Kremlin Highlander. Joseph Stalin's Patography - A Psychiatrist's Review - Great And Terrible

There is no need to introduce Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin in our country. The leader of the Soviet people is most aptly characterized by his own principle: "Healthy distrust is a good basis for joint work." It didn’t matter to him that the “healthy mistrust” had blown millions of lives in the wind of repression

Schizoid personality traits

Soso? Dzhugashvili - student of the Tiflis Theological Seminary (1894)

The psychiatric characterization of Stalin, which became famous during the period of perestroika, is unambiguous and allows us to draw a terrible conclusion - a mentally ill person ruled the country for thirty years.

Professor of psychiatry A. E. Lichko believes that already in his youth and youth, Joseph Dzhugashvili in certain situations clearly manifested schizoid character traits:

• isolation, unsociability, alienation from others;
• emotional coldness;
• restraint in the expression of feelings;
• inability to empathize;
• non-conformism in behavior;
• immersion in the inner world of unusual interests.

He retained schizoid features for the rest of his life. Many contemporaries of Stalin noted an amazing restraint in the manifestation of feelings (before he showed signs of cerebral sclerosis in old age) and cold equanimity.

Academician, who treated the most senior leaders of Russia from the imperial family to the Soviet Politburo, VM Bekhterev repeatedly examined Joseph Vissarionovich, and his conclusion was bleak: “Unbalanced psyche. Progressive paranoia with clearly expressed excessive suspicion, persecution mania."

Megalomania

Koba, member of the Marxist circle (1902)

The medical diagnoses of highly qualified psychiatrists about Stalin's mental state are similar. All of them note the isolation, extraordinary suspicion, the extremely peculiar thinking of the ruler, in which any real facts were ignored or obeyed his own ideas. Add to this a grandiose megalomania and persecution with periodic exacerbations.

“The multimillion-dollar sacrifices that Stalin made with exceptional ease for the sake of satisfying his own delirium and fear of“enemies”- all this fits into the scheme of paranoid schizophrenia,” writes the psychiatrist, professor O. Vilenkin.

“Something about Stalin's behavior is really embarrassing. It is possible that he, in fact, had periods when delirium could arise. Certain characterological features of Stalin arouse suspicion. Coldness towards children. To the grandchildren. Coldness and lack of deep affection for anyone. But this is not madness or delirium - these are characterological features,”- analyzes the portrait of the leader Professor AG Gofman, who at that time headed the department of the Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry.

Asocial psychopathy

Traits such as heightened suspicion, the prevailing idea of its special meaning, special mission, extreme egoism, excessive conceit, one-sidedness in assessments, intolerance of other people's opinions, rancorous resentment - all these are properties of a far from harmonious personality.

In psychiatry, such individuals are classified as psychopathic and paranoid-psychopathic

“The strengthening of suspicion, intolerance, suspiciousness and other difficult characterological qualities that have entailed waves of repression since the thirties - all this with a greater degree of probability can be explained by prolonged hypertension and atherosclerosis” health N. Kornetov.

Baku, March 23, 1910.

Professor A. A. Sobchak draws attention to the fact that Stalin's suspicion was manifested in small things.

He never sat with his back to the door; he did not like to be crawled into inner pockets in his presence; he came to any meetings and conferences late

Russian psychiatrists describe a whole range of mental disorders. In a complex conglomerate of personality disorders in Stalin, either epileptoid traits, or the traits of a fanatic psychopath, or individual hysterical-characterological and expansive-schizoid features, or paranoia that intensify over the years, come to the fore. In general, if we consider this mosaic psychopathy in the aspect of its relationship with society, it cannot but be recognized as asocial.

