‘Naked power has an expiry date,” writes Frank Dikötter. This is no doubt true. But lest you find the observation overly reassuring, remember that Joseph Stalin stayed in power for 31 years, Mao Zedong for 27, Benito Mussolini for 23, and Adolf Hitler for a hideous 12. So for all the apparent precariousness that can beset a strongman who seizes control of a state by thuggery or violence, the absence of genuine popular support doesn’t always result in his imminent toppling.
In fact, writes Mr. Dikötter in “How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century,” by relying on “military forces, a secret police, a praetorian guard, spies, informants, interrogators, [and] torturers,” a tyrant can remain at the helm for decades. Yet oppression alone is seldom sufficient. There is, he explains, another ingredient to despotic longevity: “A dictator must instil fear in his people, but if he can compel them to acclaim him he will probably survive longer.”
