The Secret Life of Dictators with Frank Dikötter

- So the fear starts the moment you seize power, or the moment you, you, you, you obtain the power. But as a result, precisely of the cult of personality, there are benefits. You turn everyone into a liar. You surround you, you become surrounded by sance people who who, who applaud you all day long. But as a result, you no longer know who thinks what, which has its benefits, as I said, because nobody can really come up with some sort of organized opposition. But you don't know what they think either, which means you can't trust anyone, which means you must make all major decisions on your own.

- Frank Dikotter is the Milias Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Frank, you've written a lot about the concept of dictatorship, especially in your award-winning and bestselling book dictators from 2019. How important is the cult of the personality to the phenomenon of dictatorship?

- Well, you know, it's a, it's a very good question because, and his vague interest in dictators are needless to say, that started with Mao. But I always read up a lot on the second World War being Dutch, obviously, 1, 1, 1 1 has a, a direct link to, to that entire era. And Hare Hitler, and I did a degree, a degree in Russian, which meant that I read a great deal about Lenin and Stalin. And I think very gradually, it just occurred to me that an awful lot is said about what these dictators do in terms of, you know, the fear, the terror, the secret police, the prisons, the gulag, the camps, but not a great deal about this cult personality, which is seen by historians as a sort of, you know, fake Stalin wasn't a great genius. Mal Mao didn't have the answer to everything. But when you think about it, if you go back to the fear when the cult of personality appears to be the exact opposite enthusiasm, right? People applauding the dictator, praising his name, reciting his work, bowing to his likeness, in the case of the cultural revolution from 1966 onwards in, in, in China. But in fact, it still is fair. So a dictator has a choice. You, you can either have a gun behind every single person, and that's going to be very difficult. You can police the streets, but's going to be very expensive and difficult, or you can police the minds of everyone, the minds of everyone, and compel people to acclaim them hymn. It's always a hymn in public. And, and that to me, I thought was absolutely fascinating. And it went back to something I read on the cultural revolution when I was in, in high school. It was a, a novel by Taiwanese author who had spent some time in China during the cultural revolution and was dead afraid that her child, age four would go around saying, Mao is a bad egg.

- Which, - Which were the, which would land the entire family in trouble. I thought that that's the key. The, the fear is not the guns. The fear is must be instilled in every hedge of every person. And then something else came to mind with this call of personality as, as I was working on it, you know, I picked topics that I don't know much about. I have questions, and I'd like to, to come up with some sort of, of answer. And that is that it's not just about ordinary people claiming the leader, the leader, the dictator himself lives in fear. A leader, a dictator, takes power, doesn't go to the ballot box, seizes power through a coup, through, through manipulating the ballots, through a stab in the back, walking over the bodies of his enemies and sometimes friends. But the point is, if I seizes power, anyone else can seizes it from me in turn. So if I'm number one, I'm very concerned about number 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, all the way down the line. So what do you do? You compel them to acclaim you, all the ones around you so that none of them knows what anyone actually thinks. In, in effect, the cult of personality destroys truth and turns every person into a liar. And when everybody lies, it's very difficult to come up with an opposition. It's very difficult to come up with a clique who might seize power from the dictator. And that's where we are, of course, in a number of countries around the world, China, with name. And,

- And that's very much what George all was getting at in 1984, wasn't it? That the mind to, to bring the mind round was more difficult, but more long lasting than bringing people around by force.

- Yes, abs, absolutely.

- Although the force is always there, of course,

- Must be there. Yeah. But it doesn't take much. The, the once you, once, once you execute a few people, the, the threat of physical violence is there. But it takes much longer to have people worry about what they might not just say, but think or dream when they wake up in the middle of the night and are called swept because they had a negative thought about the great

- Leader. And do you think, to what extent does that work with our modern day dictators? 'cause most of your dictators were all of your dictators. 20th century.

- Yes.

