The British historian Ian Kershaw (Oldham, 1943), author of a monumental biography of Hitler, publishes Personality and Power (Critique), profiles of 12 European leaders, from Lenin and Stalin to Mussolini, Franco and Hitler, including Churchill, De Gaulle, Adenauer or Thatcher. Decisive personalities for the Europe of the 20th century and most of whom rose to power as a result of traumas, wars and situations of economic and even cultural crisis that are not in short supply now.
"While I was writing the book, the war in Ukraine began and I saw analogies," he explains, but adds: "History tells us where we come from, not where we are going." Even so, he recognizes echoes "between these strong figures of the 20th century and how they came to power" and Putin, who rises "thanks to the crisis in Russia during the Yeltsin era." “There are also echoes in the way he has been able to make big decisions with catastrophic effects. But I don't like to say that he is like Mussolini or Stalin, his rise is very different. And what he wants: the reconstruction of the Russian empire, rebuilding something that ended a long time ago. Putin is Putin."
Three of the major figures in Kershaw's book are Russian. The last one, Gorbachev. “Indirect part of Gorbachev's legacy is Putin, the direct part is Yeltsin's chaos. It is not a surprise in European history to have a Putin after a Gorbachev. That he is in a way the creator of modern Europe after the end of the cold war and the destroyer of his own country. No other figure could have done what he did: the crisis was growing in the USSR, but experts agreed that he could flounder for many years. He persuaded the people that changes were necessary. And the changes swept him away, but his commitment to nuclear disarmament, peace, was something phenomenal”.
Two other fathers of the USSR, Lenin and Stalin, are for Kershaw, along with Hitler, the three key figures of the first half of the European 20th century. “The First World War was so cataclysmic that it destroyed the old order producing extreme nationalism and communist movements. Hence Hitler and Mussolini were born. And in Russia it produced the conditions to sweep away the tsars and a revolution that brought Lenin.” The decision of the German empire to allow him to return to Russia by train changed history, he recalls, because the Germans wanted to liberate that war flank. Then, “Lenin was a great strategist, he knew what he wanted, all these leaders have a very clear notion of where they are going, he was resolute, strategically intelligent and added to absolute cruelty he was able to make a minority party have all the positions key code". In post-war Spain there was also terror: "Franco wanted not only to defeat his opponents but to destroy them, typical of the dictators of the first half of the century", says Kershaw, and recalls the cult of his personality: the press in 1949 considered him superior to Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, "champion of the forces of heaven and earth" and "star of the whole world".
The historian acknowledges that “democracy is on the defensive now, but it is not the crisis of the twenties or thirties, when they were new, they had to establish their structures and could be swept away more easily. Today I don't think the crisis is fatal, there are challenges, but they have been resilient. And I think that today we need strong leadership, but they don't have to be charismatic”.