Stalin, Lenin and Kalinin. 1919 year

Fear of assassination

This fear haunted Stalin constantly. “The degree of his mistrust, suspicion, fear of poisoning went so far in the last year of his life that there were cases when he, locked in his office, personally cooked his own food on the electric stove. Knowing how he hated this occupation, and considering that only the most primitive dish - scrambled eggs or boiled pasta - can be prepared in such a handicraft way, such actions of Stalin seem absolutely incredible and fantastic”(Pokhlebkin V. V., 1997).

It is no coincidence that in all trials of his political opponents, without exception, since the thirties, the accusation of organizing or planning an attempt on the life of the leader and his entourage has necessarily appeared

He did not trust doctors because he was afraid of being healed to death. He saved himself from a cold with a folk remedy: he lay down under a cloak and sweated (Basinsky P. V., 2011).

Interesting is the opinion of a British physician, former Foreign Secretary David Owen: “Generally speaking, Stalin did not complain about his health. He could feast with friends well past midnight, but he also worked many hours a day. His body remained strong throughout the Second World War. Paranoia as one of the personality traits does not necessarily deprive a person of working capacity. And yet, the pervasive suspicion that accompanied him throughout his life remained a key characteristic of his personality."

Psychopathology and power

Of interest are assessments of the influence of J. V. Stalin's mental disorder on his party and state administration.

“One of the strong, provoking paranoid features of the factors is the situation when in the hands of a schizoid is enormous power. In the last year of his life, paranoid development reached the level of delusional psychosis”(Lichko A. Ye., 1994).

“Throughout his life, he fought mercilessly against his internal enemies. Enemies were necessary for him to feel the meaning and fullness of life. If there were no enemies, he invented them.

Stalin with the head of the NKVD Yezhov, who was shot in 1940.

After the execution, the photo was edited by Soviet censors.

In the way Stalin organized the repressions and political processes of the thirties, there is undoubtedly a painful touch, a pathological component. On April 7, 1935, a law was adopted on responsibility up to the death penalty for children from the age of twelve”(Sobchak A. A., 2014).

After the end of World War II, when Stalin felt himself master in Europe, he constantly provokes conflicts in different parts of the world

It unleashes a civil war in Greece, the violent Bolshevization of the Central and Eastern European states occupied by the Red Army, the conflict with Yugoslavia, support for the civil war in China and, finally, the Korean war.

The words of the historian Gefter acquire a predictive meaning: “The stereotype of Stalin's policy has become firmly established. This is the creation of pre-catastrophic extreme situations, the way out of which strengthens autocracy, gives a cult, religious attitude to the man-savior."

An autopsy of IV Stalin's brain, carried out in 1953, “showed signs of atherosclerosis, at least five years ago. Today, his condition would be termed “early stage of multi-infarction dementia,” says neuropsychologist and cognitive neuroscientist Elhonon Goldberg.

Stalin, F. D. Roosevelt and W. Churchill at the Tehran Conference (1943)

Monsters, Inc

Paranoia in some cases, while the leader's thinking has not yet been damaged by age-related atherosclerotic disorders, can sometimes be creative enough to raise the authority of his policy to a height that is inaccessible not only to criticism, but even to critical thought.

In this case, the aphorism of the English historian Lord Acton is appropriate: "Power spoils, absolute power spoils absolutely." Both of these pathological factors are linked by mania grandiosa. Indeed, for the ruler to decide to act alone - instead of all social institutions in the country - he must be captivated by the idea of his own greatness.

Quite quickly, phobias, obsessive thoughts, and "faddies" of the leader become the basis of the outlook and worldview of his corporation, which makes all the cardinal decisions. This means that mental illness rises at the helm of power, and nosocracy is realized and gaining strength.

The tombstone of JV Stalin at the Kremlin wall. 2011 r.

Note that, oddly enough, the people remember and honor those rulers for the longest time, who are responsible for the most ruined human lives: Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong. This is the paradox of mass human psychology.

Based on materials from the book: Shuvalov A. V., Poizner B. N. The disease of communism. Foundations of the psychopathology of power. M.: KURS, 2017.

Sources

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