The Immortal Goon wrote:He wasn't shy about wearing the Orthodox Church's title of "divinely anointed leader of our armed and cultural forces, leading us to victory".
Everything has to take into consideration historical, cultural and political context when one is trying to understand why political leaders are the way they are or were the way they were.
I find it is a very common mistake for people who grow up with a certain cultural, historical, and political perspective, to
assume that every other culture, or a nation's history, and other groups or others political philosophies, follow the same paradigms, or follow the same rules as their own native societies do. That is a huge mistake. That is why I think studying different cultures, and histories, and political philosophies clarifies a lot of decisions reached by a nation's leaders in the present, and in the past. If you don't do that? It is easy to reach false conclusions. American exceptionalism is a very good example.
For me? We are dealing with homo sapiens. One species. They vary a lot. But the circumstances that that species runs into time and time again in human history--and the way the conditions are dealt with TIG, tend to be very consistent. It is very interesting. When to think they are going to react the same as others? And when they are going to be different? You can almost predict how they will behave, act or think, if you study that particular group's cultural matrix, and history very thoroughly, and also study the leader's individual particular human habits, thoughts, and ideology in depth.
For example, I believe Stalin was definitely pro working class and pro peasant. His entire life history is about dealing with class and being oppressed as the child of serfs. Keke his mother was beaten and she was extremely influential in Stalin's life. She wanted him to become a bishop in the church. For Stalin to disrespect or not understand how a peasant Georgian (they did not speak Russian in his childhood he learned Russian later on) feels about God and Religion and the land? No, he understood his culture. He also understood how power worked and who abused who in the power battles in his home, his politics, his religious upbringing, and economically. It is all there. If you study it.
Stalin was raised in very hard circumstances.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keke_Geladze