Talking about “children of monsters,” the sons and daughters of dictators
Friends, today I have a book out: Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators. A couple of weeks ago, my own publisher, Encounter, did a little Q&A with me — for publicity purposes. I thought it a useful Q&A, and I thought it would make a little column.
So, see what you think. And talk to you soon.
Q. How did this book come about?
A. I was in Albania — which had suffered one of the worst dictatorships in history. Enver Hoxha kept that country in a merciless grip. I wondered whether he had had children. And, if so, what their lives were like. What they were like.
Q. Some sons succeed their father as dictator. Who are those?
A. My book covers “Baby Doc” Duvalier in Haiti; Kim Jong-il in North Korea; Bashar Assad in Syria; and, back in North Korea, Kim Jong-un.
Q. Any other Duvaliers, Kims, or Assads waiting in the wings?
A. Yes, actually — in all three cases.
Q. Has a daughter ever become dictator? Has there ever been a female dictator?
A. You could count certain queens, and, if you stretched it, Indira Gandhi’s period of “emergency” rule. But mainly, dictatorship has been a man’s business. Several of the dictators in my book had daughters who might have succeeded the old man in “office,” had they been of the other sex.
Q. What is Hitler doing in your book? He didn’t have any children, did he?
A. Ah, but there was a claimant: a Frenchman named Jean-Marie Loret. And he believed himself the son of Hitler. (His mother, a French peasant girl during World War I, told him he was.) So our question is, What effect did this have on Loret? (By the way, he looked a lot like Hitler. As does his son.)
Q. What do dictators’ children have in common?
A. They are all individuals, and they have coped with their situation in various ways. Some are heroic, some are neither here nor there, and some are villainous. What they have in common is that they have been dealt a very unusual hand. A hard or tricky one, too.
Q. Stalin’s daughter defected to the United States, didn’t she?
A. Yes, in 1967. She “redefected” in 1984. And “re-redefected,” back to the United States, as soon as she could — which was a year and a half later.
Q. Have there been any dissenters in the Kim family?
A. One of Kim Jong-il’s sons is a semi-dissenter, and he lives abroad. According to reports, he has dodged assassination attempts by his half-brother, the ruling Kim.
Q. Any defectors in the Castro family?
A. Indeed, including two daughters.
Q. Tell us about the Qaddafi sons.
A. A gruesome crew. Totally gruesome. They had license, and they exercised it gruesomely.
Q. Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay — how bad were they?
A. Let me quote an Iraqi general, Georges Sada, who wrote a book called Saddam’s Secrets: “They were worse than Saddam, a hundred times over.” This is hyperbole, of course — but understandable, once you get to know the boys.
Q. Do dictators leave terrible scars — emotional ones — on their children?
A. Sure. And the ones who rise above, or even try to, you really admire.
Q. Did Idi Amin really have 60 kids?
A. Yes, with 21 different women. The first of his children was born in 1948, probably, and the last was born almost 50 years later: in 1996. He was a busy man, and a much-loved father to his children, actually.
Q. What kind of father was Pol Pot?
A. He had a child, late in life — a daughter, when he was about 60. Evidently, he treated her very lovingly, very tenderly. And she remembers him with great fondness. (Pol Pot and his dictatorship killed about 2 million people, i.e., between a fifth and a quarter of the Cambodian population.)
Q. What is the ghastliest or most eye-popping story in your book?
A. There are many, but anything having to do with Bokassa, the dictator of Central Africa, is pretty ghastly and eye-popping indeed. Put it this way: Two of his daughters were married in a double wedding. Before long, three of those four people were dead, along with the infant child of one of the couples. That’s Bokassa for you.
Q. Which of the children, of all the children you cover, led the most fascinating life?
A. Hard to beat Svetlana Stalin, whose life was tumultuous, almost unimaginable. But others have had their own challenges, their own tumult, and their own unimaginability.
Q. What does your book tell us about nature vs. nurture?
A. That is the $64,000 question, or one of them. Consider Romania: The dictator Ceauşescu and his vicious wife, Elena, had two sons. One was a perfect monster: the little monster of bigger monsters. He raped and killed his way through life. The other son has never harmed a hair on anyone’s head, so far as I’m aware. He has lived more or less blamelessly. And quietly.
Q. Why should people read your book?
A. Well, that’s not really for the author to say! But I’ll take a stab at it. First, the book is a collection of interesting stories about interesting lives. (All too interesting, many of the “children” would tell you.) Second, a study of those lives enhances our understanding of tyranny, under which much of the world’s population lives.
Q. Does the book also say something about the blessings of a free society and the rule of law?
A. Indirectly, yes! I’ll quote from a blurb by Mark Helprin, the novelist. “In the end, one is left somewhat shaken but profoundly grateful for the American Constitutional order. To the point where you say to yourself, thank God I live here.”