I sometimes shake my head in wonder when I reflect on who was yet with us when I was born … Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Tojo, Mao and a bunch of other ne’er do wells. I’m surpised I didn’t pop out, look about me, and say ‘no thanks, I’ll just head back up the birth canal.’ It was a scary world populated by a number of psychopathic leaders.

As a group, they killed tens of millions either directly, through ordered assassinations, or indirectly through starvation as a result of misguided policies. Stalin killed 5 million Ukrainians alone through his rural collectivization policies while Mao starved millions of peasants during his so called ‘great leap forward’ campaign. The numbers are so huge that we are numbed by them.

Such men easily turned on their own. Hitler had Ernst Rohm, one of his oldest friends and head of the Brown Shirts, murdered when this man became inconvenient. Mao turned on his second in command when his old friend from ‘the long march’ had the temerity to mildly criticize some of the supreme leader’s policies in public. But no one seemed to enjoy killing his friends and associates as much as Joseph Stalin. By 1937, this ‘man of steel’ had virtually all the original Bolsvehviks assassinated or banished, even those who were Lenin’s original partners in the October Revolution. Poor Leon Trotsky was initially forced to emigrate before Stalin’s assassin’s later tracked him down in Mexico to split his head open with an axe. Being in a leadership position with these tyrants was not necessarily good for one’s health.

Many thought that the worst of Stalin’s bloodlust and paranoia ended with his death in 1953. When one of the few survivor’s of his many purges, Nikita Kruschev, rose to the top of the Politburo later in the 1950s, he initiated a campaign of de-Stalinization. The surviving Soviet leaders, in particular, wanted to move beyond the model of control where the last man standing rules. The test of that new approach came when Nikita himself was deposed in the 1960s. He was surrounded by KGB agents while on vacation and ordered back to Moscow by the Politburo. His botching of the Cuban Missile Crisis had begun the unraveling of his stay at the top even though his sensible actions during the height of this face off between super powers may have saved mankind from itself. In the old days, his loss of power would have been a death sentence. In the post-Stalin era, he was permitted to resign and live out his last years in relative peace.

Since then, Russian leaders have come and gone but few, if any, have merely disappeared or been sent to the Gulag after a show trial. Gorbachev and Yeltsin oversaw the dismantling of the Soviet Empire and faced little in the way of consequences. When the Soviets crushed the liberalization in Checkoslavakia under Alexander Dubcek, this reformer was not summarily shot. He was merely stipped of his powers and given a minor job in some rural part of the country. It did look as if the Communists had joined the ranks of civilized nations … until recently that is.

Okay, they are no longer Communists technically, but Russia is still run under an autocratic regime. You might call it oligarchic capitalism or a capitalist dictatorship but names are rather meaningless. The country is run by a few for the benefit of the elite. The vanguard of the proletariat is now the vanguard of the filthy rich as they exploit the nation for their selfish interests. Hmmm, sounds just like contemporary America. One wonders what has changed other than the prevailing terminology. In the old Communist regime, they had the Nomenclatura, a list of the privileged few who enjoyed resources and comforts beyond the wildest imaginings of the common folk, the proletariat. Now, those rewards go to Putin’s buddies.

However, there appears to be one aspect of the old Stalinist regime, seemingly buried along with his body, that is making a comeback … leadership through terror and assassination. Now, I’m not saying that Vladimir Putin is the reincarnation of Joseph Stalin. No one is that bad. But he might be vying for mini-Stalin status. No wonder Trump groveled at his feet. Putin is the hyper-autocrat that The Donald craves to be. Trump would love to be able to elimnate his enemies in some permanent manner. For many years in the Putin era, his rivals for wealth and power merely wound up in jail. They no longer sent them off to the Siberian Gulag or had them disappear. Then things took a violent turn after the invasion of Ukarine in February, 2022. Let’s look at a few of the more recent strange happenings.

Artem Bartenev, age 42, mysteriously has fallen from a 12th story window. He had been a judge appointed by Putin but perhaps fell out of favor.

Belarus Leader Alexander Lukashenko was rushed to the hospital with a mysterious ailment after a public appearance with Vladimir. He is either in a coma or dead.

Earlier this month, Yuri Demin, age 62, fell from a 2nd floor window. He was head of a Russian State Inspectorate agency.

In February, Marina Yankna, age 58, head of the Russin Ministry of Defense Financial Support Department died mysteriously after criticizing the Ukrainian incursion.

In December, 2022, Russian politician Pavel Antov fell from a window in India after criticizing the Ukrainian adventure.

Also in Decenmber, Antov’s close friend was found dead from some unkown cause in a hotel room.

In September of 2022, Pavil Maganov, chariman of the Russian oil giant, Lukoil, fell out of a window in his hospital room. Also a mystery.

Finally, another highly placed Russian, Pyotr Kucherenko, fell ill on a flight from Havana to Moscow and died. Yet another mystery.

Perhaps the Public Health Service in Russia should issue a warning to ‘stay away from windows’ or, perhaps more effectively, don’t ‘criticize the supreme leader.’ Then again, perhaps one should consider the possibility that the extra-legal elimination of political rivals, real and imagined, have become the norm in Russia today. Perhaps historians in the future will unravel what is going on in that struggling country today. What is well known is that few now bring him the truth about his Ukrainian campaign. Those surrounding Putin don’t tell him about 100,000 dead Russian troops or 8,000 lost armored vehicles. After all, falling from a window is not something most of us seek out willingly. How many around Trump told him he LOST THE 2020 ELECTION to his face.

But here is where the Stalin approach to leadership might be pertinent to our situation today. Our wanna-be dictator, Donald Trump, has been indicted for a second time, now for very serious federal crimes. Not surprisingly, The Donald has been ranting about the coming violence if he were to suffer any consequences for his crimes. His public posturing might be dismissed as the ravings of a sociopathic narcissist. He clearly has gone around the bend.

What is troublesome has been the reaction of the core Republican base. Given that Trump remains the clear front runner to his Party’s nomination for 2024, this major political party apparently remains entrenched in a parallel universe. It is a world where Trump clearly won the 2020 election; where Biden, not Trump, is the epitomy of corruption; and where the federal legal agencies (Justice, FBI, etc.) have been weaponized in the service of the ‘Deep State.’ And, oh yes, Hillary is still running a pedophilia ring out of a string of pizza parlors.

And what is really troublesome has been the immediate reaction from Donald’s most committed supporters. Over the past 24 hours or so, the right wing internet has exploded with calls for an open civil war. There are calls for assassinating those responsible for the persecution of their hero, the man they see as the savior of White America and as Christ’s representative on earth, which is odd since Christ was not white and was a Jew, though who quibbles about such details. Some even have threatened to go after Merrick Garland’s children and grandchildren, the U.S. Attorney General whom they see as a traitor to America for insisting that we should remain a nation governed by law and not serve at the whim of men.

As my late wife often said, the political spectrum is a horshoe, not a straight line. The extremes are closer to one another than to the center. Putin could easily shift from being a KGB agent to a Capitalist Autocrat. That journey was short indeed. Once there, the tactics of an older era of tyrants must seem appealing, especially when the pressure is on after a failed (or seemingly failed) incursion into the Ukraine. Stalin did not remain in power because he was a brilliant leader or did good things for the Soviet Union. He remained in power through fear and violence. That is a lesson not lost on Putin, nor on his devotee and acolyte, Donald Trump.

NOTE: The picture above Putin is me (my college pic). My old college girfriend put this together after we reconnected in cyberspace after some 4 decades. She had a wicked sense of humor and wanted to make fun of her favorite socialist … ME!