Autocracy Now!

In the early 1930s, two mysterious (at the time) deaths occurred to people who were close to Stalin as he consolidated power as the supreme leader of the USSR.


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After consolidating power over his Bolshevik rivals, Stalin dispensed with Lenin's pseudo-capitalist NEP and replaced it with the top-down bureaucratic nightmare that was the Five-Year Plans.

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As Lenin's health declined, Stalin sought to outmanouver his rivals in the Bolshevik party and consolidate single-handed, dictatorial control over Russia. 

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In this episode, we'll track Stalin's life and career through one of the most tumultuous times in Russian history: the Revolutions of 1917 and the Civil War that would follow. In these early days, we see Stalin's autocratic and ruthless nature beginning to be exposed; and we also try to answer the question: how did a fringe group of fanatics and radicals seize control of one of the most powerful nations of Europe? 

In this episode, which launches our epic series on Stalin, we'll examine the early life of the man who would become the ruthless dictator who ruled over the USSR. He was like so many thousands of other villagers; born into relative poverty, you might have expected him to be forgotten by history. Instead, the unique circumstances of Russia at the time - and the quirks of his personality - led to him becoming a figure that defined a century. We will hunt for clues in his early life as to what would come later, and ask the question: are great historical figures born, or made?

This episode, we look at the life of the Roman Emperor who really wanted to be a gladiator. Yes, Joaquin Pheonix himself - Commodus: a perfect object lesson in what can happen when you give absolute power to someone catastrophically incapable of wielding it.

Hello, and welcome to Autocracy Now, the show about the lives of famous autocrats.

In this first episode, I'll discuss my motivations behind creating the show, and what I hope we can learn from examining the lives of these dictators. What exactly is an autocrat - how do we define different types of government? What are the advantages of a dictatorship over a democracy?

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, I'd be happy to hear from you. If there's a particular dictator you'd like me to cover in the future, this is your chance to make your case! Please visit us over at autocracynowpodcast.wordpress.com, contact me on Twitter at @AutocracyNow, or email us at [email protected].