How to Be a Dictator

by Frank Dikotter

  24Frank Dikötter, The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution, 1945–1957, London: Bloomsbury, 2013, pp. 16–17.

  25Dikötter, The Tragedy of Liberation, pp. 3 and 22–3.

  26PRO, FO 371/92192, 20 Nov. 1950, p. 19; Robert Guillain, ‘China under the Red Flag’ in Otto B. Van der Sprenkel, Robert Guillain and Michael Lindsay (eds), New China: Three Views, London: Turnstile Press, 1950, pp. 91–2; on rules in the display of portraits see, for instance, SMA, 9 Sept. 1952, A22-2-74, pp. 6–7; 29 Dec. 1951, B1-2-3620, p. 61; Hung Chang-tai, ‘Mao’s Parades: State Spectacles in China in the 1950s’, China Quarterly, no. 190 (June 2007), pp. 411–31.

  27Dikötter, The Tragedy of Liberation, pp. 134–7.

  28Ibid., p. 83.

  29Ibid., pp. 47–8.

  30Ibid., pp. 99–100.

  31Ibid., p. 190; William Kinmond, No Dogs in China: A Report on China Today, New York: Thomas Nelson, 1957, pp. 192–4.

  32John Gitting, ‘Monster at the Beach’, Guardian, 10 April 2004.

  33The classic work on this subject is Cohen, The Communism of Mao Tse-tung; the author was ostracised, of course, as learned professors from Harvard University wrote learned books about the ‘Sinification of Marxism’.

  34Valentin Chu, The Inside Story of Communist China: Ta Ta, Tan Tan, London: Allen & Unwin, 1964, p. 228.

  35See Richard Curt Kraus, Brushes with Power: Modern Politics and the Chinese Art of Calligraphy, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991.

  36Chow Ching-wen, Ten Years of Storm: The True Story of the Communist Regime in China, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960, p. 81.

  37Dikötter, The Tragedy of Liberation, p. 227.

  38William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and his Era, London, Free Press, 2003, pp. 271–2.

  39Dikötter, The Tragedy of Liberation, pp. 275–6.

  40Pang Xianzhi and Jin Chongji (eds), Mao Zedong zhuan, 1949–1976 (A biography of Mao Zedong, 1949–1976), Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2003, p. 534; Li Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Memoirs of Mao’s Personal Physician, New York: Random House, 1994, pp. 182–4.

  41Dikötter, The Tragedy of Liberation, p. 291.

  42GSPA, Mao’s speech on 10 March 1958 at Chengdu, 91-18-495, p. 211.

  43Li Rui, Dayuejin qin liji (A witness account of the Great Leap Forward), Haikou: Nanfang chubanshe, 1999, vol. 2, p. 288.

  44Frank Dikötter, Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–1962, London: Bloomsbury, 2010, p. 20.

  45Ibid., pp. 22–3.

  46Li Rui, Lushan huiyi shilu (A true record of the Lushan plenum), Hong Kong: Tiandi tushu youxian gongsi, 2nd edn, 2009, pp. 232 and 389–90; Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, p. 381.

  47Li, Lushan huiyi shilu, p. 232.

  48Gao, Zhou Enlai, pp. 187–8; Liu Tong, ‘Jieshi Zhongnanhai gaoceng zhengzhi de yiba yaoshi: Lin Biao biji de hengli yu yanjiu’ (A key to understanding high politics in Zhongnanhai: Sorting out and studying Lin Biao’s notes), paper presented at the International Conference on Chinese War and Revolution in the Twentieth Century, Shanghai Communications University, 8–9 Nov. 2008.

  49Dikötter, Mao’s Great Famine, p. 102.

  50Ibid., pp. 116–23.

  51See Frank Dikötter, The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962–1976, London: Bloomsbury, 2016, p. 12.

  52The People’s Daily, 7 Feb. 1963, quoted in Cohen, The Communism of Mao Tse-tung, p. 203.

