Fake It Till You Make It. A comparison of Joseph Stalin’s, Vladimir Putin’s, and Viktor Orbán’s personality cults and how they relate to democratic backsliding

Abstract

This research taps into the ongoing debate on democratic backsliding and compares how similar Vladimir Putin’s and Viktor Orbán’s personality cults are compared to Stalin’s cult in light of Russia’s and Hungary’s current backsliding. By creating a four-topic model which consists of the cult’s emergence, practicalities, role of predecessor(s), and – most importantly – of the leader’s roles and image, the current leader cults prove to resemble much from Stalin’s. Moreover, there seems to be a parallel between the development of the leaders’ personality cults and authoritarian practices which is mainly due to the leaders centralising the nation’s politics and system around their own persona, therewith pulling power to themselves and creating the belief that that no other leader could take their place. This research therefore concludes that even though Putin and Orbán may not be re-Stalinising (yet), their countries have reached the status of autocracy and will probably backslide further towards a dictatorship-like system.