- But in the 21st century with Xi Putin, king, Jon Un, and so on. Yeah. Are they scared? Do you think that, that Xi is, is is worried and scared about being overthrown by the four or five people around ou nonetheless do conform outwardly to the cult of the personality of Xi? Oh, well, all day

- Long. So all day long. So the fear starts the moment you seize power or the, the moment you, you, you, you obtain the power. But as a result, precisely of the cult of personality, that there are benefits. You turn everyone into a liar. You surround you, you become surrounded by SCO fats, people who who, who applaud you all day long. But as a result, you no longer know who thinks what, which has its benefits, as I said, because nobody can really come up with some sort of organized opposition. But you don't know what they think either, which means you can't trust anyone, which means you must make all major decisions on your own. And bit by bit, you must start keeping tabs on the people around you. I know number two will applaud me in public, but what does he really think? Who did he meet? Who is he speaking to? They've got a massive state organizations to follow people, right? Secret police, ministry of, of, of state security, public security, you name it. I get reports all day long. My my, my personal spies. But this is a lot of work. So to be a dictator, all consuming, because you cannot trust a single person. This is also why for dictators, the key value, what they want most is loyalty dictators like children and animals. Hitler was kind to his dog.

- Well, until the very end when he killed Blondie, he wasn't that kind when he made him eat cyanide. Yes. Yeah. Well, but sign of love, let's look at the history of dictatorship, because it hasn't always, the phrase dictator hasn't always been seen as a pejorative phrase, has it? In the ancient world, certain people who assumed dictatorial power, Cincinnati being the classic example, who then gives it up later. The actual concept of dictator of being a dictator wasn't a, a negative one. Even Napoleon Bonaparte, especially in his early years, who did assume through a military coup, dictatorial powers was seen in a positive light. You start with Louis the 14th, and that very much of course was the calta, the personality as well. But te te tell us about how the concept of dictatorship has altered over the centuries.

- Yes. So to me, the, the, there, there is a, a key point, which why would go so fast to say that there's no real dictator in the ancient world, a pre-modern world. It starts with modernity. But then what is modernity and when does it start? So to me, the point about Louis the IV is not that he is a dictator. He doesn't really care about what the populace at large thinks of him. Of course, he's concerned, you know, to some extent, but he's really concerned about the aristocracy. And he builds this monumental building Versailles to have all the people who might represent a threat close to him at court, where they must constantly demonstrate their loyalty. So it gets very close to call personality. But the key point really is that in 1789, not quite Louis the 14th, but his, the descends get decapitated and with the head of the monarch, which is put between his legs, and then he's, he's buried really what is buried as well is of course this, this notion of divine rights. So from 1789 onwards in, in Europe, political power is supposed to reside not so much in, in, in heaven, not given by gorge, not given by a mandate of heaven. If you are, if you are in China, it is, it resides in the people, the nation. So of course, if all sorts of debates about what is the nation, what are the people, but, but, but clearly then a dictator must invoke the people in order to justify his own presence. And the best way to do that, again, is by invo, invoking the call of personality and saying, oh, but the nation at large loves me without having to go to the ballad box. So that to me is the key. 1789 to me is the, the key point where what you see is a tension between, on the one hand, those who do wish to represent the majority, and those who claim to represent the majority, those who get elected at the ballot box, and those who do not get elected, but will have endless plebiscite, you know, Adolf Hitler, 99.8% of people approve of him, although he never got elected. That, that becomes, to me, the, the key tension between, if you wish, democracy, a separation of powers and a monopoly of a power nor separation of power.

- Are there really

- Other,

- Not withstanding the culture of the personality, what are the other common features that you found between the eight dictators that you looked at, and which might also be seen in other dictators like Franco or Xi or Putin? Is there a, is there a dictator mentality, a dictator sort of common personality traits?

- Yeah, so I, I was, I was told more than once that I should have organized this book differently. I, I should have done it by, by, by, by, you know, thematically, thematically.

- Mm.

- But I resist that. And I'll tell you why, because I'm, I'm somewhat, I'm somewhat critical of big theory and, and, and, and big sociological generalizations seems to me that what matters most always is the individual and the circumstances. So both are always unique. So if you take eight dictators, what you see is that the circumstances are strongly different from, you know, Hitler in the 1930s, a reasonably developed country to Haiti under, under Papa Doc, desperately poor other side of the world. Completely different circumstances and utterly different people in terms of personality. So what you yet then is a sort of a variation on a number of themes. So why pick eight is because I think it's enough for a reader to realize that there may be common features, but all are so profoundly individual and so very different. You cannot take Hitler and, you know, transplant him to North Korea or Kim Sung and fly him to, to Hades simply not going to work. Nonetheless, I think the reader does realize that there are a lot of common themes among these people. And I would say the key one is utter sheer lack of empathy. Lack of empathy. I feel nothing if you're going to wake up in the middle of the night and feel bad because a couple of million people were just destroyed in some sort of mass deportation or famine over which you presided, it will not go very well. So

- You have to be essentially a, a sociopath or even a psychopath in order to be a good dictator.

