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Czar or Czarina, Secretary General of the Communist Party or President of the Russian Federation, all Russian leaders have two things in common: an authoritarian practice of power and, on the world stage, an imperialist logic. Apart from two “liberal moments”, from 1905 to 1917 and – under Boris Yeltsin – from 1991 to 1999, this vast country knows nothing but brutal dictatorships and frightening totalitarianisms. While Russia has gone to war in Ukraine, L’Express takes a summer look at Vladimir Putin’s most illustrious predecessors: Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Catherine II, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Joseph Stalin . Here, across five centuries, is the crazy story of five Russian dictators.