  53David Milton and Nancy D. Milton, The Wind Will Not Subside: Years in Revolutionary China, 1964–1969, New York: Pantheon Books, 1976, pp. 63–5; see also Jacques Marcuse, The Peking Papers: Leaves from the Notebook of a China Correspondent, London: Arthur Barker, 1968, pp. 235–46.

  54Lu Hong, Junbao neibu xiaoxi: ‘Wenge’ qinli shilu (An Insider’s Story of the PLA Daily), Hong Kong, Shidai guoji chubanshe, 2006, pp. 14–17; Daniel Leese, Mao Cult: Rhetoric and Ritual in China’s Cultural Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 111–13.

  55Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, p. 412; Lynn T. White III, Policies of Chaos: The Organizational Causes of Violence in China’s Cultural Revolution, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989, pp. 194–5, 206, 214–16.

  56Letter by D. K. Timms, 6 Oct. 1964, FO 371/175973; see also Laszlo Ladany, The Communist Party of China and Marxism, 1921–1985: A Self-Portrait, London: Hurst, 1988, p. 273.

  57Dikötter, The Cultural Revolution, p. xi.

  58Ibid., pp. 71–4.

  59Ibid., pp. 107–9.

  60Chang Jung, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Clearwater, FL: Touchstone, 2003, p. 413.

  61Dikötter, The Cultural Revolution, p. 89.

  62PRO, FO 371-186983, Leonard Appleyard to John Benson, ‘Manifestations of the Mao Cult’, 28 Sept. 1966.

  63Louis Barcata, China in the Throes of the Cultural Revolution: An Eye Witness Report, New York: Hart Publishing, 1968, p. 48.

  64SMA, 11 Dec. 1967, B167-3-21, pp. 70–3; NMA, Instructions from the Centre, 5 April and 12 July 1967, 5038-2-107, pp. 2 and 58–9.

  65HBPA, Directive from the Ministry of Trade, 30 Aug. 1966, 999-4-761, p. 149.

  66SMA, 2 May 1967, B182-2-8, pp. 5–8.

  67Helen Wang, Chairman Mao Badges: Symbols and Slogans of the Cultural Revolution, London: British Museum, 2008, p. 21.

  68PRO, FCO 21/41, Donald C. Hopson, ‘Letter from Beijing’, 7 Oct. 1967.

  69For instance Pamela Tan, The Chinese Factor: An Australian Chinese Woman’s Life in China from 1950 to 1979, Dural, New South Wales: Roseberg, 2008, p. 131.

  70PRO, FCO 21/19, Percy Cradock, ‘Letter from Peking’, 3 June 1968.

  71SMA, B103-4-1, 11 July 1967, pp. 1–3; B98-5-100, 9 Dec. 1969, pp. 10–11; B109-4-80, 1 Aug. 1968, p. 31; on statues in Shanghai, one should read Jin Dalu, Feichang yu zhengchang: Shanghai ‘wenge’ shiqi de shehui bianqian (The extraordinary and the ordinary: Social change in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution), Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, 2011, vol. 2, pp. 198–228.

  72Dikötter, The Cultural Revolution, pp. 240–41.

  73‘Zhongyang zhuan’an shencha xiaozu “guanyu pantu, neijian, gongzei Liu Shaoqi zuixing de shencha baogao” ji “pantu, neijian, gongzei Liu Shaoqi zuizheng”’ (Report on Liu Shaoqi by the Central Case Examination Group), 18 Oct. 1968, Cultural Revolution Database; with a few minor changes, I have used the translation in Milton and Milton, The Wind Will Not Subside, pp. 335–9; on the composition of the congress, see Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006, pp. 292–3.

  74GDPA, 296-A2.1-25, Report on Shanghai, 7 March 1973, pp. 189–98; PRO, FCO 21/962, Michael J. Richardson, ‘Naming of Streets’, 26 Jan. 1972.

  75Chang and Halliday, Mao, p. 583.

  76Chang, Wild Swans, p. 651.

  77Jean Hong, interview, 7 Nov. 2012, Hong Kong; Rowena Xiaoqing He, ‘Reading Havel in Beijing’, Wall Street Journal, 29 Dec. 2011.

