There is a long precedent in Russian history for hiding the truth about the health of their leaders. When Peter III and Paul were assassinated, the official story given out was that they had died of "apoplexy." (When Talleyrand heard that Paul had died of apoplexy, he remarked, "Russians should invent another illness to explain the deaths of their emperors.") This even persists somewhat today, such as last year when Putin canceled a trip to Kazakhstan was not seen in public for over a week, and there were reports in the West that he had flu, but Putin's spokesman refused to comment on his health. Even in the United States there is a tradition of this. When President Grover Cleveland was diagnosed with verrucous carcinoma in 1893, the country was in the midst of a financial depression, and Cleveland feared that news he had cancer would create further panic, so he arranged to have secret surgery on board a borrowed yacht after it had put out to sea. The surgery was conducted through the president's mouth, to avoid any scars or other signs of surgery. Following the operation, Cleveland went into hiding for the weekend, while a cover story was put out that he had had to have two bad teeth removed (this was not entirely untrue, as the doctors did remove parts of his upper left jaw in the process of excising the tumor). In the same vein, even though FDR was widely known to be a polio victim, he hid the extent to which it had crippled him; it was only after his death that it became public knowledge that he had used a wheelchair. Kennedy concealed his numerous health problems as well.
