Russia has had its share of infamous leaders - after all, one of them was literally named
Ivan the Terrible? But who was the worst of the worst - both for the world at large,
and the people they ruled over? These are the three worst Russian
rulers of all time - and you might be surprised who did and didn’t make the cut!
The Tsarist period of Russia spanned over 400 years during which the country was run as an
absolute hereditary monarchy. Many of its rulers were infamously brutal, harnessing the Russian
military and their personal enforcers to terrorize both enemies of the country and minority groups
within their borders. But by the time the 1900s rolled around, the monarchy was looking shaky.
The previous Tsar, Alexander III, had reversed many reforms and was seen as a tyrant. Now,
the monarchy fell into the hands of Nicholas II - only 26 years old when he ascended the throne.
On the surface, Nicholas seemed like he would be a step forward for Russia domestically.
He supported economic and political reforms and listened to his advisors. He wanted to expand
the country’s international ties, particularly to France, and modernize the economy. But he
was a King, and he intended to remain a king. He resisted giving the legislature any more power,
and frustration quickly grew with his tight-fisted leadership. It was almost the 20th century, after
all - were the people really supposed to just sit back and let one guy tell them what to do?
But sometimes, fate determines a leader’s path. War would heavily define Russia’s destiny in
the early 20th century, starting with the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. Both empires had
their eyes on Asian territories like Manchuria and the Korean peninsula. Japan was initially
willing to split the difference, but Russia refused, and the war was on.
Russia suffered several humiliating defeats early on but refused to negotiate with Japan. By the end
of the conflict Russia was thoroughly defeated. Not only did Russia suffer heavy casualties and
lose much of its military infrastructure, but this was seen as the beginning of Japan’s rise
as a world power - something that would pay horrible dividends in around thirty years.
Russia looked weak, its economy was suffering, and tensions were about to explode.
And soon, Nicholas II would face the first major challenge to his rule.
It was January 1905, the Russo-Japanese War was still ongoing, and the citizens
of Russia had enough. They launched a series of protests, strikes, and even military mutinies
designed to force concessions from the Tsar. The Tsar’s response? Ordering his
soldiers to fire on a massive march of peaceful protesters, killing close to a hundred people.
Countless leaders of the movement were arrested, and in the aftermath of this brutality and the
loss of the war, the Tsar was forced to introduce some reforms. They weren’t seen as nearly enough,
and the people’s rage wasn’t quelled. It was clear that more trouble would be coming. Nicholas II,
like many of his predecessors, tried to distract people by providing the people with a scapegoat.
Under his reign, anti-Jewish pogroms were common and often carried out with the tacit approval of
the government. They were often used to give the public someone to blame for their troubles - but
the public was becoming increasingly aware of where their troubles were really coming from.
But Nicholas II wasn’t paying attention to his approval rating,
he was preoccupied by family problems. The Tsar’s son, Alexei, suffered from
hemophilia. Treatments for this disease were minimal at that point, and the powerful family
was looking for answers. They found them in the ravings of one Grigori Rasputin,
a Russian peasant who underwent a religious awakening at a monastery and now proclaimed
to be a holy man with mystical powers. He claimed to have healing abilities and became
a trusted advisor of the monarchy - distracting the Tsar at one of the most critical times of
his reign. Today, many people cast Rasputin as some secret mastermind steering the Tsar’s
actions and plotting to betray him. Many stories told about Rasputin also attribute him with the
inability to die, no matter what was thrown at him. In reality, he was likely just an eccentric
who had no business being as influential as he was, eventually being assassinated by noblemen
who didn’t want him so close to the Tsar. And soon, the Tsar would face one final test.
The outbreak of World War I didn’t initially involve Russia, but just about everyone was
pulled in sooner or later. Nicholas initially wanted to avoid all out war while still
supporting their allies in Serbia, but due to the Russian army’s structure there was no way
to just partially mobilize the troops. He ordered full mobilization, despite the fact that the army
was still recovering from the losses it suffered in the Russo-Japanese War. The
military was grossly unprepared for a pan-European conflict, with a serious shortage of equipment,
ammo, and proper clothing. Russian troops suffered massive losses, and the heavy mobilization left
the capitol largely unprotected. And that would be the Tsar’s doom.
The massive loss of life in the war and the devastating effect it had on the economy left
many people in Russia with nothing to lose. Under Nicholas II, the quality of life in the country
had significantly decreased. The events of 1905 would soon repeat again- only this time it would
go differently. A combination of massive protests by anti-Monarchy alliances of different political
parties and mutinies from within his military eventually forced Nicholas II to abdicate. He was
in poor health at the time, and he and his family were sent into exile. But it wouldn’t last -
because only a year after the February Revolution of 1917, a Communist government took control, and
they wanted the Romanovs to pay for what they put Russia through. The entire family was ultimately
executed, bringing a sad end to Nicholas II’s hapless reign as the last Tsar of Russia.
But it wouldn’t be long before Russia had another infamously bad leader.
Vladimir Lenin took control of Russia’s new Bolshevik government shortly after
the October Revolution, and those hoped the new revolution would bring liberal
democracy to Russia were soon disappointed. He quickly centralized power, collectivized the
country’s industries, and cracked down on many opposition parties. The country quickly became
more equal, but this didn’t necessarily mean the country become more free. If we take into account
the Russian standard for leaders, Lenin was relatively lenient. His rule of the USSR wouldn’t
last long as after only four years in power, he suffered a stroke and was incapacitated.
He certainly wasn’t one of Russia’s worst leaders - but his successor would go down in infamy.
In the aftermath of Lenin’s death, Russia was governed by a collective - but one man
soon rose to the top. Born a humble son of a shoemaker in Georgia, his name was Joseph Stalin,
and he would go down as one of the most brutal dictators in the history of the world.
Although Stalin was at first only one of many, he would soon force his rivals out of the party
and consolidate his power over the country. He became an absolute dictator - and unlike Lenin,
he was hyper-focused on stomping out all opposition to his leadership within the
Communist party. He would become infamous for his heavy-handed tactics to crush dissent,
both within Russia itself and in its satellite states.
Stalin’s leadership was best summed up by this series of atrocities.
The most infamous of Stalin’s creations was the gulag system, a series of prisons and
forced-labour camps scattered throughout the Soviet Union. While these existed to a certain
extent under the Tsar, what set Stalin’s gulags apart was their sheer brutality and how fast they
grew in numbers. The targets of his purges were often either political rivals or entire classes of
businessmen, academics, or farmers who were deemed to be enemies of the state. It didn’t matter if
you agreed or disagreed with Stalin, if he deemed you to be an enemy of the state you would get a 1
way ticket to the Siberian wasteland. In total, almost four million Russians were sent to the
Gulags over a twenty-year period, with close to a million of them reportedly being shot!
And for those left behind, things often weren’t much better.
It didn’t take much to get classified as an enemy of the state under Stalin. When he talked about
those hoarding too many resources, he wasn’t talking about monarchs or land barons - he was
often talking about peasant farmers who owned a small swath of land they used to produce food.
Their farms were seized and turned over to the state, many were deported to the Gulags,
and those who were left behind were subject to demonization and attacks from the government.
These farms provided the backbone of Russia’s agricultural industry. Now under the unskilled
hands of the state, soon the inevitable followed. Russia soon slipped into a devastating famine.
The Great Famine of 1932 was one of the worst agricultural disasters in human history,
and it was almost entirely man-made. Stalin’s policies of industrialization had damaged the
country’s food infrastructure, and while estimates of how bad it got vary, some say as many as 14
million people might have died from the famine. But it wasn’t an even-handed disaster - Stalin
used the food shortages to target populations that he deemed less loyal or less “traditionally”
Russian. The two countries hardest hit by the famines were Ukraine and Kazakhstan,
and Stalin blamed the citizens of those Soviet-occupied countries for their own fate.
This played a key role in weakening a country just before one of Stalin’s biggest tests yet.
World War II was right around the corner, and no amount of
purging would stop Hitler and his armies. Nazism was rising in Germany, and traditionally
Fascism and Communism are bitter enemies. But neither Hitler or Stalin were a traditional member
of their party, and they soon found that they had a lot in common. As Hitler was consolidating his
power over Germany and beginning his campaign of brutal oppression, Stalin was doing the
same - brutally purging his own Communist infrastructure to eliminate anyone who wasn’t
completely loyal to him. He used the Secret Police to target anyone he deemed an enemy - and unlike
in the past, these purges went all the way up to the top of the country’s leadership. He had eighty
percent of the Communist Party’s leaders executed - including the head of the Secret Police he used
to carry out the purges. And soon enough, the two
mad dictators would find common ground. In 1939, Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet
Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a key non-aggression pact that would let them partition
Poland between the two powers and ensure that they could carve up all of Europe without fighting
each other. Stalin saw a kindred spirit in the Nazi dictator, and everyone knows that trusting
Hitler can only end in good things, right? Yep, sure enough, the mad Nazi broke the pact and
invaded Russia in 1941. It would be a massive strategic mistake - but also one that would
lead to some of the worst days of Stalin’s regime and some unimaginable atrocities.
Because the mighty Russian war machine was once again not ready for all out war.
The Russian military was key to defeating the Nazis, but it would come at a horrible price.
Stalin’s tactic of “we have more men than they have bullets” led to unimaginable casualties.
While they did have elite units of snipers that were highly effective,
the general military suffered losses in the millions. It’s estimated that almost 70% of
Russian men born in 1923 were dead by the end of World War II. Stalin’s response to this massive
loss of life? Issuing an order that any Russian soldier who retreats should be executed.
Stalin did not value human life - no matter who’s it was.
During the war, Russian prisoners of war weren’t treated as heroes who’ve caught a lucky break,
but potential traitors. Stalin was so paranoid that he viewed everyone taken captive by the Nazis
as “Traitors of the motherland”. Upon their release after the war,
many were interrogated and sent to the Gulags. But most infamously,
Stalin’s own soldier son was taken captive by the Nazis. The Nazis thought they had the
leverage they needed to seek the release of a captured high-ranking German field marshall.
Stalin’s response to the proposed trade? “I will not trade a Marshall for a Lieutenant”. His son
would be taken to a concentration camp where he perished before the Allies liberated the camps.
As the war ended, Stalin was ultimately on the winning side and gained many
territorial concessions in the aftermath. But his atrocities would bring him to an ironic end.
He continued to reign until 1953, when he suffered a cerebral haemorrhage.
While his loyalists attempted to treat him, his condition quickly spiralled and three days after
the initial haemorrhage he was dead. The death of the infamous Russian dictator left a massive
power vacuum, and the Soviet Union would have many successors over the next few decades.
But would any of them be one of Russia’s worst leaders?
In the aftermath of Stalin’s death, the Communist Party would appointed different leaders,
leading to things deteriorated diplomatically between the USSR and the United States.
The Cold War began, with both countries developing extensive nuclear arsenals
and jockeying for power across the world. Things got perilously close to nuclear war several
times - and no Soviet leader would epitomize that more than Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev.
Khrushchev was known for his fiery personality, and he was determined not to give an inch to the
United States. He burst onto the scene in 1953, and by 1960 he was at the United Nations vowing
to the United States that “We will bury you”. He soon gained the reputation of being unstable,
due to his colorful outbursts. He once even banged his shoe on a table during a UN meeting! But in
1962, he flew too close to the sun. Cuba had recently overthrown its government and installed
a communist dictator, Fidel Castro – placing the communist state perilously close to the US!
Tensions were already high, and Khrushchev decided to escalate them - by putting nuclear missiles on
the island as a direct threat to his enemy! This caused a massive diplomatic standoff,
reaching a point where many thought that the world was about to be plunged into nuclear Armageddon.
So does this brinksmanship put Khrushchev on the list of Russia’s worst leaders?
Surprisingly…no! While living through his tenure was undoubtedly scary due to his
intense personality, he was actually considered a relatively moderate leader back in Russia.
His policies were far less repressive than Stalin, and he shocked the world in 1956 when
he condemned his predecessor’s brutal purges. This made him rather unpopular in Russia,
as hard-liners within the government stripped him of power after eleven years and elected the
more traditionalist Leonid Brezhnev. While his tenure was less tense in terms of geopolitics,
Brezhnev was seen as more oppressive, especially towards the country’s Jewish population.
There would be many men at the helm of the Soviet Union – but does the unions
last leader deserve a spot on our list? The year was 1985, and after Brezhnev’s
extended reign, the Soviet Union had two different leaders in only three years. Both Yuri Andropov
and Konstantin Chernenko had tense relationships with the United States’ staunchly anti-Communist
President, Ronald Reagan. But the new guy in charge, Mikhail Gorbachev, had different plans.
While he was a devoted communist during his early years in politics - which allowed him to
rise up the party ranks - the genial man with the distinct port-wine stain birthmark on his forehead
wanted to improve relations between the USSR and the west and modernize Russia.
But history often has other plans. Under his tenure, the Soviet Union
liberalized many of their policies. They began engaging more with Jewish activists both inside
and outside of the country, releasing many Jewish prisoners and allowing larger numbers
to immigrate to Israel. Gorbachev worked together with Reagan to reduce tensions
and scale back both countries’ nuclear ambitions. The entire world breathed a sigh of relief as it
seemed the Soviet Union was in more reasonable hands, and Gorbachev seemed to be moving the
country away from a communist dictatorship and towards becoming a social democracy.
But not everyone was happy about this. Much like Tsar Nicholas II, Gorbachev’s
leadership might have been undone by paying too much attention to outside forces and not enough to
internal ones. Many supporters of liberalization were happy with Gorbachev’s reforms but wanted to
see more from the leader. At the same time, Marxist hardliners wanted to topple him and
replace him with someone who would reverse his concessions and crack down on dissidents.
The collapse of the Berlin wall and the reunification of Germany only made them angrier,
and in 1991 a group of hardliners responded to Gorbachev’s re-election by launching a
coup attempt while he was on vacation. He and his family were taken hostage,
but the coup failed thanks to the intervention of the pro-liberalization faction led by Boris
Yeltsin. In the aftermath, the Soviet Union fully collapsed. Outside Russia, Gorbachev is
still viewed positively, but Russian nationalists consider him one of the worst because he led to
the collapse of the Soviet Union. But what about his successor?
Boris Yeltsin, the leader of the pro-liberalization faction,
would become Russia’s first - and some would say only - democratically-elected leader in 1991.
He quickly set out transforming the country into a capitalist democracy,
dismantling much of the country’s security state, and opened the nation up to the rest of the world.
However, many of the events of his tenure were already pre-determined by the collapse of the
Soviet Union. He oversaw the massive decrease of Russian territory and the creation of many new
countries which laid on once Russia soil. While Russia remained a powerful nation, during this era
it largely stopped being a superpower. And many of its misfortunes
during this era were his doing. Yeltsin was a believer in capitalism,
but he practiced capitalism in a way that favoured his allies and led to an economy
that was heavily dominated by a small group of oligarchs. That led to significant corruption,
with many calling Yeltsin’s Russia a kleptocracy. He could also be repressive,
once trying to dissolve the parliament and conducting several small-scale wars
against independence movements in regions like Chechnya. He served for eight years,
and most people consider his Presidency a mixed bag - but his biggest sin may be his trust in the
man who would become his chosen successor. The infamous Vladimir Putin.
If it feels like Putin is taking Russia back to the Soviet era - he just might be. The Russian
leader has been leading the country for over twenty years now, making him the second-longest
serving Russian leader since the beginning of the Soviet era. But he’s been in politics
a lot longer than that - he served as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for sixteen years,
meaning his tactics are well-rooted in the Soviet era. While he worked under Yeltsin in a democratic
government, once he took control in 1999 he wasted no time consolidating his power. Today,
while Russia is still ostensibly a democracy, Putin essentially rules with an iron fist.
And in many ways, he’s taken his cues from some of his predecessors.
Putin is a strong believer in suppressing dissents. That includes internally,
like when he cracks down on protestors which were dealt harsh prison sentences for criticizing the
government. Externally, the Russian government has become notorious for targeting critics abroad,
with Russian dissidents and spies being poisoned with radioactive material as far away as London.
And like any good spy, Putin has never been formally linked to any of these killings - and
good luck getting to him even if you have proof. And just like past Soviet leaders,
he holds a tight leash on those who hold power in the country.
Much like Yeltsin, Putin has close relationships with his country’s oligarchs. But unlike Yeltsin,
those relationships only seem to last as long as he has use for them. Many powerful
businessmen have found themselves arrested on sketchy charges under Putin’s tenure,
with their businesses often being absorbed by the government. There has also been a large increase
in foreign citizens being arrested on charges ranging from drugs to spying to bar brawls,
with the government always sentencing them to harsh prison terms that can only be cut
short via a prisoner exchange. And that was all before 2022.
Putin’s tenure will be defined by his massive miscalculation in declaring war on Ukraine.
Putin’s Russia has always been aggressive militarily, including brutal wars in the
Muslim area of Chechnya, and the seizure of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine. But all
of those were either within Russia’s territory, or backed up by large numbers of Russian ethnics in
the conquered region. In Ukraine, Russia has been taking on a massive nation of 41 million people,
with a powerful military of its own. Russia banked on the military folding within days,
Ukraine being reincorporated back into Russia, and Russia being re-established
as a great power. He even began stating that he will regain all of Russia’s lost territory.
The reality was anything but. Since the war began, Putin has brutally
shelled Ukraine, causing mass civilian casualties - but at every turn, the Russian military has been
largely routed by the Ukrainian forces with massive military support from Europe and the
United States. While Putin boasted of seizing Kiev within days, he instead has been relegated
to fighting over small swaths of land in Ukraine’s east - with many cities being retaken by Ukraine
after they get conquered. The Russian military’s tech has been proven to be outdated, the army
suffered massive casualties, and Putin has only become more paranoid and belligerent as a result.
Russia’s diplomatic status is lower than ever, with the country under massive international
sanctions that have devastated its economy. In some ways, Putin combines the worst of all
worlds - Tsar Nicholas II’s stubbornness, Stalin’s brutality, Khrushchev’s belligerent personality,
Gorbachev’s unawareness of a coming disaster, and Yeltsin’s corruption.
Where will he ultimately rank on the scale of the worst Russian leaders? It’s hard to tell yet,
but he’s making a good case for top three. Want to know more about how this infamous
Russian leader has avoided an involuntary retirement? Watch “Insane Ways Vladimir
Putin Survived Assassination Attempts”, or check out this video instead.