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Leadership
The first Tsarist family, the Ruriks, ran from the late 800’s  to the late 1500’s, after which there was a short period of 25-30  years called ‘the Time of Troubles.”  During this time, there was  an appointed Ruler who served for about 10 years or so named  Boris Gudenof.  It was from this name that the American cartoon  character Boris Badenof was derived.  This period also featured  pretenders to the throne and a Polish invasion, but all settled  down with the appointment in 1613 of a new Tsarist family, the  Romanovs.  This family ruled until 1917.              The gradual thinning of Royal Russian blood lines was  accelerated by entirely-German Catherine the Great in the  1760’s.  By the 1860’s, there was little Russian blood left.    Lenin’s family name was Ulyanov, and there was  considerable Jewish influence on his mother’s side of the family.  Stalin was Georgian, as was his number 2 man, Beria.  Khruschev was Ukrainian. Since 1963, Soviet/Russian leaders have all been  Russian, making it less of a surprise that there has been very  little substantial progress since then.  In terms of ranking leaders in categories like goal setting,  management skill, and communicability, the most important are:   1)  Peter the Great, early 1700’s.  2)  Catherine the Great,  mid/late 1700’s.   Stalin, 1928-1953.   4)  Khruschev, 1954-1963.   He makes the list because he was a Stalin apprentice who  managed similarly and kept planning for the future but with his  own signature and character.   
It is very important to address the issue of the relationship between  hard work and leadership, as this subject has been raised repeatedly by  Putin.  Putin believes that working hard in itself equates to great leadership--  -sort of like being a work-a-holic automatically means being an excellent  worker by any yardstick.  Putin practically brags about this.  HIS work,  though, is mainly focused on re-constructing “Russo-Soviet” bureaucracy, re-  building the past with a modern twist.  Looking backwards and not forwards.   Putin isn’t comparable to Stalin or Khruschev, who repeatedly set difficult  future goals and strived to attain them.