The bizarre phenomenon of dictator literature.

The British journalist Daniel Kalder’s new book The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy, deals with something rather odd: the writings of despots and mass murderers. While living in Moscow, he set himself the task of reviewing an extensive selection of works penned by the dictators of the 20th and early 21st centuries. (The British title of the book is Dictator Literature.) Kalder argues that Vladimir Lenin should be viewed as the father of this literary genre. Even before he had studied Marx, the young Lenin had read Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s 1863 novel What is to be Done? It inspired Lenin to dedicate himself fully to revolution. Deeply impressed, Lenin gave the same title to one of his own books, of which there were many. His collected

works runs to 55 volumes. While exiled by the tsarist government in Siberia, Lenin produced what Kalder calls “the first major book by the father of 20thcentury dictator literature.” Over its 500 pages, The Development of Capitalism in Russia argued that the country was now industrialised rather than agricultural and so ready for rule by the urban proletariat. Joseph Stalin, his successor as Soviet leader, as a trained seminarian collected and commented on and refocused Lenin’s writings. And, of course, he too wrote dozens

of books of his own – turgid, boring nonsense. Stalin was so impressed by Alexander Kazbegi’s novel The Patricide, written in 1882, that he renamed himself “Koba” after its central character, and used the pseudonym throughout his early career. To bolster his claim to be a theorist; his works were published. His own ambitious history of the Bolshevik revolution, known as the Short Course, was not only printed in the tens of millions of copies, but also became an object of study by the Soviet masses. Yet, Kalder tells us, as a young man even Stalin penned some not insignificant poetry in his native Georgian. Mao Zedong first encountered Marxism while working in a library, “the ideal location for a cash-strapped nascent megalomaniac in need of easy access to

inspirational bad ideas,” writes Kalder. He devoured the texts that would provide his ideological cover for the cruel regime he later imposed on China. His infamous “Little Red Book,” Quotations of Chairman Mao Zedong, was waved by millions of addled revolutionaries around the world during the years of the Cultural Revolution. It was read out in factories, the way sacred texts are in monasteries. It was also credited with the ability to improve table-tennis skills and cure cancer. These Communists had intellectual pretentions and their “works” became an important part of the promotion of their cults. The Italian fascist Benito Mussolini immersed himself in the reading of classic texts. He was later a professional journalist, and highly successful newspaper editor, so it’s no surprise Il Duce

went on to write poems and plays, including a historical drama based on Napoleon’s last days. He published a biography of Jan Hus, the early proto-Protestant reformer, and even wrote a romance novel, The Cardinal’s Mistress. Fellow fascist General Francisco Franco of Spain wrote the screenplay-novel Raza at the end of 1940 and start of 1941. The Caudillo’s narrative is set during the just-concluded Spanish Civil War As for the most notorious piece of “dictator literature,” that prize must go, hands down, to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. If ever we needed proof, Kalder contends, that in some cases “books and reading can cause immense harm,” this one is it.