A Brief History
On July 9, 1903, the future leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, was exiled to Siberia for 3 years. Financing the Communist movement in Russia by robbery, extortion and kidnappings, it is no surprise that Stalin (born Ioseb Jugashvili) was arrested several times and sent to Siberia, where he invariably escaped to return to fomenting revolution. Vladimir Lenin likewise served 3 years of exile in Siberia for sedition. (If punitive exile was supposed to erase revolutionary zeal, it appears not to have worked.)
Digging Deeper
Many future leaders of countries had found themselves in jail prior to becoming the person in charge, both revered national icons and history’s criminals.
Among the infamous variety, Adolf Hitler did prison time for his unsuccessful “Beer Hall Putsch” attempt at a coup, and served 9 months of a 5 year prison sentence. The former jailbird engineered the costliest war in human history as leader of Nazi Germany.
Another infamous leader, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, fled the country when an assassination attempt against the establishment failed. Conspirators were sentenced to death, a fate avoided by Hussein’s flight to Syria and Egypt. Upon his return to Iraq, Hussein was jailed prior to release and partaking in the government.
Another Middle Easterner that ran afoul of the law prior to taking charge was Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. Khomeini got himself arrested in 1963 and again in 1964 (detained for 6 months that time) before he was exiled for almost 15 years. He returned in 1979 amid the Islamic Revolution that deposed the Shah and Khomeini ended up in charge.
Among those leaders revered (more or less) world-wide as great men that had spent their time in prison, Mohandas K. “Mahatma” Gandhi served 2 years of a 6 year sentence for sedition (1922-1924), was arrested every so often after that, and served 2 more years incarcerated (in a palace???) from 1942-1944. When India finally won independence with his leadership, Gandhi was assassinated in 1948, an ironic end for the architect of non-violent protest.
Another leader given accolades by the world that spent time in jail was Nelson Mandela of South Africa, sentenced to life in prison in 1962, and serving 27 years before being released and becoming president of the country (1994-1999).
I cannot think of a US President that did any appreciable time in jail or was forced into exile before taking power, so do not take the experience of these listed leaders as a road map to success, at least not here. Question for students (and subscribers): What other famous leaders can you think of that spent time in prison or exile? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Favorov, Nora Seligman and Oleg V. Khlevniuk. Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator. Yale University Press, 2015.
McCollum, Sean. Joseph Stalin (A Wicked History). Franklin Watts, 2010.
Radzinsky, Edvard. Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia’s Secret Archives. Anchor, 1997.
The featured image in this article, a photograph of Stalin with a group of prisoners at the Kutais jail, 1903, is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 70 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 100 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in the United States, because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1925.
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