- Yeah, I would say lack of empathy. So I, so the, the, the, the, the point really is that you do not, you're not born a dictator, but you become one. But lack of empathy helps a great deal. I think that'd be the, the, the, the tick number one of the list of desirable futures.

- That, that's a very interesting point about how you, you're not born a dictator because there are, in the modern day, aren't there some people who are teetering on the brink of dictatorship, I'm thinking in particular of President Erwin of Turkey, who it wouldn't take much now for him to actually turn into a fully blown dictator.

- Yes.

- He wasn't born one necessarily, but he is well on the way of becoming one. Would you agree with that?

- It's, it's in principle to me, it is reasonably straightforward. If you go back to what I said earlier on, either you have a monopoly over power or you have a separation of powers. So the whole, the whole notion, you know, Monte enlightenment, the idea of separation of powers, checks and balances, something extraordinarily difficult to, to develop. And of course you can start curtailing it, you can start undermining your judicial independence, for instance. But the monopoly of a power is pretty straightforward. So to, to me, to have a little bit of a, a monopoly of the power and separation, the power's a bit like a fried snowball. It's a bit like a, a married bachelor, you can't really do that.

- Yeah. - Although, and I will immediately point at Singapore as a, as a wonderful example of, of a city where you can mix these two. So there are a few examples. So er one I think is very interesting and so is Putin, by the way, this may be controversial. It's interesting in that when you have, or you had a country where the head of the opposition is the mayor of your capital in Istanbul.

- Yeah.

- Like, can, can you really talk about a monopoly over power? To, to put it slightly differently, could, could you imagine the head of the opposition and the people's Republic of China being the mayor of Shanghai? Or first of all, there is no opposition. So, so it, so that to me is, is is is something which is, I think in the case of Turkey and Russia, what we're talking about is a very imperfect separation of powers, which is then aggravated over time by particular individuals. So that there is a dissent towards a monopoly of the power, but it's not perfect.

- And when the army and the courts and the police, and certainly the secret police fall under the, the aegis of the head of state,

- Yes,

- You are moving therefore to towards a dictatorship, even if, which is true of Russia. Not true of entirely true of, of other places, but probably true of Turkey. Now,

- Yes.

- But as you say, there are other centers of power

- Yes.

- Which you don't actually see in Russia, do you? Centers of power. No. You can't imagine the lead of the Navalny being allowed to be mayor of St. Petersburg or Mo No, exactly. So, so what you are saying is that in, whereas in Singapore, there isn't control of the courts or the army by any, by any one person. So there is a, there's a sort of sliding scale essentially of dictatorship with, with, with Russia at one end, Singapore at the other, and Urdu somewhere in

- Between. I, I think that's true. Although in principle, I'm still pretty much, I I still think that you either have a good monopoly over power or, or, or, or he. You, you don't, I mean, if Stalin were to be resurrected, he would scoff at Putin. You don't have to kill under Stalin journalists or state employees. Mm. They write what you want them to write, and they publish what, what, what you want them to publish. They will also acclaim you a great deal.

- Yes. In all of these though, the assumption must be that democracy has failed in these particular countries. This is the central argument of the dictator, isn't it? That, that I can do this better than a democracy, because democracy has let you down in specific areas. It's not develop, it's not developing the country, it's not delivering the things that I can give you instead, I mean, do you see that as being integral to the rise of dictatorship, the concept on behalf of the people that democracy has, has failed to, to deliver?

- Yes. A a again, with Putin, the, the question really is that is not a perfect dictatorship. There's not a, a sheer monopoly over power in the sense that one had under the Soviet Union. And then the question is why? So that, I think there's two answers. One, there was constitutional reform in, in the nineties after the, the, the, the collapse of the Soviet Union. And some, some of that manages to survive. And then the question is, is it Putin who will allow that to happen? Or is there somehow, is he not quite capable or willing to have that sort of, you know, sheer good old fashioned grip on power? Is he willing to somehow compromise a little, a little bit? So that to me is, is is the question there? And I simply don't have the answer, but it's taken Putin quite a bit of time to get that. You'll know, you'll remember that it's taken decades, right? Yes, yes. Absolutely. So the, the question really was about popular support for the dictator. And to me that is always a slightly dangerous argument to say that there is a population which, which somehow believes that there must be a strong man. A strong man is more desirable because democracy is not getting us anywhere at all. And you will remember the, the popular misconception that good old harbor Hitler got elected when, when he wasn't. Of course he wasn't. And, and in fact, the percentage he got at the ballot box went down in 31 and 32, not, not up. So he was really placed there after, you know, sorted sort of corridor politics. And the background was appointed chancellor. So the, the great mystery here of, of Al Hitler is in 33 is not elected by anyone. And nobody, no majority is in favor of him in up to 33. And nobody is in favor of him in 45. So again, back to the cult of personality, you have all these Germans who applaud this man apparently, but in 45 you can read through a great many memoirs and you will not find a person who cries.

- Yes, yes. Massive indifference. And what happens on those rare occasions when a dictator becomes genuinely popular in May in June, 1940, when Hitler returned from Paris, having crushed France in six weeks, it does seem as though, had he genuinely held a referendum in Germany, he would've won it. Maybe,

- Maybe not. So to me that's a, an absolutely fascinating issue where I think historians really have a lot of work to do. 'cause the answer is actually very simple, right? If it is a dictatorship, either 1940 or 1968 with the culture, with the cultural revolution on the Mao or, or Kim III as I call him up in North Korea today, you simply don't know what people believe either today dictatorship and you don't know. And the dictator himself might not know, or, or it is not. And people can express themselves quite freely. You know, remember the election of Trump first time around, I do not remember a great many people in this country having predicted that Trump would win unless an open free society where he can carry out all the research you wish. So nevermind finding out how popular a dictator really is at the height of his power, 1940 with ata, I would say the moment already in 39 when the war starts, Germans are profoundly upset. And of course by 1940 have felt a, a great amount of, of, of, of, of pressure, pain, deprivation as a result of, of the war. And they are forced to apply in 1933. By the end of 1933 when it comes to power, a hundred thousand ordinary Germans are in j ordinary Germans are in jail for having spoken out against the man himself. People have just dragged off the streets.

- No, absolutely. But by June, 1940, where before, before Germany is bombed, after it's crushed France, and obviously earlier Poland and, and Scandinavia and so on, yeah. It, the, the streets fill with, with ordinary Germans. They don't seem to be doing that at bayonet point in June, 1940, when he returns ugly, victorious, are we to assume, you know, that they are being forced to do this? Or is there no such thing as, as a national pride that that makes you proud to have avenge 1919?

- I think there's a quotation in the book where on his birthday in 1939, somebody spans in, in, in nearby the chancellery and, and, and observes a few dozen people in the rain standing there dis

- Oh yes. No, it's not popular. The outbreak of war is not popular. But but you can't tell me that the fall of France was not popular in Germany.

- It, it's, I'm not saying that. I'm only saying it's very difficult to find out.

- Yeah. - And you should never underestimate the extent to which regimes will go to prop up support and project it. Yeah. But people are literally bust to public places. Mm. Stand there in the reign and applaud the man in 1940 or, or elsewhere. It's a very common practice in Italy. It's very, very interesting. Mussolini, people have to turn up on the, the piazza and listen to the loudspeakers. Right. Like Mussolini, well before Hitler understands how important radios and loudspeakers are produced and sold

- Below. And Doc Oxford photographs.

- Yeah. He a

- Famous doctored

- Photograph. Now you can leave, read a lot of biographies of Mussolini, but took me a while to find out an article published in the 1950s that actually pointed out that people in a small town will get through the mail, a letter that tells them to turn up when Meline is there on the square and applaud him. Or, or, or else. Or else.

- And in your book, you do differentiate between political theater, which is an, an, an acceptable part of democratic politics and the cult of the personality.

