BONUS: Dictators’ Books

Summary

Real Dictators: BONUS Episode - Dictators’ Books

Real Dictators is an award-winning podcast by NOISER that delves into the hidden lives of history's tyrants. In the bonus episode titled "Dictators’ Books," host Duncan Barrett engages in a profound conversation with author Daniel Calder. This detailed summary captures their exploration of dictator literature, shedding light on the personal and political nuances embedded within these often obscure writings.

Introduction to Dictators’ Literary Pursuits

The episode commences with Duncan Barrett introducing Daniel Calder, the author of The Infernal Library (also known as Dictator Literature: A History of Bad Books by Terrible People). Calder has dedicated years to unearthing and analyzing the literary works produced by various dictators, aiming to understand the minds behind their tyrannical regimes.

Calder’s Obsession with Dictator Literature

Calder shares his journey into the realm of dictator literature, highlighting a pivotal moment in the early 2000s when he encountered the Ruhnama, a book authored by Turkmenistan's dictator. This discovery ignited his decade-long obsession. He recounts:

"I think I managed to find it online. And this was in the days of dial-up. And I remember downloading it page by page so I could read it. And it was quite weird and terrible, but in an equal measure." (02:04)

Calder's fascination was further fueled by his visit to Turkmenistan in 2006, where he witnessed the pervasive presence of the Ruhnama in public spaces, cementing his belief that dictator literature was a living tradition rather than a relic of the past.

Accessing and Preserving Dictators’ Writings

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the accessibility of these works. Calder notes the disparity in availability:

"The Rukhnama is not as easy to get hold of now and Ruhnemar volume 2 is very difficult." (05:20)

He contrasts easily accessible writings like Lenin's extensive publications, maintained by dedicated Soviet institutes, with the scarcity of works from lesser-known dictators such as Clement Gottwald of the Czech Republic. This variance underscores the fleeting nature of dictator literature, which often vanishes once a regime collapses.

The Nature and Quality of Dictators’ Writings

Calder delves into the diversity of dictator writings, which range from political tracts to poetry and novels. He emphasizes that the quality varies significantly:

"Mussolini probably was an actual writer, you know, so I think it's quite well known. Mussolini was a journalist by profession and very successful journalist and very successful editor." (08:13)

While some leaders like Mussolini demonstrated genuine literary skill, others produced works that were more propagandistic and less engaging. Calder highlights Hitler's Mein Kampf as an example of unstructured, hate-filled rhetoric, contrasting it with Stalin's dry and controlled writings.

Emotional and Psychological Insights

Reading dictator literature often evokes discomfort and a sense of interacting with pure evil. Calder reflects on this complex emotional landscape:

"Sometimes yeah, and I mean that's a good question." (07:04)

He explains that while some works, especially those written during periods of turmoil, reveal glimpses of the dictators' vulnerabilities and insecurities, others maintain a cold, monolithic facade. This duality offers readers a window into the psychological underpinnings of these tyrants.

Case Study: Saddam Hussein’s "Zabiba and the King"

A significant segment of the episode is dedicated to Saddam Hussein's novel, Zabiba and the King. Calder provides an in-depth analysis, describing it as a romance set in early Islamic history. The novel serves as an allegory, potentially symbolizing America's influence, yet it contains bizarre and gratuitous elements that reflect Saddam's troubled psyche:

"There's a lot of strange bits in it. So even if you read it as an allegory, the detail about rape is quite out there." (13:42)

Calder posits that the novel offers a rare glimpse into Saddam's loneliness and desperation, portraying him as a leader who, despite his formidable power, experiences profound vulnerability:

"You know, it's easy to denounce, but it's interesting to understand." (19:13)

This portrayal humanizes Saddam to an extent, emphasizing the importance of understanding the personal dimensions of dictators to grasp the full scope of their tyranny.

The Legacy and Impact of Dictators’ Literature

Calder discusses how dictator writings often become almost sacred texts within their societies, used as tools of indoctrination and control. However, their legacy is fleeting, as new regimes typically discard previous rulers' works. He underscores the paradox of these works being both widely distributed during dictatorship and quickly erased post-fall.

