[carlosjobim]

Stalin and most other dictators bring their own power structures. The capital city is just that. As an example, some roman dictators/emperors never even went to Rome, but still had strong power structures.

And just because it has to be pointed out, Stalin didn't do his reign of terror from the Kremlin in Moscow, but from his dacha in Kuntsevo.

Hitler also spent most of his reign of terror from Wolfsschanze and Obersalzberg. He definitely had his own power structure, completely independent of the city of Berlin.

[lazide]

Stalin used (and took over) Lenin’s power base, and built up more as time went on. He didn’t ‘bring his own’. Even despite all the purges, for instance, the Red Army was there before and after him. The NKVD, KGB, MDB all had predecessor agencies (some back to the Tsars even, but the NKVD was first formed in 1917).

And Kuntsevo is in Moscow. Literally.

And if you’re asserting that Hitler didn’t need, or use, the Wehrmacht or other organs of state power (including the Gestapo, which was consolidated out of the prior Prussian Secret Police), and didn’t spend most of his time in Berlin, then I don’t know what to say.

[carlosjobim]

> And Kuntsevo is in Moscow. Literally.

Yes it is, but it's not in the Kremlin, where the official seat is.

Both Stalin and Hitler were independent of their capital cities for conducting their rule. Dictators and emperors are not mere symbolic heads of state, and their network of people means much more than where they sit to conduct their business. This network is not necessarily connected to the capital.

I think we're maybe debating semantics, but I strongly disagree with the idea that the capital cities are more influential than the dictators and emperors. As in my example of Roman emperors who hardly even went to Rome.

Politics is much more about abstract human connections, than brick and stone buildings. We are a very mobile species after all.