Dictators Explained

Dictators Explained: The Malevolent Careers of 8 Leaders Including Hitler, Stalin and Mao | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra

"The cult of personality is not designed to convince or to persuade people that the leader truly is a great genius. No. The cult is there to destroy common sense. To destroy reason, to sow confusion, to enforce obedience, to literally isolate individuals and crush their dignity. People have to self monitor what they say, how they said, and in turn, they start monitoring other people…

Mussolini… He's so obsessed with control that after a couple of years, he is in charge of about half a dozen ministries. It's a dictatorship. At every level, he will find time to change the color of a woman's magazine, the 1930s. It's the same for Duvalier in Haiti… Duvalier will prescribe who can graduate, how career should be spelled, what people ought to read. On which side of the road the car should drive. Extraordinary dictatorship down to every little detail...

Stalin himself is a compulsive editor who will check everything that is said about him in the press. Every photo must be censored and approved, every word attributed to him must be approved. So it's a great amount of work. And they work very hard. It's not easy to be a dictator… it demands a great amount of almost obsessive level labor. And I think to be fair to the, demand, demanding a good deal of talent. Some of them are very talented, and not just organizational skills...

‘There's often a desire it seems to portray it with, the dictators to portray themselves as humble simple man of the people, an accessible icon. And you explore how these dictators made themselves accessible or visible in number of ways. Can you talk a little bit about that?’

‘Yes, most of them, there're always common features but you always find an exception, an exception to the rule. A great many of them do cultivate this image of modesty. Hitler clearly is not one of them. But DuValier, Papa Doc in Haiti, knows full well, that when he presents himself as an electoral candidate in 1957, he has virtually no chance to succeed, because these elections are really nothing but a showpiece organised by the military. So he assumes the air of a very unassuming country doctor. A man who wouldn't harm a fly, who is devoted to the welfare of his subjects. And of course, the moment he is granted power with the protection of the military, he turns and back around and purges the ranks of the army.

In the case of Stalin, slightly different. Too, there is a paradox in the Soviet Union and other communist countries, namely, that the Soviet Union is supposed to be the dictatorship of the proletariat, not the dictatorship of one particular individual. It's okay for Hitler and Mussolini to make their own star the guiding principle of their country, to put themselves at the very center of their own ideology, but not so if you are a Marxist-Leninist. So how does Stalin get around this? Well, by creating the illusion that it is not him, but rather the people who demand to see him, it is the people who adore him. It is the population, the masses who pay homage to him because he is the embodiment of the Revolution.

In the case of Stalin, there's an other aspect to this. His main rival is Trotsky. From 1924 to 1928, he pends his time plotting against Trotsky, who is finally isolated and expelled from the country. But once abroad, Trotsky starts writing about Stalin as a rather devious, underhanded, mediocre character. So what Stalin does is invite a string of writers, journalists, who are invited to visit him in his office in the Kremlin, and he presents himself as a very plain, simple, ordinary man, devoid of all vanity. So again, the way these dictators present themselves is extraordinarily calculated, all of them are literally great actors...

Mao, good old Chairman Mao. Of course, he takes so much from Stalin, including Stalinism, and the cult of personality. But believes that Stalin has failed miserably in spotting his nemesis Nikita Khrushchev who, of course, starts destalinization in 1956, three years after the death of Stalin, and Stalin’s body is literally dragged out of the mausoleum. So Mao is determined not to beat [sp?] the same fate.

What is his answer? I think, in part his answer is the Cultural Revolution. Since Stalin failed to spot Khrushchev as a potential enemy, Mao thinks let ordinary people hands down anyone at any level within the party, who might have harbored reservations about his role. So this is the Cultural Revolution, people are pitted against people, ordinary people can denounce party members all the way to the very top. In the end, it becomes an endless cycle of violence in which people are desperate to prove their loyalty to the chairman. And he reigns supreme. He feels secure enough at the very end of his life, to somehow rein in the cult of personality.'...

'All dictators, very much teeter between hubris and paranoia. Hubris because they're surrounded by sycophants, flatterers. And in the end, they tend to make all the decisions themselves with, with, the fatal consequences for huge numbers of people.

Stalin makes the mistake of signing a pact with Hitler, for instance. Hitler makes the mistake of invading the Soviet Union which will be his downfall, etc, etc. And the paranoia, hubris and paranoia in the sense that they’re constantly afraid of others, and it doesn't help that they get older. The end of his life, Stalin was probably more paranoid than ever and continued the purges, even though, as he start self deification ordering even larger statues of themselves.

But the point I'm trying to make is that some of them, the ones who tend to fail, in particular Ceaușescu, start believing in their own cult. I’ve no doubt that Ceaușescu, Romania, after a while, becomes quite convinced that he is the genius that the people portray him to be. And he's got a never ending, insatiable appetite for more distinctions, more university degrees, more honours, he collects them literally. He counts them in the evening, very much like a stamp collector. So he becomes a victim of the cult himself. I said earlier on that the cult is there to make the general population and members of the inner circle captive. But Ceaușescu becomes a prisoner of his own cult, believes in it, fails to read the signs, and is very upset. At first, full of disbelief, then upset that the population actually turns against them, he can't see it...

I think there might be a slight misconception in the case of Hitler, in the sense that we only see him rant and rave at crowds. There's only one tape available where he speaks normally to another human being. A recording made while he was traveling on a train. He sounds reasonably straightforward. But nonetheless, he always dominated the conversation...

Only about a week ago, slandering, Putin was outlawed, which tells you that he's not much of a dictator, because if should, a good dictator would have done done that many, many, many years ago. And as a good friend and historian of mine, Robert Service says, you can go to Moscow, you can google quite a few things about Putin and you will findatthe people disagree with them. Look at the demonstrations going on in Moscow, right?...

Xi Jinping… I think is very close to being one of those old fashioned dictators. He certainly has closed down that country drastically over the last number of years. You may remember what I said earlier on, there’s a very simple test. Go to a country and try to find somebody who speaks out against the man in charge. Very difficult in the People's Republic of China today. People demonstrating by the hundreds of thousands in Hong Kong, but across the border, very difficult to find any one person who offers their support for Hong Kong… yes, Xi Jinping has his little red book. Yes, Xi Jinping has this whole iconography. And yes, Xi Jinping towers far above his peers. And it would be dangerous to speak out against him...

It’s always good to be vigilant, one must be vigilant, but seen from a lot longer historical perspective, these dictators are playing a very weak hand, they will lose."