“The golden rule of the tsars” – why Putin’s health is kept secret Radioactive capsule lost in Australia – the search is likely to be difficult

Why is there so much speculation about the health of heads of state, especially in authoritarian regimes? A good example is currently Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin boss was buried a thousand times by observers of international politics, only to appear alive and well on television in the coming weeks.

As recently as January, it was the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, who thought that Vladimir Putin was seriously ill – and had been for a long time.

Is it really so? The former KGB agent’s iron fist doesn’t seem to let up, though some people claim they saw it shake.

In reality, few know the true state of health, and there is a good reason for this, explains Guillaume Perrault, editor-in-chief of “Le Figaro” and lecturer at Sciences Po Paris. There is a veritable cult of secrecy surrounding the health of the Kremlin bosses. This is a Russian peculiarity, a legacy of the USSR.

This law of silence is based on several challenges:

To back up his claims, Guillaume Perrault examines in his article how the earlier ‘fathers of the nations’ handled – or rather, how they concealed – information that betrayed some weakness.

Lenin secretly healed himself with “yesterday’s enemy”.

Lenin suffered from atherosclerosis, a disease caused by the buildup of fatty deposits in the arteries that promotes strokes. In April 1922, he had the Kremlin pharmacy supply him with sedatives. He’s not the only Bolshevik leader she needed.

In a letter to Stalin, he mentions “the gold that the Party spends on the inevitable trips to Germany of members of the Central Committee who secretly traveled to yesterday’s enemy to undergo medical treatment of the highest order”.

Between May 1922 and 1923, Stalin suffered several strokes. Meanwhile, he was treated by some 15 Russian and German specialists as power slowly slipped into the hands of Stalin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Bukharin.

As his condition worsened, the Politburo did not hesitate to isolate Lenin on the pretext of protecting him from overexertion. Visits and correspondence are suspended. And when he became aphasic after another stroke in 1923, only the Bolshevik cadres knew about the secret. Even on the eve of his death – January 21, 1924 – the party continued to claim that he was still recovering.

Stalin and the fear of white coats

Rumors of Stalin’s deteriorating health also surfaced, but only very late, in 1953. Stalin was considered a “living god” in the USSR and Eastern Bloc countries. He was paranoid, hiding behind his small circle of minions and not hesitant to roll heads at someone who was conspiring.

He was especially suspicious of the Kremlin doctors. In 1938 he had two of them sentenced to death and from 1950 he arrested others by drawing up files accusing them of espionage and terrorism. From 1952 he was convinced that his personal physician, together with other ‘white coats’, was plotting against him. The reason: the fact that Professor Vinogradov considered him “not healthy”. Interrogations and torture follow.

On the evening of March 22, 1953, Stalin was found unconscious on the floor by his guards after suffering a violent stroke. The employees allowed several hours to pass before calling the doctors. As he lay dying, the inevitable battle for succession began.

Brezhnev and his beautiful nurses

As Le Figaro extensively reports, the end of Brezhnev’s rule further illustrates how well the secret of health was kept. Brezhnev was 57 years old when he came to power. He was charismatic, a bon vivant, smoker and drinker who struggled with “barbiturates, anxiolytics and sleeping pills.” Like Lenin, he suffered from arteriosclerosis and increasingly disappeared in hospitals. “Officially, however, according to the great Soviet tradition, everything was fine,” says “Le Figaro”.

He used the services of nurse Nina Koroviakova, who was 25 years younger than him. She became his confidante and he even consulted her on political matters, much to the dismay of the Politburo.

At the end of his life, he said he would employ a nurse, “a young and attractive Georgian woman, surnamed ‘Djuna'”. But while Brezhnev’s physical and mental decline was evident, the party leadership kept the Kremlin leader in power until his death in late 1982. Official propaganda showed him in good health. With good reason: the cadres preferred a “weakened, even slightly ridiculous Brezhnev” to the risk of an uncertain successor.

So Putin could fare as his predecessors did: Some see it as inevitable that “as in the time of the tsars, the ruler refuses to abdicate and dies on the throne, and the country suffers,” says Perrault.

(iodine)