The Last Dictator In Europe
“That little son of a bitch.”
That was how President Harry Truman referred to Joseph Stalin. Truman was right on two counts — that is, on Stalin’s height and his character.
“Stalin was only five foot four inches tall, thin, swarthy and with a pockmarked face,” reported Paul Johnson in his classic Modern Times, adding: “[T]he second and third toes of his left foot were fused together; and in addition an accident as a boy caused his left elbow to be stiff, with a shortening of the arm, the left hand being noticeably thicker than the right.” (READ MORE: Brittney Griner’s Russian Mugging)
Johnson, a close friend of R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. and cherished contributor to this magazine for decades, quoted old Bolshevik Nikolai Bukharin, who said of Stalin: “This is a small, vicious man; no, not a man, but a devil.”
Another small, vicious man is Vladimir Putin. Vlad might pose as a big tough guy, bare-chested while shooting wild beasts, or ordering his soldiers to kill Ukrainian civilians, but in truth, he’s a little man — though at 5 feet, 7 inches, he has 3 inches on Stalin (and 2 inches on that little rat Vladimir Lenin).