  78Ai Xiaoming interviewed by Zhang Tiezhi, 22 Dec. 2010, Guangzhou.

  79Wu Guoping interviewed by Dong Guoqiang, 1 Dec. 2013, Zongyang county, Anhui.

  CHAPTER 5 KIM IL-SUNG

  1Robert A. Scalapino and Chong-sik Lee, Communism in Korea. Part I: The Movement, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972, pp. 324–5; Lim Un, The Founding of a Dynasty in North Korea: An Authentic Biography of Kim Il-song, Tokyo: Jiyu-sha, 1982, p. 149.

  2Hongkoo Han, ‘Wounded Nationalism: The Minsaengdan Incident and Kim Il-sung in Eastern Manchuria’, University of Washington, doctoral disertation, 1999, p. 347.

  3Han, ‘Wounded Nationalism’, pp. 365–7; Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, pp. 202–3; Dae-sook Suh, Kim Il-sung: The North Korean Leader, New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, pp. 37–47.

  4Charles Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution: 1945–50, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002, chapter 2.

  5Lim, The Founding of a Dynasty
in North Korea, p. 152.

  6Bradley K. Martin, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty, New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2004, p. 53; Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, p. 223; John N. Washburn, ‘Russia Looks at Northern Korea’, Pacific Affairs, 20, no. 2 (June 1947), p. 160.

  7Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, p. 150; the estimate of one million is in Byoung-Lo Philo Kim, Two Koreas in Development: A Comparative Study of Principles and Strategies of Capitalist and Communist Third World Development, quoted in Martin, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, p. 56.

  8David Allen Hatch, ‘The Cult of Personality of Kim Il-Song: Functional Analysis of a State Myth’, doctoral dissertation, Washington, DC: The American University, 1986, pp. 106–9.

  9Benoit Berthelier, ‘Symbolic Truth: Epic, Legends, and the Making of the Baekdusan Generals’, 17 May 2013, Sino-NK.

  10Hatch, ‘The Cult of Personality of Kim Il-Song’, pp. 83 and 104.

  11Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, p. 110; Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993, pp. 142–5.

  12Max Hastings, The Korean War, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987, p. 53; Hatch, ‘The Cult of Personality of Kim Il-Song’, p. 153.

  13Suh, Kim Il-sung, pp. 123–6; Lim, The Founding of a Dynasty in North Korea, p. 215.

  14Hatch, ‘The Cult of Personality of Kim Il-Song’, pp. 159–60.

  15Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, pp. 428–9.

  16Andrei Lankov, The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 37–9.

  17Blaine Harden, The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: A True Story About the Birth of Tyranny in North Korea, New York: Penguin Books, 2016, pp. 6–7; Suh, Kim Il-sung, pp. 127–30; Andrei Lankov, From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea, 1945–1960, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002, pp. 95–6.

  18See MfAA, A 5631, Information Report from Embassy, 23 March 1955, pp. 63–4.

  19MfAA, A 5631, Information Report from Embassy, 23 March 1955, p. 54; RGANI, 5-28-411, Diary of Ambassador V. I. Ivanov, 21 March 1956, pp. 165–8; a rock encased in glass is mentioned in Horst Kurnitzky, Chollima Korea: A Visit in the Year 23, Lulu Press Inc., 2006 (first published in 1972), p. 19.

  20Hatch, ‘The Cult of Personality of Kim Il-Song’, pp. 172–5; Hunter, Kim Il-song’s North Korea, p. 13.

  21Hatch, ‘The Cult of Personality of Kim Il-Song’, pp. 176–80.

  22RGANI, 5-28-410, pp. 233–5; this document has been translated by Gary Goldberg in ‘New Evidence on North Korea in 1956’, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 16 (Fall 2007/Winter 2008), pp. 492–4.

  23RGANI, 5-28-412, 30 May 1956, pp. 190–96; this document has also been translated by Gary Goldberg in ‘New Evidence on North Korea in 1956’, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 16 (Fall 2007/Winter 2008), p. 471; on this incident, see Andrei Lankov, Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005; Balázs Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era: Soviet-DPRK Relations and the Roots of North Korean Despotism, 1953–1964, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.

