jimmysong on Nostr: Stalin was first and foremost a bureaucrat. He was able to become dictator over the ...
Stalin was first and foremost a bureaucrat. He was able to become dictator over the USSR precisely because he had an enormous capacity to do mind-numbing paper-pushing work. Lenin gave him lots of such work because he didn't mind doing it and Stalin, in turn, used the bureaucratic position to cement his position once Lenin passed.
Our tendency is to view bureaucracy as something benign and annoying, but in fact it is a cancer that devastates the organization that hosts it. If you've read The Real Anthony Fauci, you'll see that Fauci did something similar to cement his power, just at a smaller scale. It's the consummate bureaucrat, that will double-think their way to the top that ends up in power and unsurprisingly, they are truly sociopathic once in power.
They also don't stop being bureaucrats. Stalin worked 18 hours a day until the day he died, doing the paper-pushing that got him there. It's perhaps why he got more cruel the longer he stayed in power.
Our tendency is to view bureaucracy as something benign and annoying, but in fact it is a cancer that devastates the organization that hosts it. If you've read The Real Anthony Fauci, you'll see that Fauci did something similar to cement his power, just at a smaller scale. It's the consummate bureaucrat, that will double-think their way to the top that ends up in power and unsurprisingly, they are truly sociopathic once in power.
They also don't stop being bureaucrats. Stalin worked 18 hours a day until the day he died, doing the paper-pushing that got him there. It's perhaps why he got more cruel the longer he stayed in power.