- Yes.

- Where does one sort of leach into the other, as it were?

- Fear, fear, fear. Any one president in the democracy can surround him by children and supporters to show how popular it is. Yeah. But if it's driven by fear, that's a different story where you can't say no and not wish to stand there and applaud. That's the key. So

- You mentioned, you mentioned President Trump earlier, but this is political theater as opposed to cult the personality,

- Because there's, don't misunderstand me, I'm not one who says that in a dictatorship, all you need is 1% of popular support, whereas in a democracy, you need 51% of, of support. That's not true. A a a dictatorship must rely on I think something like 20, 30%. There's got to be support from key interest groups and that can be achieved through different means, but it is not, it is rarely 50%. Right. If you were able to find out might, it might be that there's a, you know, like June, 1940, there's a, a blip there. Yeah. Yeah. But already by 43 at the Stalingrad, Germans in Germany start ripping off the ba Nazi badges, getting rid of portraits of a Hitler. Mm. It's already on the way down 43. The portraits

- Thing is very interesting when you, you have a scene in your book where the massive statue of Lenin, Addis Abba that has been, has been turned over and it's, and it's sort of lying on its side. And statues are an important part of all of this, aren't they? The massive statue of, of Kim in Pyongyang and, and so on. And then of course, the pulling down of the statues when it takes place. And we of course in Britain are still having rous over statues. Winston Churchill statue was famously defaced Yes. In ornaments square a few years ago. And other statues are regularly attacked as well. What's the role of, of statuary in both in, in dictatorships and also in

- Democracies? It's the face of the dictator. The face of the dictator must be there at all times. There's gotta be portraits, gotta be statues. But the interesting thing, again, if you pick eight, I could have picked 9, 10, 11, somebody told me, what is eight? It's not even a football team. It's gotta be just enough for you to do a good job. But the key point is it's got to be based on primary sources. It is too easy. A sociologist would tell you there are statues everywhere, but they're not, in some cases a great many. In the case of good old chairman, Mao and Kim Mul song, A great many Stalin, massive statues, but not for out of Hitler. So then you've gotta find out why is that, there's very interesting correspondence about them and the statutes. He forbids it. And there's a point where he says, statutes is for the past, I'm walking towards the future. He's a man of his future. There cannot be any statues about, about him. So there's very few statues that portraits Yes, but not statutes.

- And do they play a, a reasonable and and legitimate role in our democracies to have, you know, here in United States where we're sitting, there are statues in, in lots of towns of local worthies and, and serious and substantial figures. And the odd writer and so on. I mean, are they a good thing or are they just a totem that one day are gonna be pulled down by people?

- You know, I'm, I'm just a hopeless sort of historian. I like anything that is a reminder of the past, you know, any, any so

- Hitler's wife in that, in that sense, it's all about the past, I think. So

- Statues are all about

- The past.

- I'm all in, in favor of preserving stuff

- Quite right. Same here. They, does some of them start off, these dictators aspiring to be Caesar or Napoleon or Citus, even aspiring to be a, a, a, a positive force before their, their hatred of democracy turns them into monsters. Or are they, do they tend to be monsters before they even aspire to, to

- Be leaders? It's a very difficult dynamic to understand. There's got to be some predisposition, so to speak. No, but I do think that one does become a dictator. One, because it, this, if you wish, once you seize power, which is, you know, the definition of a, of a dictator, which you seize power, the, the playbook is quite limited. So you must take other steps if you wish to preserve that power. It goes back to Thomas Hobbes. Right?

- Yeah. - But you must always acquire more power in order to preserve the power you already have. Yeah. And that's the driving principle of a dictator. And there's no end to it.

- Yeah. And elli, with the regard to, if you want to be loved or hated, it's it's feared, loved or feared. That's

- Should you be, should you be feared. See points out that if you're loved, the moment things go, go perche, people will just abandon you. Whereas if you've instilled fear into them, they will continue to fear you. Mm. Even when things go bad.

- Mm.

- So it, it's, it's all consuming. And needless to say, it will, it does change a person. But the predisposition is there already pointed at empathy. I think another one is just overweening ambition. These people are very convinced of their own superiority. They can see it, they're convinced, they're driven.

