Paul Corner - Mussolini in Myth and Memory: The First Totalitarian Dictator

Dictators come, dictators go. Very often their departure is accompanied by expressions of popular jubilation, mitigated in some cases only by uncertainty about what may come next. Once a relatively secure stabilization is achieved the verdict is usually undisputed. Three years after Stalins death, his name could finally be linked to the word criminal in a way unthinkable in the Soviet Union before 1953. With Hitler there was little discussion. When the extent of the Holocaust came clearly into focus (and it took more than a decade for this to happen), Hitlers name became virtually synonymous with evil. More recently, for anyone enjoying Christmas television in 1989, the sight of the bodies of Nicolai and Elena Ceauescu lying huddled in a desolate courtyard near Bucharest remains indelible. In this last case judgement was immediate. Popular anger directed at the dictator was such that, in defence of the hasty trial and summary execution, the former Romanian defence minister declared that shooting was preferable to the spectacle of the couple being lynched by a mob in the street. And if, for the moment, the North Korean Kim dynasty has avoided popular overthrow, there can be few doubts, judging from what escapees recount, that its eventual demise will not be mourned with copious tears.

Dictators have been accused of most things, often with reason, even if they have sometimes provided useful scapegoats for the difficulties their successors found they had to face. Certain accusations are common. The pursuance of disastrous foreign policies is a charge that can be levelled at many dictators and it is not difficult to think of examples. But it is at the level of domestic politics that they most often seem to resemble each other. Arbitrary power is frequently seen as leading to private enrichment. Whether Ceauescus kitchen scales were really made of solid gold remains in question, but the story fits well with what people expected of the mans behaviour, essentially corrupt and self-regarding. Indeed, corruption comes high on the list of accusations made of dictatorships; the deviation of public funds into the private pockets of a privileged elite is judged to be a common phenomenona phenomenon particularly galling in what are frequently countries with very limited resources. Any protest against either corruption or peculation is impossible because of a system of justice itself subservient to the political elite and all too ready to interpret the law, even where there is a semblance of legality, in the interests of that elite. Underlying all these problems are the central questions of the denial of rights and the repression of certain libertiesof freedom of speech, freedom of assembly (and of opposition to authority), freedom of movement, and so on. Repression denies people the right to express themselves in a multitude of ways, forcing them to conform to certain patterns set by authority. You are compelled to behave as if you support the regime.

The list of offences is long and would seem to be enough to condemn this type of regime in perpetuity. Yet, surprisingly, this is not so. With the exception of Hitler, dictators and dictatorships seem to be making a comeback in public perceptions. It is most obvious in the case of contemporary Russia, where, according to the Moscow-based Levada Center, there has been a steady rise in the percentage of Russians disposed to view Stalin in a favourable light75% at the last survey in 2019. In fact, the coffee mugs depicting Stalin and Putin sit happily side by side in St Petersburg souvenir shops. And Russia is not the only example. In Romania, even the once-reviled figure of Ceauescu has been transformed, within 2018almost 65% of Romanians declaring a positive opinion of their former leader. Although such figures have to be read with due caution, the trend seems clear. In some senses at least, dictators and dictatorships are back in the public eye and that eye is not always unfavourable.