4. Joseph Stalin’s Possible Mental Illness Could Explain his Incredibly Violent Behavior
Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union for more than two decades, leaving a legacy of death and terror as he turned a backward Russia into a world superpower. According to Stalin’s physician, Alexander Myasnikov, the most recognized figure of communist history suffered from a series of mental issues including paranoid personality disorder and manic depression. Also, in his diaries, Myasnikov claims that Stalin suffered from atherosclerosis (the hardening of the arteries), which made his mental health even more fragile. This actually, could have been a factor in his political decision-making and violent actions.
Major atherosclerosis in the brain, which the doctors found at the autopsy, should raise the question of how much this illness – which had clearly been developing over a number of years – affected Stalin’s health, character and his actions, as Dr. Myasnikov wrote in the diaries, excerpts of which were published for the first time in the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets in 2011. Scientists concluded that character traits can easily become exaggerated, to the point a person becomes paranoid, and that it’s very possible Stalin may have lost his sense of good and bad, healthy and dangerous, permissible and impermissible because of his illness.