Why was Dmitri Medvedev chosen by Vladimir Putin 4 years ago to serve as a puppet President? This is a question many people are asking. Medvedev was not known to anybody, had a zero recognition rate among the people of his country, had no leadership skills or experience. He was just an insignificant, lower-level bureuacrat which are a dime a dozen in any country. How was this guy even chosen for the role of Russia’s president?
I have an explanation, and, as weird as it will sound, I believe it is the only one that makes sense.
Putin is a very self-centered, insecure guy with an inferiority complex of enormous proportions. He is also much shorter than an average Russian male. While the average male height among Russian men (not the men of the Russian Federation, mind you, but ethnic Russians) is 6’1, Putin is only 5 feet 5 inches tall. This is quite rare among men in his country.
I don’t think that Putin’s ego would have been able to withstand appearing in public next to a guy who’d tower over him. Putin has become notorious for coming up with devious ways of avoiding being filmed standing next to taller people. So he chose Medvedev, a political nobody, whose one great quality is that he is only 5 feet 2 inches tall.
Clarissa's Blog 
Putin has become notorious for coming up with devious ways of avoiding being filmed standing next to taller people
Never heard about it.
In “Convert from feet to meters” calculator is 6’1 = 6.1 = 185.93 Centimeters ?
5.5 ~ 168 cm which is 2 cm less than my height.
5.2 = 158.5 cm
Now I feel myself very, very tall for a woman. What is average female height among Russian women? Among Jewish ones?
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5’5 is 165 centimetres, that’s my height. 🙂
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@el
There is a minor error in your calculation. 6’1″ is not 6.1 feet but 6 feet and 1 inch.
It would be 6.1 if 100 inch would be 1 feet, but 1 feet is 12 inches…
And Americans say that the metric system is too complicated !
6’1″ = 1,85m
5’5″ = 1,65m
5’2″ = 1,57m
I am 1,70m or 5’7″ and I must say that I totally feel for putin in that regard. Always being the smallest one sucks enormously.
By the way, Google is the fastest way to convert stuff. Just insert “5 feet 7 inch in meters” or something like that.
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Given his obsession with getting filmed in macho situations it would not surprise me one little bit if this was not part of his reasoning. But I think there is more and I think Medvedev alludes to it here http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/30/dmitry-medvedev-putin-more-popular?newsfeed=true
I think Putin picked an unknown because he did not want somebody more popular than him looking after things while he waited for the opportunity to return to the job. Of course this is from the perspective of a total outsider so might be complete bollocks.
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I agree with Clarissa in principle, but I need to add a couple of things:
1. Medvedev was not unknown, he was a highly positioned official, head of the president’s administration.
2. Another reason why he was chosen was that he is not ‘too clever’ and not ‘too independent’. To be just small wasn’t enough to choose him.
NB: Most of dictators were (and are) small. Take some of the Soviet, French, or German dictators, just to mention a few.
However, to defend not very tall men, I must say that most of them are
very good. Well, it’s easy for me to say this as I am rather tall.
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🙂 Of course, nothing is wrong per se with shorter people. I was solely referring to this pair of short and nasty characters. I’m sure they would have been just as nasty at any height. I’d just rather they weren’t at the height of power in Russia. 🙂
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They will never grow. Physically, because they are grown-ups, and socially, because there is no room left for growing. Or maybe one of them will decide to declare himselve God Almighty. In this case, people will refer to him as You, or even Thou.
Michael Blekhman
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Blasphemer ! Thou shalt not have any gods beside me !
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Sorry for the typo: ‘himself’ of course. Or, rather, ‘Himself’.
Michael Blekhnman
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I knew that Medvedev was short, but I didn’t know he was that short. Nor did I know that Putin is that short. No wonder he is always being photographed without his shirt and shooting bears. So macho. Maybe he could get some therapy from Sarkozy who is so confident that he wears high heels and insists that his wife wear flats in public.
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Actually, I don’t think it’s Putin who has inferiority complex. I am afraid it’s the nation. Hopefully, I am wrong…
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the napoleon complex ? 🙂
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I don’t think Putin deserves to be compared to Napoleon, to be honest. 🙂
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They are both the same. Two little (in both meanings) aggressive creatures. And both are considered heros by their nations. Poor people. That’s who they call their heros.
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