Effects of narcotics in post 1900 history

Hi all, hope I've put this in the right thread.

This is a question that's been nagging at me for a couple of weeks since a visit to the KGB museum in Prague- if anyone's going there for holidays, I urge you to check it out, even of the proprietor is a terrifying Stalinist who claims that a) only Soviet soldiers were killed in Operation Danube, b) Gorbachev was an American agent and c) Finland attacked Russia first in 1939.

Anyway, the guy, lunatic though he may be, has a wealth of fascinating stuff on display, including a metalwork beetle that Felix Dzerzhinsky apparently kept on his desk.

Packed full of cocaine.

In the words of the proprietor-
"Every 45 minutes, Iron Felix, is sniffing cocaine, for inspiration, you see?"

Now, cocaine is a horrible drug that brings out the worst of everyone's personality- arrogance, a complete lack of empathy and awareness ofconsequences - and crucially, paranoia.

Bearing in mind that cocaine was perfectly legal at that time with no stigma attached to it, it's easy to assume that if Dzerzhinsky was banging rocks, then Stalin, Beria et al. probably were to some degree also.

This begs a fascinating question- to what extent was their paranoia and the murderous actions that resulted from it - influenced by coke? How much might the drug have exacerbated the negative aspects of their personalities, and immured them from feeling any degree of guilt over the consequences of their actions?

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic" - now I come to think about it, it does sound like the kind of arrogant bollocks cokeheads talk.

Anyone got any thoughts on this?
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Drugs didnt stay in Soviet vogue after the relatively liberal '20s, and Stalinists weren't keen on uncontrolled anything, least of all substances. Yezhov was a coke fiend towards the end of his tenure, but since his mission anyways was purge, Purge, PURGE, the coke probably didn't do too much. And while lots of peculiarities (alcoholism, pedophilia, serial rape, etc.) of the former Politburo were well recorded, cocaine wasn't really used outside of the hard-on sybarites (Yezhov, Abel Yenukidze, Vasily Stalin, etc.).

Stalin almost definitely did it in his youth, and pre-Revolution cities were full of urchins selling little envelopes of coke to street goers. So while many of the leaders may have been familiar with coke, they certainly weren't blitzed on yeyo all the live long day like tight-wound, mega-anxious Felix.
 
I couldn't help but imagine the scenario of a coke - addled Charlie Sheen given control of a CIA that had full powers of assassination... but you have to wonder, how much of Stalin's irrational paranoia was cocaine induced? Could the Holodomor have been avoided if there wasn't coke ther to add fuel to his paranoid delusions? I guess we'll never know, but it fascinates me the more I think about it.
 
Most of Stalin's actions (Purge, etc.) were the result of his deep-seated paranoia, not any specific substance. However, if he was using cocaine, or at least those around him were, it would have just exacerbated the situation. Maybe without drug usage, the purge might have been less severe, or a few hundred thousand less people might have starved to death.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Frankly, that sounds crazy weird.
That's what I thought at first too, then I remembered how crazy popular cocaine was EVERYWHERE in the late 19th, early 20th century. And I suppose it's no weirder than West Africa being the primary destination of the global cocaine trade. Brown-brown for all!
I couldn't help but imagine the scenario of a coke - addled Charlie Sheen given control of a CIA that had full powers of assassination... but you have to wonder, how much of Stalin's irrational paranoia was cocaine induced? Could the Holodomor have been avoided if there wasn't coke ther to add fuel to his paranoid delusions? I guess we'll never know, but it fascinates me the more I think about it.
Most of Stalin's actions (Purge, etc.) were the result of his deep-seated paranoia, not any specific substance. However, if he was using cocaine, or at least those around him were, it would have just exacerbated the situation. Maybe without drug usage, the purge might have been less severe, or a few hundred thousand less people might have starved to death.
This is all beginning to sound like a bit much. The. Politburo wasn't full of coke heads, purges and collectivization were not fueled by Bolivian marching powder. Nor was Stalin paranoid; he and his cohorts were deadly serious and deadly sober about the "black work" they were doing (unlike Dzherzinsky and Yezhov, who enjoyed killing). The famines and purges came from the ideological fundaments of Bolshevism, which is bloody, brutal and IMMEDIATE Revolution followed by reckless economic experimentation and then more counterrevolutionary blood. You don't need drugs or dismissively prejudiced psych analyses of the Red courtiers to figure out WHY they killed so many people.
 
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