to get momentum. By the time the hardliners tried to hit back at him it was already out of his hands and beyond stopping.
So it’s Lenin and Gorby, the two bookends.
Eh? Which of Stalin’s children succeeded him?
Chernenko - he was the least competent, and did more per unit time to push the USSR onto the trash heap than anyone else.
Khrushchev. Best named other than Stalin, and Stalin’s name was made up. Also, the burying thing.
Well, I didn’t see that coming.
Can’t believe I’m the first to post this.
The ABCs of Dead Russian Leaders.
‘A’ they’re Atheistic
‘B’ they’re Big shots
‘C’ they’re Communistic
‘D’ they’re Dead
Classic. Heard this on Dr. Demento show in the 80s.
Gorby FTW
The absurd stupefying hyper-dictator with garish mass demonstrations while starving your people model . Jeesh…
Looking at the poll results I wondered why on earth would anybody vote Chernenko. Now I understand better.
Gorby.
Glasnost - [Glasnost (Russian: гла́сность, IPA: [ˈɡlasnəsʲtʲ], Openness) was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information…]
I genuinely appreciate irony, in any language.
Gorbachev – even if the result was unintended, he was probably the guy who brought down the USSR. (Ooops!) Still, he worked with the US to try and bring peace.
(Lenin and Stalin were fucking tyrants.)
I don’t swing that way, so I voted for Gorbachev. Having said that, Stalin circa 1902…hmm. And he was a poet! (Very young Stalin looks like a nasty little snitch. 1911 Stalin looks like a Mafiosi–well, appropriate enough, I guess–or possibly the town drunk. 1915 Stalin looks like a totally goofy regular guy.)
Stalin is widely considered to be responsible for one of my favourite quotes:
“Quantity has a quality all of it’s own.”
Admittedly he was referring to troops and tanks but that doesn’t mean I can’t apply it to food and other middle class and capitalist pursuits.
Gorbachev, because the first mental image I get is the Simpsons rendition of him and I find that image to be quite endearing.
I’ll have to go for a choice out of left field and pick Andropov, he was leader of the KGB before becoming overall top dog and while he could never be accused of being anything other than a hardline Communist there is evidence that he would have/was moving in the direction of limited reforms and attempts to deal with corruption that were unfortunately cut short because of his ill-health.
He’s also the leader who in a secret meeting said war with the West was inevitable during the Operation RYAN/Able Archer incident!
btw I always liked the bald/hairy factoid about Soviet/Russian leaders, that since Lenin the leadership of Russia has rotated on a bald and hairy head basis, and with the return of Putin the process continues, hurrah!
Khrushchev, because he inspired a great Halloween costume I wore.
I voted for Gorbachev, but Khruschev was a reformer too, to the extent that he could be. Nikita overreached and was forced out; Mikhail overreached, was deposed, then got back into office just in time to have the whole system collapse around him. Since it was a brutal, undemocratic and grotesquely inefficient system responsible for vast human suffering, oppression and degradation, so much the better.
Khrushchev did a huge amount to reform the Soviet Union from its Stalinist horrors; he probably brought that ship around as much as anyone could have at the time without blowing it up. In context his reforms were as impressive as Gorbachev’s. His aggression against the USA was certainly no greater than that tossed his way by Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. Despite the evils of the regime, he was legitimately interested in the welfare of the people and tried his level best.
Golda Mier could make them all run up a tree.
Gorbachev is the most important leader of the last 40 years with perhaps some competition from Deng. While he didn’t intend the collapse of the Soviet Union, he did want to open up the system and end the Cold War and did more to achieve this than anyone else by far. Without Gorbachev, I think it’s quite possible that the Soviet Union would survive till today like Cuba and North Korea.
Stalin because he can stop cold an argument that Hitler was a one time aberration of human behavior. The others are all banal by comparison.