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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.