Ramachandra Guha: Limitless power Politics and play: A brief history of cults of personality
The term, ‘cult of personality’, is thought to
have been first used with regard to the Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin. Stalin
died in 1953, after more than two decades in power; three years later, in a
speech to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, his
successor, Nikita Khrushchev, spoke of how the cult of personality built around
Stalin had a damaging influence on the party and the country. It was, remarked
Khrushchev, “impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to
elevate one person, to transform him into a superman possessing supernatural
characteristics, akin to those of a god. Such a man supposedly knows
everything, sees everything, thinks for everyone, can do anything, is
infallible in his behavior”.
While the term may
have entered the lexicon only in 1956, there were, of course, cults of
personality before Stalin’s. They included those of Mussolini in Italy and
Hitler in Germany, leaders who similarly used propaganda and the instruments of
the State to elevate themselves to a god-like status, towering above their
party colleagues and the public at large. Mussolini and Hitler also enjoyed
limitless power, and they too demanded (and obtained) absolute submission to
their whims.
The cults of personality
before Stalin were mostly of right-wing dictators. The cults after him have
been mostly (though not exclusively) of left-wing dictators. They have included
the cult of Fidel Castro in Cuba, the cult of Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, the cult
of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, and, above all, the cult of Mao Zedong in China.
Mao’s was the most bloated of all personality cults, because of the size of his
country. Hundreds of millions of Chinese were obliged to bow in reverence
before Mao and treat every utterance of his as the Word of God.
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