"Everything's lost. I give up."
Stalin said he could no longer be the Leader. He resigned.
At midday, when Stalin usually arrived at the Kremlin, he did not come. He did not appear later in the day. The vacuum of power was palpable...
"Comrade Stalin's not here and I don't know when he will be."
Stalin "had shut himself away from everybody, was receiving nobody and was not answering the phone."
Molotov told Mikoyan..."Stalin had been in such a state of prostration for the last two days that he was not interested in anything, didn't show any initiative and was in a bad way."
Yet Stalin had read his history: he knew that Ivan the Terrible, his "teacher," had also withdrawn from power to test the loyalty of his boyars.
...this was the only real opportunity they had to overthrow Stalin...
The breakdown was real enough: [Stalin]was depressed and exhausted.
Yet Molotov and Mikoyan were right: it was also "for effect." The withdrawal from power was a well-tried pose, successfully employed from Achilles and Alexander the Great to Ivan. [And later by Stalin's student, Mao Zedong.] Stalin's retreat allowed him to be effectively re-elected by the Politburo, with the added benefit of drawing a line under the bungles up to that point...So it was both a breakdown and a political restoration.
"Those who ignore history are damned to repeat it," we could put that onto a Hallmark card too, along with "History is bunk." Vladimir Putin is not facing anything like what Stalin faced upon launch of Operation Barbarossa. Among the reasons posited for his now ten-day absence is the pressure on him from the murder of Boris Nemtsov. There are rumors today that a silent coup has occurred. No. But more recent history is not as comforting: Both Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin were subject to coup attempts in their absence and Putin has been under some pressure: from his invasions of Ukraine, to which Nemtsov was a "bridge;" from the preposterous arrest of the Chechen Muslims in Nemtsov's murder; from Western sanctions which have devastated Russia's economy.
Putin is more scholar of Russia's history than was Stalin; he knows the value of a strategic retreat for a Russian leader under pressure. I have read that there is little else in the Russian press than his absence, little else on peoples' minds. Stalin retreated to his dacha seven days after Barbarossa began. On the tenth day:
Stalin reappeared in the office, "a new man"...
Tomorrow, the eleventh day since Vladimir Putin "vanished," he is scheduled to meet with the president of Kyrgyzstan.
All quotations from Stalin, The Court of the Red Tsar, Simon Sebag Montefiore, 374-77.
Stalin said he could no longer be the Leader. He resigned.
At midday, when Stalin usually arrived at the Kremlin, he did not come. He did not appear later in the day. The vacuum of power was palpable...
"Comrade Stalin's not here and I don't know when he will be."
Stalin "had shut himself away from everybody, was receiving nobody and was not answering the phone."
Molotov told Mikoyan..."Stalin had been in such a state of prostration for the last two days that he was not interested in anything, didn't show any initiative and was in a bad way."
Yet Stalin had read his history: he knew that Ivan the Terrible, his "teacher," had also withdrawn from power to test the loyalty of his boyars.
...this was the only real opportunity they had to overthrow Stalin...
The breakdown was real enough: [Stalin]was depressed and exhausted.
Yet Molotov and Mikoyan were right: it was also "for effect." The withdrawal from power was a well-tried pose, successfully employed from Achilles and Alexander the Great to Ivan. [And later by Stalin's student, Mao Zedong.] Stalin's retreat allowed him to be effectively re-elected by the Politburo, with the added benefit of drawing a line under the bungles up to that point...So it was both a breakdown and a political restoration.
"Those who ignore history are damned to repeat it," we could put that onto a Hallmark card too, along with "History is bunk." Vladimir Putin is not facing anything like what Stalin faced upon launch of Operation Barbarossa. Among the reasons posited for his now ten-day absence is the pressure on him from the murder of Boris Nemtsov. There are rumors today that a silent coup has occurred. No. But more recent history is not as comforting: Both Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin were subject to coup attempts in their absence and Putin has been under some pressure: from his invasions of Ukraine, to which Nemtsov was a "bridge;" from the preposterous arrest of the Chechen Muslims in Nemtsov's murder; from Western sanctions which have devastated Russia's economy.
Putin is more scholar of Russia's history than was Stalin; he knows the value of a strategic retreat for a Russian leader under pressure. I have read that there is little else in the Russian press than his absence, little else on peoples' minds. Stalin retreated to his dacha seven days after Barbarossa began. On the tenth day:
Stalin reappeared in the office, "a new man"...
Tomorrow, the eleventh day since Vladimir Putin "vanished," he is scheduled to meet with the president of Kyrgyzstan.
All quotations from Stalin, The Court of the Red Tsar, Simon Sebag Montefiore, 374-77.