Recommendations and Final Thoughts

Towards the episode's conclusion, Calder offers guidance for listeners interested in exploring dictator literature. He recommends Mussolini's War Diary as a relatively accessible and readable example, while cautioning against delving too deeply due to the often distressing content:

"If you're just curious and wanted to read one that didn't cause too much pain, I say Mussolini's War Diary is quite short and quite readable." (23:26)

Calder emphasizes that while these works are historically significant, they are not generally recommended for casual reading due to their challenging nature.

Conclusion

This bonus episode of Real Dictators provides a compelling exploration of dictator literature through Daniel Calder's insightful analysis. By examining the writings of tyrants like Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, and Saddam Hussein, the episode sheds light on the complex interplay between literature and authoritarian power. Calder's work underscores the importance of understanding these texts not just as propaganda tools, but as windows into the minds of some of history's most notorious figures.

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For more insightful episodes like this one, subscribe to Noiser+ at noiser.com/subscriptions and explore additional content that delves deeper into the lives of history's most infamous dictators.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

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[Duncan Barrett]

Almost every dictator at one time or another has put pen to paper. Some have wrestled with ideas, with philosophy. Many have merely vented, spewing their diatribes onto the page. Others have made forays into fiction, poetry and drama with varying degrees of success. Noiser writer Duncan Barrett spoke to a man who's made it his mission to wade through all kinds of dictators writings. Daniel Calder is author of the Infernal Library, also published as Dictator Literature A History of Bad Books by Terrible People.

[Interviewer]

I enjoyed reading your book enormously, but I'm curious as to whether you enjoyed writing it. There's a kind of bitterness that comes through now and then about the research that you had to do for this one.

[Daniel Calder]

I would say I enjoyed it more looking back over it than in the process. It was a kind of great literary endurance test to see how much of this can I read when it was just really atrocious. Most of it. I mean, I had the idea when I was a younger man, you know, and I had more of my life in front of me than I do now. So. So it was like, eh, if I spend like 8, 9, 10 years, like reading dictator books, it'll be fine. In the heady days of youth, it seemed like a worthwhile challenge.

[Interviewer]

Obviously there are the kind of dictator books that we're all familiar with, Mein Kampf, the Little Red Book, et cetera. But it was actually quite an obscure one that got you started on this road to begin with, right?

[Daniel Calder]

Yeah. I moved to like Russia in 1997 and I'd kind of grown up during the Cold War and so I was kind of vaguely aware that dictators had books. You know, when you got to Moscow in the 90s, there was still a lot of communist detritus lying around. And I remember the first flat that I rented had a kind of complete works of Lenin or something on the shelves. It felt like a kind of dead tradition to me that like dictator books was a thing from the past. And then a couple of years later, probably early 2000s, I was in my flat and there was Nothing going on. I switched on the TV and there was this report from I didn't know where. It was just really, really bizarre imagery of kind of gold statues of this slightly portly gentleman in a business suit and kind of. It looked like somewhere in Asia in this kind of post modern desert landscape with tilers in it. And at the end and I realized, oh, it took me to stand and turned out there's a book there called the Rukh Nama. And everybody was kind of compelled to read this Rukh Namah and it was the work of the dictator and it was like he was a genius. And the book itself was quite strange looking. It's kind of pink and green with this gold head on the COVID And so that did make me really quite obsessed. I had to know more. And so I think I managed to find it online. And this was in the days of dial up. And I remember downloading it page by page so I could read it. And it was quite weird and terrible, but in an equal measure. And the weirdness made it possible to overlook the terribleness or the terribleness was a feature of the weirdness. And I thought, oh, this is really interesting. And so in the end, I actually went to Turkmenistan early 2006, while the dictator Turkmen Bashi was in his full glory. It was like peak of Central Asian Disneyland, Stalinism. And I mean, I went all over the country and the book was absolutely central, you know, and there was like a mosque in his birthplace which had text from the Rukhnama on the minarets of the mosque. I thought, pretty sure this is kind of blasphemous. I went into like a Russian Orthodox cathedral and they had copies of the Ruhnema in the entrance, I think there was a mountain and they'd put bits of the Ruhnema on it. There was TV shows where they were reading from the Ruhnema. And so for me it was like a revelation because it was suddenly instead of this like dead tradition of dictator books, I thought, like, it was a living tradition and it was really bizarre. It made to me very real an experience of the 20th century that maybe lots of people had suffered through. And so I think that really kicked off this obsession that lasted for about a decade.

[Interviewer]

That book, it sounds like, was pretty easy to get hold of. Were some of the books that you needed to read harder to track down? I mean, in some cases they had kind of been disappeared in a sense after their dictator had fallen out of favor. Was it hard getting hold of these books?

[Daniel Calder]

Some of them, yeah. I Mean the Rukhnama is not as easy to get hold of now and Ruhnemar volume 2 is very difficult. But yeah, that's one of the interesting things is how quickly these books disappeared. And that was something else that fascinated me about them was, you know, when these dictators are in power, you know, they have like literally a captive audience. They can force their witterings upon millions. And they had massive print runs, I mean millions and millions of copies. And some of these dictators are in power for decades. And so you would think that if you're in power for decades and you kind of are able to force yourself writings on people, they might last at least a little while, but they melt away almost completely once these guys are out of power. And so it sort of depended on the dictatorship. Lenin for example, very easy to get a hold of those massive print runs. And there was a massive institute in the Soviet Union dedicated to the promulgation of Lenin's works. So loads of that stuff's translated. Stalin you can also get your hands on relatively easily. There was a Messianic drive to 20th century communism and so they translated the books to millions of languages and so many copies they still circulate online and second hand. But there's others that were quite difficult. Clement Gottwald, the Czech dictator. I lived in the Czech Republic for about a year and there was no trace of Clement Gottwald stuff. It was long gone. So yeah, that was part of the fun of writing the book was tracking some of the books down.

[Interviewer]

Do you feel when you were reading these books in touch with that kind of evil of the person who was writing them? I mean was there a kind of discomfort there?

[Daniel Calder]

Sometimes yeah, and I mean that's a good question. So like it sort of depended on the regime. Viri Stalin for example, super evil guy. But his like writings are extremely dry. You don't get this sense of a kind of mass murdering sadist. If anything it's extremely cold and very controlled, monolithic like the statues and the propaganda. Hitler for sure. That is like just ranting unstructured page after page of hate and bile. That book is like really onerous to read. And then I think if you read Lenin to, you know, you read Lenin, there's this like, unlike Stalin there's a real like passion in Lenin and a rage. And if you read through the lines you can see this barely restrained impulse towards violence, although he preferred it if other people did the violence for him.

[Interviewer]

And these books obviously are not just political tracts. I mean there's poetry There are plays, there are novels. Were any of them enjoyable to read?

[Daniel Calder]

Certainly when you read a lot of it, the scale becomes relative. You know, I would say Mussolini probably was an actual writer, you know, so I think it's quite well known. Mussolini was a journalist by profession and very successful journalist and very successful editor. So when you read his stuff you can tell, no, this guy actually knows how to write. In his novel, Cardinal's Mystery. It's a pot boiler, you know, you just tossed it off. But it works. You know, it's got like cliffhangers and each chapter leads to the next chapter and it's got like strong emotions. But the book by Mussolini, if I say, came closest to enjoying in a kind of non ironic sense, it was probably his war diary. And World War I kicks off. Mussolini had been this big socialist and then he sort of converts to nationalism and I'm going to fight for Italy. And that book is really interesting because it starts off very, very jingoistic. And then as it goes on, the kind of horror and the bleakness of war so overwhelms him and so his Persona kind of breaks down. And I remember there's a sequence where he's just staring at this corpse out in no Man's Land. And then other bits where he can barely bring himself to write full sentences. They're just like fragments of things that he sees. And in that sense you can really feel quite like in the trenches with Mussolini and see all these things you've heard about World War I become quite real. I mean, I'm sure there's better books about World War I you can read, but it's not bad looking for a.

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[Podcast Host]

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[Daniel Calder]

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[Podcast Host]

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[Daniel Calder]

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[Daniel Calder]

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[Daniel Calder]

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[Interviewer]

The books that are published after the dictators come to power, I mean, obviously they sell very well. You know, Mao's Little Red Book is the second bestselling book of all time, I think. Are people actually reading them? I mean, are these books to be read or are they kind of props in the personality cult?

[Daniel Calder]

I think it varies. There were means of compulsion, you know, in Turkmenistan, in order to pass your driver's test, you had to pass the test in the Ruhnama. And in the Soviet Union, you know, there were compulsory classes in Leninism. After Lenin died. One of the ways to establish authority and control was to become an expert on Lenin's texts. Even into the late Soviet Union there was a whole institute for the study of Lenin. And I met people who could quote Lenin at you. I mean, I think Chairman Mao definitely had his fans. Jean Paul Sartre was a fan of Chairman Mao and Lenin had his fans. But I think some of the others, it was definitely compulsion rather than enthusiasm.

[Interviewer]

Any of them show any sign of a sense of humor in their work? Or are these books, you know, to the last one, kind of devoid of that? Because I suppose you need a degree of self awareness to have that kind of humor maybe.

[Daniel Calder]

Yeah, not really. I'm trying to think. I mean, you know, humor is one of the most dangerous things in a kind of totalitarian regime is not allowed. I mean, there was like inadvertent humor through incompetence, but very few jokes or almost no jokes.

[Interviewer]

I suppose there is a kind of interesting element though with some of these books of these people whose presentation of themselves is very controlled, who want to project a certain personality and so on, that sometimes the books give you an insight into some deeper unconscious recess of their mind that maybe isn't always there on the surface. I mean, I'm just thinking Saddam Hussein. There's these rape orgies in one of the books. There's this very strange digression about having sex with bears. I mean, there's some strange stuff that Kind of boils up to the surface there, right?

[Daniel Calder]

I guess Saddam Hussein is another. He's a very interesting case. So Saddam, he had, I think, a very large bibliography. It was sort of collected speeches, this, that and the other, you know, various statements about revolution and, you know, society. And I don't think if you were to read that, you would get much out of it. You wouldn't get much insight into who he was. But towards the end of his regime, when things started to go wrong for him, he started writing novels. So he wrote this book called Zabiba and the King. And it was a kind of like romance novel. It's a love story. The basic premise is it's set in the past, in the early years of Islam. And there's like a pagan king. And I think he goes out riding one day and he sees this beautiful woman, Zabiba. And then that's when we imagine that Saddam Hussein's method of coasting wasn't very elegant. I mean, who knows? But like in the book, he just falls in love with his woman, and then he starts having long conversations about statecraft and religion with her, and she starts to kind of change his mind about things. And as soon as you read it, it feels different from a lot of these other books. You do feel that you're sort of connecting with the dictator on some level. You know, I think, you know, when you read the dictator books, very often the ones they wrote before they were empowered are more interesting because they're free, they're unconstrained or kind of talking about what they really think. With Zabiba and the King, and I think he wrote three more. This position he was in. He was in this very embattled position. He was paranoid. He wasn't really enjoying power, but he didn't want to lose it because he knew what was going to happen. And so I think there's almost a kind of like. So he was in this position of uncertainty and, dare I say it, vulnerability, which for the iron dictator is unusual. And so it's that kind of strange moment. And then I guess he felt, for whatever reason, he had to express himself. And so Saddam feels inspired to write a novel. And it's often read as a kind of metaphor about America, sort of, because I think the woman's held captive or she's married off to this evil guy who's often viewed as a kind of symbol of America. And so she's suffering every night. It's horrible, these interactions with her husband. So there is a sort of political subtext as well, for sure, this allegorical quality. But there's this wild stuff too, quite gratuitous scenes that you don't need to do in a pure allegory, really. Surreal outbursts. I mean, I could read it for you. Even an animal respects a man's desire. It wants to copulate with him. Doesn't a female bear try to please a herdsman when she drags him into the mountains, as it happens in the north of Iraq, she drags him into her den so that he, obeying her desire, would copulate with her. Doesn't she bring him nuts gathering them from the trees or picking them from the bushes? Doesn't she climb into the houses of farmers in order to steal some cheese, nuts and even raisins so that she can feed the man and awaken him the desire to have her? And so like, what's that, Saddam? What are you talking about? I never said. Oh, that is a reference to Russia. No, it's not. This has nothing to do with Russia. It's just strange. Maybe it's a reference to something else, but there's a lot of strange bits in it. So even if you read it as an allegory, the detail about rape is quite out there. And so you get this sense that it's like, yes, this is like, what's going on in Saddam's mind. And I guess when I started reading all these books, that was my sort of idea. I'm going to use these as like John Malkovich style portals into the heads of dictators, you know, and I will step inside. But often you're getting a portal into the head of the dictator before he was a dictator, or you're getting a portal into the Institute of Studies of boring dictator. But with that one, it feels like you are getting a portal. And I think the loneliness of this king who's, like, isolated, he's got nobody to talk to and the only person he can really communicate with is this young woman. And night after night he goes to talk to her. You know, it's not like we have to have sympathy for Saddam Hussein. He was a terrible guy. But I do think that when we think about dictators, it's important to think of them as people. At the start of the book, I think I have this quote from Dostoevsky where nothing is easier to denounce than the evildoer. Nothing is more difficult than to understand him. And so, yes, it's easy to denounce, but it's interesting to understand. And I think like that in Zabiba, if you Want to know what it's like to be a dictator with the power of life and death, but who's also terrified of being assassinated? He was, like, looking around and guarding his position at any moment. I think Zabiba and the King gives you a reasonable sense of what was going through Saddam's mind when he felt sort of besieged.