- Where does Salazar of Portugal fit into this? Because he seems to have been an acetic figure who didn't dress up in, in military uniforms, kept himself as a, as a sort of quiet, almost unobtrusive figure, and didn't follow a great cult of the personality. And yet he was a dictator, wasn't he? No.

- It's very interesting that you mentioned Salazar. 'cause I don't mention him in the book at all. Right. But I did spend time thinking about him. And the question really was, is this something like a good dictator or, or a moderately good? I suppose that's what I was tiptoeing towards. So I did spend some time reading up on Salazar. You, you're quite right. It it did, he, he he did delegate a great deal. There was no cult of personality. But if you scratch under the surface, you, you, you do find that iron grip

- Yes.

- Imprisons, it is opponents and so on. Indeed.

- Yeah. - And the prisons, needless to say, are horrendous. But the, the real sort of, you know, the nastiness really is to be found. Not so much in Portugal, but the colonies ese. And it's the same with Mussolini. Just what happens in the Ethiopia, just absolutely awful. Yeah. And the use of, of gas in North Africa and everything. So even if a dictator might seem to be somehow benign, home is rarely the case. Just to, to interrupt something very interesting in that I, I was very interested in how many, what proportion of the population is communist in the 1930s. And I was interested in China, of course. And it turns out that there are far more, as a proportion of the population, are far more communist in the United States and in Europe in the 1930s than there are in China, which is always associated with communism. Yes. Including, oddly enough under Salazar, but not in anti Germany.

- Yes, yes. No, no, no. That, no, that is an interesting vi And also it's, it's quite a strong force in Britain and obviously also in, in France in the 1930s. Yes. Yes. With regard to Mussolini and Abyssinia, modern day Ethiopia, that fits into a concept of the need for continual struggle, bism, as it was called at the time of Napoleon ii. The idea that you need to have foreign adventures and, and escapades in order to bind the country together, to have a faux without, as it were, and to, and also to deliver victories, hopefully easy ones. How, how universal is this concept of the, the, the foe without, and the idea that of constant struggle, like a, a sort of Leninist concept of, of permanent revolution.

- Yes. Yes. I I think these are almost two separate questions. The, the foe to some extent, I would say there's a, there's a very interesting Swedes, and I'm not a great fan of sociologists, but he was, his name was Herbert Kingston. He was one of the early participants in the, the Ellant Society in, In Switzerland. And he published an article in the 1930s, which I thought was very interesting. I read it long time ago. It was translated by Michael Benton, sociology of Race, wonderful man, despite being a sociologist. But they would, they would actually look at the evidence and have the theory come out of the evidence rather than the other way round, which is why there's such great sociologists. And the point about ston is that he examined a whole range of, of, of, of textbooks in Europe, not just Germany. And the idea really was that nationalism is not about finding yourself superior, it is about finding someone else better organized, better educated, technologically more advanced. So for the French, of course, this was the Germans, or these people are better organized, but entirely devoid of any artistry. And as the Germans would say, the, the French, that, that they have great universal values, but they're disorganized and they lack scientists. So the point really is that the outsider must be a threatening outsider who's not inferior, but superior. And that's, that's, that's I think, the key to both democracies and dictatorships. That there is a better organized, technologically more advanced fo out there. So that's not quite the same as I think abia, which is really colonies, right? Yeah. So Mussolini, others want colonies, the need for expansion, and also for constant struggle and constant struggle. So that, you know, Lenin, Trotsky in particular, but the, the fight never stops. The, the fight never stops. There's always an enemy lurching out there justifying the need for the dictators to stay in power, A constant vigilance, which of course is also the same for democracy, but, but very different. The idea of constant, you know, the, the, the price for democracy is constant vigilance. But the point about the dictatorship is that this, this vigilance must be carried out by access of the state. There's always something there going on. There's always a plot going on. And most of all, I think what, what I find so interesting is the exact opposite of acquiring an empire and fighting big walls, is the fear of a dictatorship, a fear of an old 82-year-old grandmother. The fear of something happening on the edge of your empire, of your nation that might somehow unravel everything. And I think the key here is, again, good old chairman, Mao 5th of January, 1930, he comes up with this saying, which I think is very common among revolutionaries, namely a single A, a a a single spark will set the prairie a lights. This is the illusion of revolutionaries that, you know, if you only, if you can get the masses to, to, to, to, to stand up and help you when revolution will take place in no time. But is of course also true for the counter-revolution. The counter-revolution. So it, it, it feeds into the paranoia of dictators. So the 82-year-old grandmother does exist, and she was in the Beijing Olympics in 2008. And the, the International Olympics Committee decided that for ping to hold it in 2008, they had to have a few square meters where people could express themselves democratically, to which they of course, agreed dictators love to make pledges and promises they never keep. And during the Olympics, two grandmothers turned up and they were arrested in pitching. So you might think, why, why would such a powerful dictatorship be afraid of two grandmothers? That's it. That's the reason.

- Hmm.

- And how important are fellow travelers in other countries? One thinks, obviously you mentioned in your, in your book about Harrison Salisbury, who was a western writer who was very keen to glorify Kim Hill sung. Then of course there were lots of Western writers who thought that Stalin had created a new generation one thinks of HG Wells and George Bernard Shaw and the Webbs and, and so on. There were plenty of people who are willing to say the same kind of thing about Hitler. You could go on to Jane Fonda, perhaps with, with the Vietnamese leaders. What is it that dictators seem to need with regard to praise from essentially enemy countries or at least opposing countries?

- Yes. So, so in the case of Stalin, of course, its entire working families who migrate to the Soviet Union from this country in the 1930s, which seemed extraordinary. Extraordinary. Yeah. But they were different when you realize that, of course there was a crisis here and, and everywhere else. Yeah. But not a famine that claimed millions from 29 to 32. Right? Yeah. So that's a quite extraordinary, but ultimately what they need is legitimacy. A dictator tends to believe leave genuinely or not genuinely, I think is besides the point. But a dictatorship just works better. So what is a dictatorship in the modern age? It goes back to what I said about the distinction between the monopoly of the power and the separation of powers. That it, you must invoke democracy. A dictatorship is a democracy. If, if you grow up under assets, Syria, you'll be told in school that you are living in the greatest democracy on planet Earth. If you're under the People's Republic of China, the Constitution tells you that you are a democracy. What happens to be a dictatorship of the proletariat. But the proletariat is the majority. So you are a democracy. There is a monopoly over power in order to maintain the interests of the majority, the democratic majority, which is best expressed by a leader, so out of Hitler, represents all the Germans. And God forbid that outsiders come and undermined that system. So, so every dictatorship proclaims itself to be democratic. And it needs legitimacy from outsiders. It needs people to fly in andor them. It needs people who come from the enemy can, if you're a communist. And the enemy, the, the bourgeois neoliberal capitalist system, people like Jeffrey Sachs today, or others who come over and applaud the system as somehow better than the real democracy that we live in. So political pilgrims is of course the title of a wonderful book by Paul Hollander. And he looks at these fellow travelers. It's an astonishing book in which he details the extent to which extraordinarily gifted and seemingly intelligent people are willing to go along with this whole cult of personality. And this, this projection of dictatorships and a projection of the democracy is quite extraordinary. The, the, the playwrights who, you know, the, the, the British playwright who, who went to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, George Bernard Shaw, and died with the portrait of Stalin by his bedside. And of course, what did, what did Shaw see in the Soviet Union in the 1930s? It was, of course, a guided visit. He saw a play, a massive play model prisons. Mm. Model schools.

- The tempkin villages,

- Essentially the Tempkin villages.

- Mm.

- And he, he bought the whole thing. Yeah.

- This is a playwright. Yeah.

- He was fooled.

- Can you tell me something about their private lives? These dictators, their, their lack of empathy, as you mentioned earlier, implies that they must not be able to make, to have normal human reactions or, or relations. One thinks of the suicide of Stalin's wife, Hitler's probable inability to have a proper relationship. Although we don't really know about his relationship with either Braun Chairman Mao having sex with underage girls, even though he had syphilis, Mussolini having lots of mistresses. Is there any connecting f but equally salazar having a happy marriage and, and seemingly Franco too. Yes. Is there any kind of connection between these people with regard to their ability to be fathers, husbands, and, and children? I,

- I think you put your finger on it. You had, you had a number of examples there. And it goes back to, I think what I said in the beginning. They are ultimately unique individuals, but of course, how the particular personality traits get expressed is amplified by the fact that they have power. And I, it's, it's a cliche to say that power corrupts an absolute power corrupts absolutely. But surely that must have an effects on, on their personal lives that you can just boss everybody around or have your mistresses appear in your extremely large office in the case of Yeah. With lots of backgrounds. Yeah. Surely that must have an effect that you can more or less do as you wish. So

- What, what do they have? What were their relations like with their parents?

- So I think fathers, this is actually the, the point is that ca can they, since they become utterly paranoid and cannot trust anyone, can they actually trust relatives that including their parents, children? That's in the case of Stalin, probably not

- Now, when Stalin had a difficult relationship with his mother, didn't he? I mean, obviously his father was a drunken Coble who beat him. Yes. But his mother loved him and said lovely things about him, but also kept a diary that he later had to have Yes. Sort of altered. Yes, yes.

- And, and of course his mother was used in the whole culture personality. Yes. Yes. But she would appear regularly. And, you know, applaud Soso. Yes. My friend Soso a lovely boy,

- Lovely boy. Frank. I always ask all my guests what a history book or biography they're reading at the moment.

- Well, I'm sorry to say that as a historian, I don't really read anything at all. I use books. I use books. Yeah. I want this one. I want, so I got about, yeah, a dozen on my desk, not to mention many, many, many hundreds on my, on my laptop. But there's one book which really brings so much of these themes together, and a book into which I dabbled time and again, I've read it more than once. And that I think constitutes the best portrait that we have of a dictator anywhere. And it's the memoirs of ue, the Doctor of Mao Mao's doctor Yeah.

- Ue

- Yeah. You quote him in this book. Yeah. I think it's just such a, such a, a convincing nuanced portrait. It's, it's really just superbly written about any dictator anywhere. So it just happens to be mal, just as, as a, as a sort of primary source. It really is fantastic. As a portrait of somebody who spent so much time with him for so long. And what, and what,

- What kind of man does emerge from this, from this book? When was it published? Well, everything long after, after Mel's death this evening,

- I can't quite remember. Yeah. Although he himself, of course, migrated to the United States, but died under very suspect circumstances. Ah, as far as I remember. Right.

- Yeah. Fantastic.

- So he he published it abroad.

- Yeah. - And I think it must have been published in the 19, the late 1990s, because I remember sitting in my office with the book and I just, I didn't leave my office. I just read throughout the night. I didn't go back home. That was such a, such a fascinating gripping account.

- And your, what if your historical counterfactual?

- Well, what if is, is very interesting because of course you, you know, I work on China primarily. You always think, what if Mao had died of a heart attack in 1927 or 37 or 47 or, or or 57. Would there not in 57, would there not have been a, a great leap forward and a famine from 58 to 62 that claimed tens of millions of lives. But unfortunately, the problem with that is that we just don't know, not in the terms of counterfactuals, but much as the dictator doesn't know where the enemy is around him. Could it be number two, number three, and numbers 15 down the, down the line? We don't know either.

- No.

- So the idea that if ma had died, a more compromising candidate might have appeared, is simply mere speculation and never the nastier one could have appeared.

- Well, I was about to say, you've, you've got plenty of other long marchers who were pretty, pretty tough figures. And then you've got D Xing and Jo La who all have their own personalities and would therefore presumably have had their cult, the personalities. Yes. And so on. So, so you, you haven't got a, a, a grand theory for a, for a lovely, fluffy democratic China that emerges. Not at

- All. Not at all. In fact, goes back, Lenon did die there. There is a counterfactual. He die. He did die. And who appeared? Someone, nobody even predicted. Mike, take power. You know, Stalin was not exactly a great orator, didn't write great. Marxist philosophy, hadn't troubled abroad, was not much of a speaker. Really. People heard his voice very rarely. Mm. Was somehow awkward, but managed. Yeah. Attention to

- Detail. Frank Deso, thank you very much indeed for coming on Secrets of Statecraft. Thank you. Thank you for having was a pleasure.

- This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution, where we generate and promote ideas advancing freedom. For more information about our work, to hear more of our podcasts or view our video content, please visit hoover.org.