How to Be a Dictator

by Frank Dikotter

  A high point came in September as the legislative chamber passed a decree awarding Duvalier the title of Grand Master of Haitian Thought. They designated his birthday as Day of National Culture, and demanded that everyone should learn at least three-quarters of the Essential Works by heart, even though 90 per cent of the population were illiterate.52

  Duvalier’s sixtieth birthday was celebrated over four days, in a style befitting a dictator fully in control of his country. Mardi Gras, the Haitian carnival, was brought forward to heighten the festive mood. Beauty queens were flown in from Miami and the Dominican Republic. Poetry readings were held, with pride of place given to the works of François Duvalier. Leading politicians, soldiers, scholars, businessmen and civil servants presented tributes. A delegation of 2,000 uniformed schoolchildren paraded in front of the palace. The macoutes paraded, the soldiers paraded.53

  The festivities were spoilt, however, after a bomb exploded inside an ice-cream cart, killing two and injuring forty. Suspecting a military coup, Duvalier reshuffled the leadership and had nineteen officers of the palace guard thrown into Fort Dimanche, a dungeon on the outskirts of the capital. For good measure two ministers were also placed under arrest. On 8 June Duvalier arrived at Fort Dimanche in full military uniform and army helmet, personally presiding over the execution of the nineteen suspects, tied to stakes on a rifle range.54

  Two weeks later, on 22 June, as the country marked the third anniversary of Duvalier’s election as President for Life, a captive audience of thousands was assembled in front of the palace. In a great show of force, Duvalier solemnly took a roll call of the nineteen officers, pausing theatrically after each name. ‘All of them have been shot,’ he announced in the end, sending shock waves through the crowd. ‘I am an arm of steel, hitting inexorably,’ he exclaimed. Then he described himself as the embodiment of the nation, on a par with other great leaders like Atatürk, Lenin, Nkrumah and Mao.55

  The cult of personality was further cranked up over the following months, culminating in the tenth anniversary of the revolution. Gold coins in four denominations were minted, carrying the president’s effigy. A compilation of his Essential Works was published as Breviary of a Revolution. Like the Little Red Book, which had just appeared, it came in a small format, easily tucked inside a pocket. The newspapers were filled with adulatory reports, ‘sickeningly transparent and endlessly repeated’ according to the American Embassy. A few days before the main event, Duvalier spoke to the nation, referring to himself as ‘the God you have created’. Mass parades were held over the following two days. A François Duvalier Bridge, a François Duvalier Library, a François Duvalier Swimming Pool (Olympic size) and a François Duvalier International Air Terminal were opened.56

  On 22 September the president spoke again, referring to himself in the third person. He listed his many achievements, and then concluded: ‘We are superior blacks, because no other blacks in the world have accomplished an historical epic. This is why, without indulging in any narcissism and without any sense of superiority, we believe ourselves, we blacks of Haiti, superior to all other blacks in the world. This is why, my dear friends, I want to tell you today that your Chief is considered a Living Sun by blacks throughout the world. It is said that he has lighted the revolutionary conscience of the blacks of the American continent and of the universe.’57

  Duvalier was a manipulator of men, not the masses. He may have been a champion of the poor, but he showed little interest in mobilising them, even for the greater glory of his own person. He rarely left the palace, and never travelled the country. The macoutes ensured that thousands turned up on the lawns of his palace to dutifully acclaim him several times a year, but otherwise the vast majority of people were left alone. There was no official ideology, no all-encompassing party, no attempt to institute thought control, even though dissent was prohibited. The radio occasionally broadcast his speeches, but until 1968 stations in the north of the country were too weak for reception. Newspapers carried his pronouncements, but were rarely seen in the impoverished countryside, where few could read.58

  Duvalier was a dictator’s dictator, a man who wielded naked power without the pretence of ideology, despite all the talk about revolution. He ruled alone, from his mahogany desk, an automatic pistol within reach, a few palace guards behind the nearest door. There was no junta, no faction, no clique, no true party except in name, only underlings vying for his attention, hoping to supplant each other by demonstrations of absolute loyalty. Duvalier, suspicious of everyone, was single-minded in exploiting their foibles, manipulating their emotions, testing their loyalty. It helped that he occasionally miscalculated, crushing friends and foes alike.59

