Shorter Stalin

I recently read Abraham Ascher’s 2017 biography of Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, better known to us as Joseph Stalin. If ever you need a lesson on the perils of authoritarian government, a bio of Uncle Joe is just what the doctor ordered.

Two things struck me as curious, the first of which I already knew: young Josef was training to be an Orthodox priest before he caught the revolutionary impulse. The second is a claim suggested by Ascher himself. Like many authors, he speculates about how childhood trauma helped to create the later man-monster, such as the beatings of his violent father and an unfortunate, pockmarked face. He also goes on to suggest that his relatively small height of five feet four inches made him uncomfortable around taller men. Consequently, his preferred functionaries were all short, and his successor, Nikita Krushchev, was popular with Stalin for being five foot three. Even Ascher does not attribute all of his later, murderous goings-on to a man grappling with height, but it is curious to think that this physical factor might have played some small part in the forming of that peculiar personality, which even Lenin, no tooth fairy himself, thought brutal. Certainly, he may have derived additional comfort knowing that many of the men he had killed were taller examples of humanity.

Our spiritual tallness also informs our relationship to Jesus Christ. The higher, larger and more impressive we think ourselves to be, the more we dismiss Him; the smaller, weaker and more damaged we understood ourselves to be, the more we love Him and hail Him. The more we love Him, the more we love and care for others. Ironic, really, when one considers the career of little Secretary Stalin.

[Christ] must increase, but I must decrease. John 3:30

Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay