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Trump - Ignoring medical advice.
In the seven months since the outbreak first spread across the United States, he has flouted seemingly every basic health guideline put forth by his own government in response.
He repeatedly refused to wear a face mask, and held large rallies with hundreds of supporters who did the same, often in violation of local ordinances. He allowed the White House to continue its daily operations with scant social distancing, exposing himself to dozens of people who had taken few protections against the virus.
Stalin - When he had gone in for his regular check-up in 1951, his doctor told him to rest more and work less, words that Stalin did not take well, biographer Roman Brackman wrote in The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life. “[T]hree decades earlier, plotting to hasten [Premier Vladimir] Lenin’s death and pretending to worry about his health, [Stalin] had insisted that Lenin be kept from his daily duties,” he explained.
The doctor was arrested and charged with working as a spy for British intelligence. But whether Stalin wanted to admit it or not, his health was indeed flagging. When he summoned a Communist Party Congress—the first in over a decade—in 1952, those attending expected it to outline the roadmap of party succession. Instead, New York Times correspondent Harrison Salisbury wrote, “If it had seemed for a short time that the great roles at the party congress were to go to Malenkov and Khruschev, such ideas were quickly dispelled. The great role, the only important one at the congress, was played by Stalin himself.”
FROM:
Smithsonian Magazine
The True Story of the Death of Stalin
Stalin - Illness is hidden from public:
Trump - Trump sought to keep COVID-19 diagnosis secret Thursday as he awaited second test result: WSJ
Stalin - Cult:
Trump - cult:
The Trump cult lives in a meaner, alternate universe
Trump - Gangster:
Trump is ‘undeniably’ the worst criminal in history, Noam Chomsky says
‘The cost is greatly amplified by the gangster in the White House, who has killed tens of thousands of Americans’
Stalin - Gangster:
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"Born to a poor family in Gori in the Russian Empire (now Georgia), as a youth Stalin joined the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He went on to edit the party's newspaper, Pravda, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings, and protection rackets...
Widely considered one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Stalin was the subject of a pervasive personality cult within the international Marxist–Leninist movement, which revered him as a champion of the working class and socialism. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Stalin has retained popularity in Russia and Georgia as a victorious wartime leader who established the Soviet Union as a major world power. Conversely, his totalitarian government has been widely condemned for overseeing mass repressions, ethnic cleansing, deportations, hundreds of thousands of executions, and famines that killed millions...
Final years: 1950–1953
In his later years, Stalin was in poor health.[637] He took increasingly long holidays; in 1950 and again in 1951 he spent almost five months vacationing at his Abkhazian dacha.[638] Stalin nevertheless mistrusted his doctors; in January 1952 he had one imprisoned after they suggested that he should retire to improve his health.[637] In September 1952, several Kremlin doctors were arrested for allegedly plotting to kill senior politicians in what came to be known as the Doctors' Plot; the majority of the accused were Jewish.[639] He instructed the arrested doctors to be tortured to ensure confession.[640] In November, the Slánský trial took place in Czechoslovakia as 13 senior Communist Party figures, 11 of them Jewish, were accused and convicted of being part of a vast Zionist-American conspiracy to subvert Eastern Bloc governments.[641] That same month, a much publicised trial of accused Jewish industrial wreckers took place in Ukraine.[642] In 1951, he initiated the Mingrelian affair, a purge of the Georgian branch of the Communist Party which resulted in over 11,000 deportations.[643]
From 1946 until his death, Stalin only gave three public speeches, two of which lasted only a few minutes.[644] The amount of written material that he produced also declined.[644] In 1950, Stalin issued the article "Marxism and Problems of Linguistics", which reflected his interest in questions of Russian nationhood.[645] In 1952, Stalin's last book, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, was published. It sought to provide a guide to leading the country after his death.[646] In October 1952, Stalin gave an hour and a half speech at the Central Committee plenum.[647] There, he emphasised what he regarded as leadership qualities necessary in the future and highlighted the weaknesses of various potential successors, particularly Molotov and Mikoyan.[648] In 1952, he also eliminated the Politburo and replaced it with a larger version which he called the Presidium.[649]
With a high number of excess deaths occurring under his rule, Stalin has been labeled "one of the most notorious figures in history".[864] These deaths occurred as a result of collectivisation, famine, terror campaigns, disease, war and mortality rates in the Gulag. As the majority of excess deaths under Stalin were not direct killings, the exact number of victims of Stalinism is difficult to calculate due to lack of consensus among scholars on which deaths can be attributed to the regime.[893]
Personality
Chinese Marxists celebrate Stalin's seventieth birthday in 1949
Trotsky and several other Soviet figures promoted the idea that Stalin was a mediocrity.[760] This gained widespread acceptance outside the Soviet Union during his lifetime but was misleading.[761] According to biographer Montefiore, "it is clear from hostile and friendly witnesses alike that Stalin was always exceptional, even from childhood".[761] Stalin had a complex mind,[762] great self-control,[763] and an excellent memory.[764] He was a hard worker,[765] and displayed a keen desire to learn;[766] when in power, he scrutinised many details of Soviet life, from film scripts to architectural plans and military hardware.[767] According to Volkogonov, "Stalin's private life and working life were one and the same"; he did not take days off from political activities.[768]