  24Lankov, Crisis in North Korea, p. 154.

  25Ibid., pp. 152–4.

  26Curiously, there are hardly any explicit acknowledgements in the secondary literature that the songbun system was based on the one devised under Mao; for an exception, see Judy Sun and Greg Wang, ‘Human Resource Development in China and North Korea’ in Thomas N. Garavan, Alma M. McCarthy and Michael J. Morley (eds), Global Human Resource Development: Regional and Country Perspectives, London: Routledge, 2016, p. 92; on the persecutions, see Lankov, Crisis in North Korea, p. 164.

  27Lankov, Crisis in North Korea, p. 182.

  28RGANI, 5-28-314, Letter from S. Suzdalev, Ambassador of the Soviet Union, to N. T. Fedorenko, 23 March 1955, pp. 13–15; RGANI, 5-28-412, 10 May 1956, Report of conversation of I. Biakov, First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy, with director of Museum of the History of the Revolutionary Struggle of the Korean People, pp. 249–52; BArch, DY30 IV 2/2.035/137, Information Bulletin, 14 March 1961, p. 72.

  29Suh, Kim Il-sung, pp. 168–71.

  30BArch, DY30 IV 2/2.035/137, Information Bulletin, 14 March 1961, pp. 72–3 and 79; see also Hatch, ‘The Cult of Personality of Kim Il-Song’, pp. 183–92; on his withdrawal from public life, see Suh, Kim Il-sung, p. 187.

  31MfAA, A 7137, Information on National Day, 16 Sept. 1963, pp. 45–9.

  32On the December 1955 speech, one should read Brian R. Myers, ‘The Watershed that Wasn’t: Re-Evaluating Kim Il-sung’s “Juche Speech” of 1955’, Acta Koreana, 9, no. 1 (Jan. 2006), pp. 89–115.

  33James F. Person, ‘North Korea’s chuch’e philosophy’ in Michael J. Seth, Routledge Handbook of Modern Korean History, London: Routledge, 2016, pp. 705–98.

  34MfAA, C 1088/70, Ingeborg Göthel, Report on Information, 29 July 1966, p. 100.

  35Person, ‘North Korea’s chuch’e philosophy’, pp. 725–67; MfAA, G-A 344, 10 Nov. 1967, Letter from Embassy, pp. 1–7, notes how the cult increased with the purges.

  36MfAA, C 1092/70, Information Report from Embassy, 19 Aug. 1968, pp. 19–20; PRO, FCO 51/80, ‘North Korea in 1968’, 3 July 1969, p. 13; FCO 21-307, ‘Kim Il-sung, the “Prefabricated Hero”’, 3 June 1967.

  37Suh, Kim Il-sung, p. 197; PRO, FCO 51/80, ‘North Korea in 1968’, 3 July 1969, p. 13.

  38MfAA, C 1088/70, Ingeborg Göthel, Report on May Day, 5 May 1967, pp. 55–8.

  39MfAA, C 1088/70, Hermann, Information Report from the Embassy, 5 Jan. 1968, pp. 76–7 as well as Ingeborg Göthel, Report on Information, 3 Nov. 1967, pp. 16–17; Ingeborg Göthel, Information Report from Embassy, 22 Sept. 1967, pp. 18–19; C 1023/73, Information Report from Embassy, 22 May 1968, pp. 98–9; on dedicated study rooms, see also Rinn-Sup Shinn et al., Area Handbook for North Korea, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969, p. 276.

  40MfAA, C 1088/70, Ingeborg Göthel, Report on May Day, 5 May 1967, pp. 55–8; Ingeborg Göthel, Report on Information, 3 Nov. 1967, pp. 16–17.

  41Suh, Kim Il-sung, pp. 231–4.

  42MfAA, G-A 347, Barthel, Report on Discussion with Samoilov, 17 May 1972, pp. 16–18; see also Suh, Kim Il-sung, p. 242.

