WHEN BEING TALL IS A POLITICAL DISADVANTAGE.

WHEN BEING TALL IS A POLITICAL DISADVANTAGE. The Wall Street Journal had an article yesterday (January 30) by Alan Cullison about possible successors to Putin if he retires. In the article, he mentions Dmitry Medvedev as a candidate, but says, “Detractors say that, at 41 years old, Mr. Medvedev is handicapped by a lack of political experience and gravitas—at 5-feet 5-inches tall he is one of the few top Russian officials shorter than Mr. Putin.” I was of course struck by the assumption that being short equates to lacking gravitas. But I was reminded of some stories told by R. Barry Farrell to his class in Russian politics over fifty (!) years ago. Farrell said that Stalin was quite short and that every one of his lieutenants was shorter than he was. Each also had a major disqualification (Mikoyan was Armenian, Khrushchev played the part of a buffoon….). Farrell said that he attended a diplomatic event in Russia shortly after Stalin died and saw all the short members of the collective leadership arriving in their small Russian cars. Then he saw Marshal Zhukov, a tall man, arriving separately in an army jeep. He correctly predicted that Zhukov would be one of the first to be eliminated in the struggle for succession. Perhaps being shorter than Putin is not a disadvantage in vying to be his successor.