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Comment by JasonFruit | Hacker News Reader

Inspiring, famous, influential, and powerful are not synonyms. The Ceaucescus exercised a lot of raw power.

Indira Gandhi was instrumental in the creation of a new country - Bangladesh - by waging a direct war with Pakistan. Not a small matter considering Bangladesh is the 8th most populous country in the world. This is in addition to influencing the second most populous country in the world (India).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Freedom_Honour

Within Romania yes, but India dwarfs it geographically and demographically, and internationally I think Gandhi had a lot more influence.

In a tiny country. Imelda Marcos exercised a similar level of power in a country >5x the size of Romania.

The fact that he threw in Margaret Thatcher (who was not a dictator, and thus didn’t have as have much raw power) kinda shows that the author was just pulling opinions out of thin air, or exaggerating for effect, rather than carefullly measuring ‘raw power’.

On the other hand, Tatcher was a world leader (behind Reagan and Gorbatsjov).

Her power to dictate the life of civilians in her country was less than that of dictators; her ability to influence the world beyond her country's borders far greater.

I think the point here is that Elena Ceausescu wasn't a world leader. Nobody is disputing Thatcher's importance.

Surely Indira Gandhi with her authoritarian tendencies held more "raw power" than Thatcher, elected in a stable parliamentary democracy with proper rule of law.

In Romania certainly. Outside Romania?

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