adimir Lenin was characterized as charismatic in the sense of Max Weber’s definition of the word. Weber extended the definition of charismatic to include more than just prophets, but also war leaders who were fanatically followed and idolized and in urban demagogues. According to Weber there are the ordinary types of leaders who are adequate and rational in their day-to-day management, then there are the charismatic leaders who “however they acquire the position, exhibit in their leadership and added dimension which is nonrational (or supra- or infrarational), depending on some quality in their persons which is felt as magnetic, contagious, stirring, overpowering, a quality which inspires in their followers powerful emotions and fanatical devotion,” (Wolfe, 1984: 35).
In this way, charismatic leadership is probably the one thing that Lenin, Hitler and Ayatollah Khomeini shared in common the most. This is because they all inspired this type of fanatical worship, but they were of different varieties. Hitler used racial hatred to bring cohesion to his cause while Khomeini used religious fanaticism to marshal his forces. Lenin, on the other hand, did not believe in God, so his was inspired from a natural ability to insure that what he was fighting for, what his causes for, were what the people’s causes were and what they wanted to fight for, “Weber’s extension of the term charisma and charismatic to types of leadership and rule whose possessors do not feel that the source of their powers is transcendental and whose followers do not feel it to be transcendental either, has evoked critical reactions in who find the extension improper, not to say blasphemous. They would allow charisma to Jesus and His Disciples…not to be parochial, they would allow it to a Mohammed, too, since he and his followers believe that his powers of prophecy, prescription, command, and leadership in war and statecraft came from Allah. They wou...