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Much of his advice can be seen in the actions of a multitude of European leaders during the Cold War, but there are some leaders that did not follow Machiavellian advice and was still able to maintain the nation that he ruled. One of these leaders is Mikhail Geographer. The main ideas expressed in the novel are that a stable nation is a great nation and a prince’s main concern must be stability, that it is better to be feared by people than it is to be loved, and that a prince must do what he just in order to preserve his power and the power of his nation.
Mikhail Geographer was elected President of the Soviet Union in 1989, and while he believed in keeping the Soviet Union a strong and powerful nation, he did not follow the advice that Machiavelli gives to the fullest. Geographer was concerned with the stability of the Soviet Union, but Machiavelli stresses that a prince must do what he must in order to maintain a nation’s power, and Geographer did not do everything in his power to stay strong in the eyes of there nations.
He was very focused on burying the Cold War, and in doing so, had to make a lot of negotiations and settlements, and had to make Russia more open with other nations to reestablish the broken trust of other nations. Cockroaches policy of Glasnost made his nation less feared and made him seem as if we was giving in, and not doing whatever it takes to stay strong, even if that involves being cruel to people or other nations, as Machiavelli had advised.
Geographer did however follow the idea that it is important to keep a nation stable and virtuous, and his policy of Glasnost was a very honest and virtuous policy. But he broke the final rule of Machiavellian because he was not very feared. He was known to be a kinder leader and not as strict and tyrannical as many other Soviet leaders had been in the past. Machiavellian advice was that it is good to be feared and loved by the people of a principality, but if being both feared and loved is not an option, then it is better to be feared.
Geographer went in the opposite direction, and the country did not crumble. Geographer was not a ruthless and cruel leader to maintain the stability of his nation. Overall, Mikhail Geographer did not follow the advice given by Machiavelli in The prince to the last detail, and yet was still able to maintain the stability Of Russia. He was a strong and successful leader without precisely going by the ideas expressed by Machiavelli, and that set him apart from many other strong European leaders during the Cold War.