  43‘Talk to the Officials of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Central Committee of the Workers’, 29 October 1971, document from the Korean Friendship Association website retrieved on 15 January 2016; Suh, Kim Il-sung, p. 319.

  44Harrison E. Salisbury, To Peking and Beyond: A Report On The New Asia, New York: Quadrangle Books, 1973, p. 207; Suh, Kim Il-sung, p. 319.

  45MfAA, C 6877, 6 March 1972, pp. 76–7; MfAA, G-A 347, Letter from Embassy, 11 Jan. 1972, p. 14.

  46Salisbury, To Peking and Beyond, pp. 208–9; see also Suh, Kim Il-sung, pp. 316–17; both mention 240,000 square metres for the museum’s overall surface, which seems unlikely for ninety-two rooms; the figure of 50,000 square metres comes from Helen-Louise Hunter, Kim Il-song’s North Korea, Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1999, p. 23.

  47MfAA, C 6877, 6 March 1972, pp. 76–7; Sonia Ryang, Writing Selves in Diaspora: Ethnography of Autobiographics of Korean Women in Japan and the United States, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008, p. 88.

  48Salisbury, To Peking and Beyond, pp. 208–9; Suh, Kim Il-sung, pp. 316–19.

  49SMA, B158-2-365, 20 Dec. 1971, pp. 107–111 and B163-4-317, 1 Dec. 1971, pp. 134–5; for an overview of badges in later years, see Andrei Lankov, North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007, pp. 7–9.

  50Suh, Kim Il-sung, pp. 270–71.

  51MfAA, C 6877, Information Bulletin, 28 April 1972, pp. 66–7.

  52Salisbury, To Peking and Beyond, pp. 196–7 and 204–5.

  53Ibid., pp. 214 and 219.<
br />
  54MfAA, C 315/78, 8 April 1970, pp. 155–8.

  55Suh, Kim Il-sung, p. 262.

  56Lim, The Founding of a Dynasty in North Korea, p. 269; Suh, Kim Il-sung, pp. 267–8.

  57Suh, Kim Il-sung, pp. 267–8.

  58Philippe Grangereau, Au pays du grand mensonge. Voyage en Corée, Paris: Payot, 2003, pp. 134–7; Hunter, Kim Il-song’s North Korea, p. 22.

  59C 6926, Kirsch, Letter from Embassy, 21 Nov. 1975, pp. 1–3.

  60Suh, Kim Il-sung, pp. 278–82.

  61Hans Maretzki, Kim-ismus in Nordkorea: Analyse des letzten DDR-Botschafters in Pjöngjang, Böblingen: Anika Tykve Verlag, 1991, pp. 34 and 55; Lankov, North of the DMZ, pp. 40–41.

  62Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997, pp. 341–2; Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2009, pp. 100–101.

  CHAPTER 6 DUVALIER

  1On the early history of Haiti, see Philippe Girard, Haiti: The Tumultuous History – From Pearl of the Caribbean to Broken Nation, New York: St Martin’s Press, 2010.

  2Eric H. Cushway, ‘The Ideology of François Duvalier’, MA dissertation, University of Alberta, 1976, pp. 79 and 96–7; Martin Munro, Tropical Apocalypse: Haiti and the Caribbean End, Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2015, p. 36.

  3John Marquis, Papa Doc: Portrait of a Haitian Tyrant 1907–1971, Kingston: LMH Publishing Limited, 2007, p. 92.

  4Paul Christopher Johnson, ‘Secretism and the Apotheosis of Duvalier’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 74, no. 2 (June 2006), p. 428; Cushway, ‘The Ideology of François Duvalier’, pp. 78–83.

  5François Duvalier, Guide des ‘Oeuvres Essentielles’ du Docteur François Duvalier, Port-au-Prince: Henri Deschamps, 1967, p. 58.

  6Trevor Armbrister, ‘Is There Any Hope for Haiti?’, Saturday Evening Post, 236, no. 23 (15 June 1963), p. 80; see also Bleecker Dee, ‘Duvalier’s Haiti: A Case Study of National Disintegration’, doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, 1967, p. 70.