  His network of willing accomplices extended all the way to the countryside. Even in the most remote part of the country, the president was popular. No public official ever claimed a good decision as his own. Deputies filled meetings with accolades to their leader. Every positive development, including a successful rainy season, was held to radiate from Duvalier.60

  It was a comparatively small network of loyalties, but it was enough to sustain his regime. The remaining four million mattered very little to him. They were accustomed to predatory governments. They lived in fear at worst, apathy and subservience at best.

  Nonetheless, a small commando of professional soldiers, properly equipped and trained, could easily have toppled the regime. It never happened, largely thanks to the United States. After the disaster of April 1961, when a group of Cuban refugees trained by the CIA tried to land in the Bay of Pigs to overthrow Castro, there was no realistic chance of the United States trying to intervene in Haiti. And even if Washington viewed Duvalier with revulsion, he, unlike Castro, was an ally in the midst of the Cold War. Duvalier exploited the relationship to the fullest. He could be stubborn, unpredictable, irascible, but he never truly severed all the links. He knew how to insult the Americans even as he took advantage of their economic aid.61

  Duvalier’s best propaganda vehicle in Washington was communism. For a decade Duvalier played up the threat from the left, labelling his real and imagined enemies as underground agents of Cuba and Moscow.

  In December 1968 two rival parties combined to form the United Party of Haitian Communists. They were committed to overthrowing Duvalier. In March 1969 they picked the only village in Haiti without a houngan and took down the regime’s flag. Duvalier responded with a huge witch-hunt as dozens of people were shot or hanged in public, many more forced to flee into the mountains. Every book even vaguely related to communism became taboo, its mere possession a crime punishable by death. When Nelson Rockefeller, the governor of New York, visited Port-au-Prince three months later, Duvalier was able to assure him that the communist threat had been eliminated. It was the start of yet another rapprochement with the United States.62

  However, the press photograph released for the occasion showed an ailing Duvalier leaning on Rockefeller for support. Papa Doc was frail, in declining health, looking much older than his sixty-two years. He began eliminating all opposition to his son being designated as his heir. In January 1971 Jean-Claude was named as his successor. A referendum was dutifully held, although among the 2,391,916 votes one was apparently negative. François Duvalier died of a heart attack three months later, on 21 April 1971. His reign was a few months short of that of Henri Christophe (1806–20). His son was installed in the first hour of 22 April, as ever a lucky date for the Duvalier family.63

  Thousands of Haitians filed by their late ruler’s body as he lay in state at the National Palace. Duvalier was dressed in his favourite black frock coat, resting in a glass-topped, silk-lined coffin. Losing a dictator can be as traumatic as having to live under one, but despite widespread apprehension that chaos would follow his disappearance, complete calm prevailed. His body was buried first in the National Cemetery, but later transferred to a grandiose mausoleum erected by his son. When Baby Doc himself fell from power in 1986 an angry crowd demolished Papa Doc’s final resting place.


  7

  Ceauşescu

  The Palace of the People, located in what was once a thriving residential area of Bucharest, is the largest administrative building in the world. In terms of volume it eclipses the Great Pyramid of Giza. Its kitsch, neoclassical structure contains more than a thousand rooms, filled with marble columns, ornate staircases and crystal chandeliers. Nicolae Ceauşescu, who laid the cornerstone in June 1985, announced that the project was a fitting tribute to the greatness of his time, officially known as ‘the Ceauşescu Era’.

  In reality it was a monument to himself. Ten square kilometres of housing were bulldozed to clear the ground, including twenty churches and six synagogues. Thousands of workers laboured around the clock. The project consumed a third of the national budget. Ceauşescu supervised every detail, making impromptu visits to give orders. An energetic but short man who was touchy about his height, he had the staircases rebuilt twice to match his step. Although he never saw the finished project, work resumed a few years after he was shot on Christmas Day 1989. It remains a work in progress.1

  Nothing predisposed Ceauşescu to become a dictator. He showed no particular promise or flair as a child, leaving home at the age of eleven to work as an apprentice for a shoemaker. Four years later he was briefly arrested for distributing communist leaflets. Membership of the Romanian Communist Party, in 1933, languished in the hundreds. Communism was unpopular, as most Romanians distrusted the Soviet Union. But Ceauşescu was a fiery, fanatical believer who found in ideology a seemingly simple key to a complicated world.

