February 100 marked the XNUMXth birthday of the late US President Ronald Reagan. Few political figures in recent history have had the charisma or enduring appeal of Jeeper. Time magazine presents world leaders whose legacies have withstood the test of time.
Mahatma Gandhi
India's independence movement produced a figure few will ever forget: Mohandes Mahatma Gandhi. While working as a lawyer in South Africa, he conceived the concept of satyagraha or civil disobedience as a response to tyranny, helping Indians fight for civil rights.
His peaceful protests abroad and his anti-poverty campaigns at home helped make him the spiritual center of India's independence struggle. Working with Jawaharlal Nehru, the future prime minister, Gandhi led peaceful protests in the country against foreign domination, such as the Salt March - a protest against Britain's salt tax.
His rise paved the way for India's independence in 1947. Although the country was later partitioned (and Gandhi himself assassinated), his role in the bloodless revolution earned him the title "Father of India" and paved the way for other social movements, including the civil rights struggle in America.
Alexander the Great
The world knows of no more brilliant or daring conqueror than Alexander the Great. According to legend - and there are many legends about him - the blood of the Olympian god Zeus flowed in the veins of the young Macedonian prince, so he broke away from his violent father and hard-working mother and led a triumphant army across the Bosphorus almost to the end of the world.
He defeated the mighty Persian Empire, which had forever tormented the Greeks, razed the once mighty capital of Persepolis to the ground, and attempted to assemble an incredible empire of nations from the Indus to the Dardanelles—while still in his twenties.
He died at the age of 32 from injuries he received in battle, and he never stopped dreaming of conquering new shores and nations. His imperial project was too great for his followers, who began to go to war with each other shortly after Alexander's death.
In the European tradition, Alexander has always been a talisman of Western domination and countless colonial adventures from the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries through today's Middle East and South Asia, while they very confidently presented themselves as Alexander's successors.
However, according to most sources, Alexander "became a native" during his military campaigns, adopting the characteristics of the Persians, Sogdians, and others he encountered and related to. As expected, the Muslim world has a whole collection of literature on Alexander, especially in Persian, which describes this indomitable conqueror as a defender of Islam.
Whoever he was, Alexander left behind cities named after him, which will last for centuries - currently the most mentioned are Alexandria in Egypt, a great trading center of the ancient world, which hosted turbulent protests against the ruling regime in Cairo, and Afghanistan's Kandahar - which comes from the Persian word "Iskandar" or Alexander - a long-time stronghold of the Taliban.
Mao Zedong
As the leader of the People's Republic of China for almost a quarter of a century, Mao Zedong is one of the most influential figures in history, and "Time" listed him as one of the 100 most influential figures of the XNUMXth century.
Based on the foundations of Marxism and Leninism, Mao created his version of communist political theory which is now known as Maoism. However, his legacy remains complicated.
In China, where his portraits still hang in Tiananmen Square, he is regarded as the mastermind of the revolution whose ideas form the basis of the success that helped the nation grow from an agrarian society to a world power.
However, much of China's success today has been achieved with great difficulty. Mao's Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions, mostly from starvation.
Winston Churchill
It is difficult to imagine Great Britain in the XNUMXth century without Sir Winston Churchill. Through the two world wars and beyond, he played a key role in his country's foreign affairs, first as commander of the navy during World War I and then as prime minister during World War II.
But while he, along with other Allied leaders, helped save Britain from Axis conquest, he also ruled as the once-mighty British Empire receded from the world stage. The contempt and open racism he felt for many of Britain's former colonies is a moment in his past that historians have only recently begun to acknowledge.
On the day Great Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, he again became Commander of the British Navy. However, it soon became clear that only Churchill could unite the country in the face of Nazi aggression, and he eventually succeeded the compliant Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
Churchill's driving rhetoric and ever-present self-confidence roused the British people and guided them through five years of European conflict. But he was a wartime leader, not a real politician, so he lost his post in July 1945.
Churchill, on the other hand, remained a force and during the 50s, he again came to the post of prime minister in 1951 and warned about the growing power of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain.
Genghis Khan
Few historical figures inspire as much awe as Genghis, or Genghis Khan. Through wise policy and sheer force of will, the XNUMXth-century Mongol military leader assembled an alliance of nomadic tribes in his remote homeland of endless steppes.
Then he unleashed his horde on the rest of the world, his horse-mounted swift shooters representing a kind of medieval blitzkrieg. His campaigns were mostly focused on parts of China and Central Asia, but his descendants went on to create a vast empire that stretched from the borders of Siberia to the river valleys of Eastern Europe.
Genghis is mostly remembered as the brutal, destructive robber that he once was, but that doesn't mean they don't like him. Mongolia embraced its most famous ruler and images of Genghis Khan adorn numerous buildings and products, even a famous type of vodka.
An hour's drive from the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar, a 12-story steel statue of a lord on horseback stands out on the horizon in the middle of an empty steppe.