[Interviewer]

It's also quite heavily influenced by his own story, isn't it? I mean, he draws on autobiographical elements.

[Daniel Calder]

Exactly. I mean, he used the material from his own life, but then he changed it as a writer does. And so, you know, in that sense, it's like. It's like a proper novel, maybe not a great novel, but he created the novel the same way all novelists do.

[Interviewer]

And presumably this book was a smash hit when it came out, even though it supposedly had an anonymous author.

[Daniel Calder]

Yeah, and I think that's just like. It wasn't that anonymous if it was a smash hit, you know. And then I think he wrote two or three more which haven't been translated into English. But I guess he was sufficiently pleased with the results of that first one that he kept going. You know, Franco wrote one novel and then stopped. Chairman Mao wrote poetry all his life, but it wasn't really published until towards the end. But it was almost like Saddam had discovered his second career. According to his editor, I think the very last book that he wrote, he was still working on it when the American tanks were, like, sort of closing in, and he was, like, trying to finish his last novel right up until the last minute. If it were me and I was writing something and there was, like, tanks, I would be out the window and running away really quickly. I said, I'll finish the book later. I might never finish it. Clearly he had something he needed to get off his chest, and that was more important, or almost as important as the mere matter of survival.

[Interviewer]

We spoke a little bit earlier, I think, about the texts that become almost like kind of sacred texts. And Saddam does something very interesting, which is that he has this Quran written in his blood. Is that right? Can you talk through how that works?

[Daniel Calder]

Assuming it's true, it was his blood. Right. I mean, he had access to lots of blood, but I think it was. And so, yeah, he did have a Quran produced in his own blood. So I think, you know, as dictators get older, they too, sometimes look for some kind of historical meaning. You know, I think that's an idea of, like, what is my historical legacy? What is my vision? What am I leaving behind? And so maybe Saddam starts thinking, you know, I should like, really write a Quran in my own blood, you know, to express my religiosity. But also, I mean, it's obviously propaganda, but also it's kind of grotesque. I mean, you know, it's kind of like really weird. And so it feels like. Feels like an unstable symbol to me, you know.

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[Daniel Calder]

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[Interviewer]

So I just have one final question. I kind of get the feeling, reading your book, that you've read these works so we don't have to. But if our listeners were going to go and sample one work of Dictator lit themselves, what would it be?

[Daniel Calder]

I'd say if you don't read them, you will be fine. I think if you're just curious and wanted to read one that didn't cause too much pain, I say Mussolini's War Diary is quite short and quite readable. And yeah, I probably wouldn't really recommend any others beyond that. Although, you know, there's pleasure in if you enjoy watching bad movies, right? Then you can sort of read these, some of these books and get some of that, although they're much more consequential. But to keep going for 200 or 300 or 400 pages is like an ordeal. And even like Saddam's novel, which sort of sounds like what, it's got bear sex in it. You have to plow through a lot of waffle and just turgid stuff. So yeah, I don't recommend it.

[Duncan Barrett]

Many thanks to Daniel Calder. For more bonus episodes like this one, subscribe to Noiser+ head to noiser.comsubscriptions to find out more. Did you know that the team behind this show has other podcasts too? [e-mail] or wherever you get your podcasts.

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