  The police repeatedly picked him up and released him again on account of his youth. In 1936 he was sent to a political prison for two years. He was unpopular with other inmates, mocked for his lack of education, his stammer and his regional accent. He was impulsive, intensely competitive and often contemptuous of others. But he had the political astuteness to forge links with the leaders in the communist movement, including Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, who took the young man under his wing. More stints in prison followed during the Second World War, when the country sided with Germany.2

  The Red Army occupied Romania in 1944 and turned the country into a satellite state. Gheorghiu-Dej emerged as its first communist leader in 1947. He manoeuvred successfully against his rivals, all of whom were purged, arrested or murdered. Lucretiu Patrascanu, a founding member of the party, was executed in 1954. Hundreds of thousands of political prisoners were sent to internment camps.

  By 1956 Gheorghiu-Dej was sufficiently entrenched to use Khrushchev’s policies selectively. On the one hand, he strengthened his country’s economic independence from the Soviet Union, moving trade towards the West. On the other, he continued to build a repressive system dominated by the Securitate, the secret police agency set up in 1948 with help from the Soviet Union. Gheorghiu-Dej relied on them to instil fear in the population.3

  He also expanded his cult of personality. As portraits of Stalin were taken down, his own went up in every school, factory and office. Newspapers published photographs of villagers gathered around the radio to listen to his broadcasts. He travelled the country, acclaimed by his people, while his comrades receded into the background.4

  Ceauşescu steadily rose through the ranks, ingratiating himself further with Gheorghiu-Dej. He vehemently attacked the regime’s opponents, harassed critical intellectuals and helped push through the forced collectivisation of the countryside. Ceauşescu was a dedicated, modest, hard-working and loyal lieutenant. Like his master, he was critical of his country’s dependence on the Kremlin but keen to maintain the rigid structures of the Stalinist one-party state.

  In 1954 Gheorghiu-Dej trusted Ceauşescu enough to put him in charge of the secretariat of the Central Committee. All new appointments went through his office. Like Stalin in the early 1920s Ceauşescu cultivated his own underlings and made sure that they thrived.5

  Gheorghiu-Dej died in 1965. The leadership was divided about the course of de-Stalinisation. Gheorghe Apostol, rumoured to have been chosen as successor by an ailing Gheorghiu-Dej, was considered too close to the Soviet Union. Gheorghe Maurer, a senior and highly respected party leader, rallied the leadership around Ceauşescu instead. The diminutive young man, hampered by a lack of verbal skills and organisational talent, seemed an ideal party figurehead.6

  For two years after he was elected secretary general in March 1965, Ceauşescu bided his time, playing his part as spokesman of a collective leadership. But he made the most of his position, addressing crowds, visiting factories and establishing links with the military and the security forces. His trips abroad, on behalf of the party, received extensive press coverage. He also struck a defiant tone, rattling Moscow by inviting leaders critical of the Soviet Union. Zhou Enlai was welcomed in 1966, future president Richard Nixon in 1967.

  On 26 January 1968 Ceauşescu turned fifty. A prudent man, he was anxious to avoid the impression that he sought a cult of personality. Nonetheless, two volumes of his speeches were published, to much acclaim. His colleagues, especially Apostol and Maurer, were keen to pay homage.7

  Three months later, in April 1968, Ceauşescu felt secure enough to turn against his erstwhile master, denouncing Gheorghiu-Dej for the arrest, trial and execution of faithful party members. This move allowed him to eliminate one of his main rivals, Alexandru Draghici, who had been in charge of the secret police at the time. Ion Iliescu, one of Ceauşescu’s faithful followers, stepped into his shoes. But the case of Lucretiu Patrascanu, executed a few days before Ceauşescu joined the Central Committee in 1954, implicated the entire old guard. All of them were now tainted and made to grovel.8

  Ceauşescu’s moment came over the summer, when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in order to suppress the country’s uprising against communism. Troops from Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary pledged support, but none from Romania. As the tanks rolled into Prague, Ceauşescu called for a mass meeting in the Palace Square, in front of the Central Committee. He delivered an impassioned speech, condemning Leonid Brezhnev’s actions as a ‘great mistake and a grave danger to peace in Europe’. He became a national hero overnight, adored for his promise that no power would be allowed to ‘violate the territory of our homeland’.9

  Ceauşescu posed as a fearless hero, the man who dared to stand up to the Soviet Union. Foreign dignitaries queued up to visit him, portraying him as a proponent of socialism with a human face. Richard Nixon, now President of the United States, was given a lavish welcome in August 1969. Photographs were published of the most powerful man in the world leaning forward towards Ceauşescu, who was sitting back in a comfortable chair. ‘He may be a Commie, but he is our Commie!’ Nixon later proclaimed.10

  A party congress was convened three days after Nixon left. Ceauşescu introduced a change in the party statutes, mandating his direct election by members of the congress. It meant that the Central Committee could no longer remove him. In one speech after another, delegates paid tribute to their leader. Of the old guard only one remained, namely Gheorghe Maurer, who continued to serve as Number Two. Ceauşescu was the undisputed leader, his men in charge of all the top party organs.11

  Between July 1965 and January 1973, Ceauşescu undertook 147 whirlwind tours of the country. In January 1970 alone, he visited forty-five industrial enterprises and agricultural units, or so the party newspaper Scinteia claimed. Each one was elaborately staged, following a choreography that barely changed over the years. A motorcade draped in flowers arrived. The local population was assembled along the main road, waving red flags to greet their leader. Children offered flowers. Ceauşescu appeared on the balcony of the local party headquarters to address a crowd, often standing on a pedestal to appear taller. The crowd cheered enthusiastically, with the secret police in the background to ensure that everyone joined the chorus. Each visit was reported on the front page of every newspaper, contributing to Ceauşescu’s image as a ubiquitous leader in close touch with his people. As a result, people tended to blame his subordinates, rather than hi
m. ‘If only Ceauşescu knew about the situation, he would attack the shopkeepers with an iron broom’, people whispered during food shortages.12

  Ceauşescu enjoyed the carefully rehearsed ritual, although nothing quite prepared him for the welcome he received when he visited China and Korea in June 1971. In Beijing the entire leadership met him and his delegation on the tarmac of the airport. Lining the roads were tens of thousands of cheering people. On Tiananmen Square a mass gymnastics display was held in his honour, as hundreds of participants dressed in different colours synchronised their movements to project welcoming messages: ‘Long Live Romanian–Chinese Friendship!’13

  Everywhere, Ceauşescu noted, people were hard at work. China was a country seemingly devoid of idleness. ‘They are very well organised, and they are very disciplined,’ he observed. In Pyongyang, the next leg of his trip, everything had been reconstructed from scratch following the devastation of the Korean War. The city had large, modern buildings. The shops were full of goods. Agriculture and industry thrived, thanks to a spirit of economic self-sufficiency. Unity, discipline, autarky, independence: all these goals seemed to come together when a population was mobilised around their leader.14

  Like Hitler on his first trip to Italy, Ceauşescu did not seem to realise that much of what he had seen in China and Korea was mere show. He even denounced his own embassy staff in Beijing and Pyongyang, accusing them of having misled the Executive Committee by reporting severe shortages when he himself had witnessed nothing but plenty for all.15

  As soon as he returned to Bucharest, Ceauşescu launched his own mini Cultural Revolution. For a few brief years after 1965, when he had presented himself as a reformer, the ideological restrictions of the Stalinist era had been relaxed. Press censorship had eased, with writers granted some leeway. Foreign programmes were shown on television. Still, the thaw had been limited, as Ceauşescu had repeatedly emphasised that Marxism-Leninism remained ‘the common denominator of our socialist art’.16