Heads of state who ruled the country despite health problems
There are many examples in the history of world politics when heads of state ruled their countries despite serious health problems. Leonid Brezhnev, Hugo Chavez, Abraham Lincoln, Kim Il Sung - these names are known to everyone, but not everyone knows about the struggle they waged with personal illnesses while standing at the helm of their nations. From chronic illness to mental illness, these leaders demonstrated both an unwavering will to power and human vulnerability. In our article we will look at how health influenced their political careers and the decisions they made while governing countries during difficult historical periods.
A classic example for our country of a head of state who remained a permanent leader despite his age and a whole list of illnesses was Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev. The health of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee seriously deteriorated in 1974, and until his death in 1982, the head of state was continuously treated.
It was officially stated that the Secretary General had heart problems, but there is information that Brezhnev suffered from a whole bunch of dangerous ailments, including emphysema, gout, jaw cancer and leukemia. In the last years of his life, Leonid Ilyich often missed official events and even meetings with the heads of other countries.
Of course, the disappearance of the Secretary General from view has always been surrounded by many rumors. People were so accustomed to talking about Brezhnev’s death that his real death came as a shock to the entire country. In March 1982, while visiting a plant in Tashkent, a steel beam fell on the politician, causing him a broken collarbone and five ribs, as well as causing hemorrhage in his liver.
But Brezhnev recovered from his injuries despite his advanced age and already on November 7 hosted the parade on Red Square. The Secretary General died due to a detached blood clot on the night of November 10, quickly and unexpectedly.
The first president of the Russian Federation, Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin, suffered from severe heart disease for many years. According to some reports, the head of the country suffered five heart attacks, several times coming close to death. Yeltsin came to power as a fairly strong and physically active man.
The President played tennis, volleyball and football, swam in an ice hole and even danced dashingly on stage with pop stars. Yeltsin endured illness on his feet and never complained about his health. But in 1995, the president’s body began to malfunction. He tried to ignore heart problems as well as a cold, which ultimately led the politician to the operating table.
After coronary artery bypass surgery, Boris Nikolaevich never recovered. He held the post of head of the country for some time, but was seen infrequently. It was at this time that the phrase that became popular appeared: “The President works with documents.” Alas, instead of working for the last couple of years of his presidency, Yeltsin spent more time on drips.
The serious illness of the Venezuelan President became known in 2011. Chavez did not, as is customary, pretend that everything was in order and addressed the people himself. He said that he had undergone a complex operation to remove a malignant tumor and thanked everyone for their understanding.
Hugo Chavez underwent at least three such operations, but all of them did not bring him recovery. The president carried out his duties with all his might, but in February 2013 he disappeared from view of the Venezuelans. Hugo Chavez died on March 5 of the same year.
Very little is known about the last days of the leader of the Latin American country. If you believe the rumors, Chavez died not on his native soil, but in one of the clinics in Cuba, where the best doctors on Liberty Island tried to save his life. Many believe that the body was secretly brought to Caracas from Havana.
One of the most beloved presidents by Americans, Abraham Lincoln, suffered all his life from a congenital genetic disease - endocrine neoplasia. This disease causes the growth of tumors in different places of the body, which can degenerate into malignant ones.
Few people know, but Lincoln’s awkward, lanky figure is a consequence of his illness. Doctors believed that the president had very little time to live and if he had not been shot on April 14, 1865 by Southern supporter John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln would have died from complications caused by the disease before the end of the year.
It is officially believed that the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, suffered from polio, which confined him to a wheelchair. But modern doctors suspect that the true cause of the politician’s illness lies in Guillain-Barré syndrome, which affects the spinal cord.
The disease progressed over many years and, after forty, immobilized the lower part of Roosevelt’s body. But even such an unenviable position did not prevent the politician from making a brilliant political career. Already moving in a wheelchair, Roosevelt won the election and became governor of New York, and in 1932 he moved to the White House as head of state.
The seriously ill Roosevelt served as president for four consecutive terms and carried out as many reforms as no one before or after him could. In just his first 11 days as president, the politician passed as many bills through Congress as his predecessors had in 70 years.
It is worth mentioning that many Americans did not even suspect that their active leader was chained to a chair - there was no television then, and in the photographs Roosevelt was standing or sitting.
Despite the fact that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was one of the youngest presidents in US history, he could not boast of good health. Everyone learned relatively recently how serious health problems the 35th president had.
Kennedy biographer, writer and historian Robert Dallek, studied in detail the family archives of the presidential family and learned about the numerous illnesses that plagued the first person of the United States. As it turned out, since childhood, Kennedy suffered from a severe form of allergies, against which asthma developed.
In adulthood, unbearable back pain was added to breathing problems. John Kennedy underwent 5 spinal surgeries, one of which almost cost him his life. To be able to move without assistance, the president wore a specially made corset and orthopedic shoes under his suit.
Kennedy's life was impossible without constant therapy - he took baths with special salt compositions up to 5 times a day and absorbed a huge amount of drugs, ranging from ordinary sleeping pills to potent painkillers and antidepressants.
Dallek believes that the fact that Kennedy never complained about his state of health speaks not of the politician’s desire to deceive voters, but of his iron willpower.
Brazil's first female president to resign following impeachment was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 2009. Dilma Rousseff was very lucky, as the disease was detected at an early stage.
Chemotherapy started on time allowed the woman to get rid of a dangerous illness, and soon after recovery another victory awaited her - winning the 2010 presidential election. Rousseff claims that preparing for the elections and simultaneously treating cancer was very difficult for her.
Despite this, the woman always looked great and appeared before voters dressed to the nines, with excellent makeup and a good mood. It’s hard to say how difficult it was for Rousseff to portray a healthy and energetic politician while having a terrible diagnosis.
Already as president, Dilma Rousseff became concerned about her figure and began to lose weight. She managed to get rid of ten kilograms gained during cancer treatment.
Ilyich’s life was not easy and full of exile, imprisonment and other revolutionary delights. In this regard, illnesses began to overcome the first head of the Soviet Union after 40 years. Historians know that Lenin suffered several strokes, as well as a serious wound inflicted on him by the Socialist Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan.
The first stroke, which occurred on May 26, 1922, partially paralyzed the leader of the world proletariat and deprived him of speech. But the willpower and efforts of the best doctors (as evil tongues say, not only workers and peasants), put Lenin on his feet by October of the same year.
Lenin immediately threw himself into work energetically and worked for two and a half months without a single day of rest. During this time, the leader managed to communicate with dozens of delegations and almost two hundred visitors, and also wrote two hundred letters, articles and decrees.
Ilyich presided over thirty meetings and made several long fiery speeches at the session of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Fourth Congress of the Comintern. For a man who had recently suffered a stroke, this load turned out to be disastrous, and in December of the same 1922, Lenin became so ill that he could no longer return to work.
The leader spent the last months of his life in his Gorki residence near Moscow in a not very conscious state. On January 21, 1924, Vladimir Ilyich died at the age of 53, being the formal head of state, but, in fact, not performing his functions for more than a year.
The great leader of the North Korean people, who ruled the DPRK from 1948 to 1994, suffered for many years from a benign tumor in his neck. Despite the fact that it was not life-threatening to Kim Il Sung, its impressive size and the pressure exerted on surrounding tissues hardly added to the leader’s well-being.
It is not known exactly why the formation was not removed - the leader of North Korea lived with an impressive growth from the mid-80s until his death. Due to the illness of the Secretary General, photographing him in his homeland was only allowed from a certain angle, and in the last couple of years, Kim Il Sung began to avoid cameras altogether. But in photographs taken during rare trips abroad, the tumor is clearly visible.