Stalin could play different roles to different audiences,[769] and was adept at deception, often deceiving others as to his true motives and aims.[770] Several historians have seen it appropriate to follow Lazar Kaganovich's description of there being "several Stalins" as a means of understanding his multi-faceted personality.[771] He was a good organiser,[772] with a strategic mind,[773] and judged others according to their inner strength, practicality, and cleverness.[774] He acknowledged that he could be rude and insulting,[775] although rarely raised his voice in anger;[776] as his health deteriorated in later life he became increasingly unpredictable and bad tempered.[777] Despite his tough-talking attitude, he could be very charming;[778] when relaxed, he cracked jokes and mimicked others.[766] Montefiore suggested that this charm was "the foundation of Stalin's power in the Party".[779]
Stalin was ruthless,[780] temperamentally cruel,[781] and had a propensity for violence high even among the Bolsheviks.[776] He lacked compassion,[782] something Volkogonov suggested might have been accentuated by his many years in prison and exile,[783] although he was capable of acts of kindness to strangers, even amid the Great Terror.[784] He was capable of self-righteous indignation,[785] and was resentful,[786] vindictive,[787] and vengeful, holding onto grievances against others for many years.[788] By the 1920s, he was also suspicious and conspiratorial, prone to believing that people were plotting against him and that there were vast international conspiracies behind acts of dissent.[789] He never attended torture sessions or executions,[790] although Service thought Stalin "derived deep satisfaction" from degrading and humiliating people and keeping even close associates in a state of "unrelieved fear".[716] Montefiore thought Stalin's brutality marked him out as a "natural extremist";[791] Service suggested he had a paranoid or sociopathic personality disorder.[762] Other historians linked his brutality not to any personality trait, but to his unwavering commitment to the survival of the Soviet Union and the international Marxist–Leninist cause.[792]"
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"llness and death
"Stalin's health deteriorated towards the end of World War II. He suffered from atherosclerosis as a result of heavy smoking, a mild stroke around the time of the Victory Parade (May 1945), and a severe heart attack in October 1945.[1]
The last three days of Stalin's life have been described in detail, first in the official Soviet announcements in Pravda, and then in a complete English translation which followed shortly thereafter in the Current Digest of the Soviet Press.[2] As described by Volkogonov,[3] on February 28, 1953, Stalin and a small number of his inner circle, consisting of Malenkov, Molotov, Beria, and Khrushchev and a few others gathered together for an evening of entertainment and imbibing alcoholic beverages. The guests dispersed at approximately 4:00 a.m. on March 1 and Stalin retired to his private quarters with strict instructions that he was not to be disturbed until sounds were heard indicating that he had awakened. Time passed and no sounds were heard throughout the day. At approximately 11:00 p.m. on March 1 his housekeeper cautiously entered his room and found him lying on the floor, wearing his pajama trousers and a shirt. He was unconscious, breathing heavily, incontinent, and unresponsive to attempts to rouse him. Beria was called and, upon seeing him, discounted the fact that he was unconscious, attributing this to alcohol consumption, and departed.[citation needed]
At 7:00 a.m. on March 2, Beria and a group of medical experts were summoned to examine him. Based on their examination, which revealed a blood pressure of 190/110 and a right-sided hemiplegia, they concluded that Stalin, who had a known history of uncontrolled hypertension, had sustained a hemorrhagic stroke involving the left middle cerebral artery. Over the next two days he received a variety of treatments; and, in an attempt to decrease his blood pressure, which had risen to 210/120, two separate applications of eight leeches each were applied to his neck and face over the next two days. However, his condition continued to deteriorate and he died at 9:50 p.m. on March 5, 1953. His body then was taken to an unspecified location and an autopsy was performed, after which it was embalmed for public viewing. Attempts to locate the original autopsy report have been unsuccessful until recently,[4][5] but the most important findings were reported in a special bulletin in Pravda on March 7, 1953, as follows:
"Pathological-Anatomical Examination of the Body of J. V. Stalin"
"Pathologic examination revealed a large hemorrhage, localized to the area of subcortical centers of the left cerebral hemisphere. This hemorrhage destroyed important areas of the brain and resulted in irreversible changes in the respiration and circulation. In addition to the brain hemorrhage, there were found significant hypertrophy of the left ventricle (of the heart), numerous hemorrhages in the myocardium, in the stomach and intestinal mucosa; atherosclerotic changes in the vessels, more prominent in the cerebral arteries. These are the result of hypertension. The results of the pathologic examination revealed the irreversible character of J.V. Stalin's disease from the moment of brain hemorrhage. Therefore, all treatment attempts could not have led to a favorable outcome and prevent a fatal end."[6]
As summarized above, rather than suggesting a plot by Beria, on whom suspicion fell for his purportedly telling Molotov "I took him out",[7] at one point and his seemingly willful delay in obtaining medical treatment for Stalin, the physical changes seen during autopsy were consistent with extracranial changes that often occur in stroke victims. Lavrenti Beria's son, Sergio Beria, later recounted that after Stalin's death, his mother and spouse of Lavrenti Beria told Lavrenti "Your position now is even more precarious than when Stalin was alive."[8] This turned out to be correct; for several months later, in June 1953, Beria was arrested and charged with a variety of crimes but, significantly, none relating to Stalin's death.[9] He subsequently was executed at the order of his former Politburo colleagues, but there are conflicting stories as to when and where this occurred.[10][11]"
Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin
