Quite apart from the egregious example of Mao, the record of Joseph Stalin, general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party from 1922 until his death in 1953, hardly inspires confidence in lifetime rule by a single communist
vozhd or leader.
(56) This has earned Putin the title of '
vozhd' (maximum leader) in some quarters.
He is indeed the
Vozhd (boss) in the Stalinist tradition, even if in a watered down sense.
The three central ideas that Lih builds through the text are the
vozhd, the narod, and the vlast.
The critic stated: "In order to show Comrade Stalin as the
vozhd' of the masses, as the genius leader, as the active participant in socialist construction ..., the artists raise him above the masses and juxtapose them.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Kuz'min, "Davyd Iesseich syn Iesseev (Dukhovnyi
vozhd' zakavkazskikh dukhovnykh khristian)," Dukhovnyi khristianin 5, no.
No simian Russian Patriarch, Imam, Polish priest, or
Vozhd followed.
One of the book's strong points is its racy pen portraits not only of the disgusting
vozhd himself but of his cronies and cowered generals.
Like many before him Pleshakov lays the blame squarely at the door of Stalin, the
vozhd (leader) of the Soviet Union whose purges had cowed his military into meek subservience, without initiative or insight.