Nelson Mandela
During the 27 years spent in prison, Nelson Mandela became a symbol of the struggle of an entire nation against injustice. As his time behind bars progressed, the movement he sparked against apartheid grew.
Mandela began his mission in 1944, when he joined the African National Congress (ANC) and became a member of the resistance movement against the segregationist policies of the African National Party. Because of his activities, he ended up in prison, and he served most of his sentence in the infamous prison on Robben Island.
Immediately after his release in 1990, Mandela became the leader of the ANC and worked with then president FV de Klerk to end the long-standing state policy of racial segregation and apartheid. In 1993, they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work.
In 1994, he won the country's first multiracial elections, and became the first black president of South Africa. Although he subsequently retired from politics, Mandela continues to embody the struggle for peace, reconciliation and social justice around the world.
Abraham Lincoln
Stories about Abraham Lincoln have become myth: born in a log cabin, he was a legendary orator, he freed the slaves and saved the Union. The sixteenth American president appeared at the right time for a nation afflicted by a great disease - slavery.
Lincoln presented his vision of the United States when he declared during his campaign for the US Senate in 1858 that a divided country could not survive. When he was elected in 1860, becoming the first Republican president, Lincoln realized that if he wanted to save the Constitution, he had to save the Union, even if it meant bloodshed. (More than 600.000 soldiers died during the Civil War.)
His Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and successful conduct of the war meant that Lincoln was practically an icon even before he was assassinated just days after the conflict ended in 1865. He became an increasingly iconic figure over the years.
Before his Gettysburg address, a man gave a speech for two hours. Then Lincoln came out to make a speech, which lasted less than two minutes. That other man's speech has been largely forgotten, while Lincoln's Gettysburg Address has endured for centuries.
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler is perhaps the most hated man in the history of human existence, the universal symbol of evil. Yet its presence permeates our culture through film, through World War II literature and history textbooks, and even through our political rhetoric.
Hitler's fervent nationalism—which eventually led to the most horrific display of inhumanity ever recorded—was initially driven by a tired and hungry German people who found themselves in his National Socialist Party after the catastrophic loss of territory and prestige in World War I. Once in power, the Third Reich quickly suppressed political opponents and oppressed anyone not from the German homeland.
Hitler's terror gripped Europe as Germany devoured its European neighbors and joined forces with other fascist and militarist regimes in Italy and Japan. However, once Hitler's forces were finally defeated by the Allies in World War II, Germany immediately set about covering up its horrific history.
Although there have been recent attempts in Germany to confront the tragic past, the rule of the Third Reich is still, quite naturally, a sensitive topic.
Ernesto Che Guevara
He wanted to do much more than simply undermine the world's economic system—he wanted to change the meaning of the term human being. Ernesto Guevara's hombre nuevo (new man) had the ability to constantly put "others" before "himself".
Adopting the Che moniker fits perfectly with his common man philosophy; the word originates from Guevara's homeland of Argentina and is used as a salutation regardless of rank or gender.
A portrait of Guevara with a beret can be found on the walls of Latin American kitchens, in the boarding rooms of American colleges and in the Revolutionary Square in Havana, because Che was the embodiment of a man who stayed true to his words and never wavered.
That Guevara would be tried as a war criminal by any modern definition only reinforces his iconic status. When he joined Fidel Castro's march through Cuba in the 1950s, Guevara never wavered from the principle that you are either for the revolution or against it.
It was Guevara who organized the murders without trial based solely on suspicion of disloyalty. Che became a recognizable face on T-shirts only because he was willing to pay the ultimate price. After he was caught preparing the revolution in Bolivia in 1967, he said: "Come on, kill me, I'm only a man."
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan once said that the 11th commandment is "Never speak ill of a fellow Republican." However, if there were to be an amendment to the American political vow, then the first commandment would be: "Do not speak ill of Ronald Reagan." That Jeep has a special place in the American political universe is clear from the rhetoric on both sides.
In just one Republican primary debate in 2008, twenty years after Reagan left office, candidates mentioned his name 53 times. Love for Reagan was so pronounced that his daughter Patty Davis, who was never much of a fan of her father's political program, publicly chided the candidates, saying, "You're not Ronald Reagan."
And during the same election season, Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama said that his role model as a political leader was Reagan, because he "changed the trajectory of America in a way... that Bill Clinton did not."
Reagan's status as a political King Mead is even more impressive when viewed in relation to his main goal—shrinking government—which, in fact, he did not achieve. According to the Office of Management and Budget, federal spending rose 22 percent under Reagan.
However, Reagan's genius lay in his understanding that stage presence could go a long way in embedding a political agenda into the permanent national culture. While promoting his worldview of individual patriotic struggle against the constraints of big government, Reagan presented himself as a true cowboy.
That powerful image is certainly reinforced by a whole series of biographical anecdotes; as a lifeguard, Reagan once prevented 77 people from drowning.
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