In this video presentation we consider how successful dictators, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, managed to obtain power and then keep that power for prolonged periods of time.

The essential ingredients, apart from some good luck being at the right place at the right time, are very good public relations or PR skills and being ruthless with your potential competitors for power.

But before considering the case of Vladimir Putin in more detail, we look at some other very successful dictators.

Napoleon Bonaparte, Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Kemal Ataturk came to power in very public ways with war, revolution or domestic turmoil providing the opportunity.

All held the beginnings of dictatorial power right from the start, but all then took steps to make sure that any possible  competitors were eliminated.

In contrast to these dictators,  Joseph Stalin,  like Vladimir Putin, came to power after being a very successful bureaucrat.

Mao Zedong came to power in 1949 with a proclamation of the People’s Republic of China after the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist Kuomintang  forces and their retreat to Taiwan. Mao held multiple official positions at the same time. He was Head of State or Chairman of the Chinese Republic, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee (which was the main policymaking body) and Chairman of the Politburo (which was the main executive  body).

Despite all these titles, Mao was seen by many of his senior revolutionary comrades as only a “first among equals”. However, Mao saw himself and his will as supreme.

Criticism of some of his policies by several of these old comrades from the pre-1949 wars, concerned Mao enough that over time he removed them from their positions and  contributed to their deaths.

Mao was careful about how he went about removing such threats to his power. Defence Minister Peng Dehuai was sacked in 1959 when he made critical comments about the Great Leap Forward  and was later arrested and beaten during the Cultural Revolution which began in 1966, and he died in prison in1974.

Liu Shaoqi, another revolutionary colleague, was imprisoned in 1967 and also beaten by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution and died in 1969 after being denied medical treatment at the direction of Mao.

Deng Xiaoping, who was later to become China’s supreme leader after the death of Mao in 1976, was also purged from his position during the Cultural Revolution. Liu and Deng were, like Peng, revolutionary colleagues of Mao who criticized Mao’s cult of the personality.

Mao’s doctor for two decades, Li Zhisui, wrote that Mao wanted a cult of personality so that he could stay at the top. However, he did not want to be accused of fostering his own cult, and so “needed the illusion that the demand for his leadership came spontaneously from the masses themselves”.

According to Dr. Li, Liu Shaoqi’s problems really started when Mao resigned as Chairman of the Republic in 1959 in order to reduce his administrative work-load, but kept the more powerful positions of Chairman of the Communist Party of China and of the Politburo. Liu became the new Chairman of the Republic and took his new title and responsibilities much too seriously for Mao’s liking.

Dr Li later wrote that when Liu contacted tuberculosis in 1964, “galvanised Mao into action”. Though he could not attack his rival directly, he could make Liu’s life miserable. Mao issued a series of instructions concerning the health care of the highest leadership. They would no longer have their personal physicians. He ordered me to not get involved in treating Liu.”

 Deng Xiaoping’s character could be prickly, but Mao seems to have had a soft spot for him and for his administrative talents and possible future usefulness, and he was brought back to the position of power eventually. On the other hand, the very talented and useful Zou Enlai proclaimed that he “did not have the talent to be number one”.

And because Mao did not thus see him as a threat, Zou Enlai survived as China’s Premier from 1954 until his death in 1976.

Building on his reputation as a very successful general in a number of battles in both Europe and in countries around the Mediterranean Sea, Napoleon Bonaparte claimed the position of First Consul in the three-man French Consulate, which replaced the Directory in 1799. Napoleon told the French people that the “revolution is finished”, which was welcomed by many after a decade of bloodshed which had begun in 1789, and then moved to consolidate his own power. In 1802 Napoleon became Consul for Life and in 1804 Emperor of France.

Like all the other dictators in this study, Napoleon worked to promote his image as necessary for the future of his country. Napoleon’s childhood friend and first secretary, Louis Bourrienne, noted that Napoleon worked hard too “depreciate the reputations of his military commanders, and to throw on their shoulders faults which he had committed himself. He wrote news bulletins from the battle fields and his campaigns to be published in the Moniteur newspaper. These bulletins always announced what Napoleon wished to be believed true. Normally, there was falsity in the exaggerated descriptions of his victories, and falsity again in the suppression or palliation of his reverses and losses.”

Theophile Berlier, later to be one of Napoleon’s lieutenants, and many other Frenchmen were tired after a decade of revolution and war and sought someone, a “man”, to bring stability.  Berlier later recalled that at the time he believed the undoubtedly strong Napoleon to be “the man sent by providence to consolidate our republican institutions and make them respected in all of Europe”. But as, Napoleon’s brother Joseph wrote, Napoleon was less interested in Republican institutions and had other ideas. “Napoleon wants the need for his existence to be so direly felt, and as such a great boon, that anybody would recoil at any other possibility.”

Napoleon experienced little opposition to his accumulation of power, except when he began thinking of becoming leader for life, and even then with an hereditary system. This was opposed by the ardent Republicans who had taken part in the French Revolution to remove hereditary monarchs and Napoleon regarded police chief Joseph Fouche as their complete personification, a center around which all the interests of the revolution concentrated themselves, and he was very wary of provoking them. Fouche knew this and worked to maintain his representation of the interest of the revolution in order to keep his job.

Louis Bourrienne wrote that “no doubt the circumstances of Fouche being in office conciliated those of the Revolutionary party who were his friends. But Fouche cherished an undue partiality for them, because he knew that it was through them that he held his place. Napoleon perfectly understood the situation. He kept Fouche as chief of police until he could find an opportunity of disbanding his undisciplined followers.”

 Bourrienne added that Napoleon “had the weakness at once to fear Fouche and to think him necessary”.

Napoleon did sack Fouche as Chief of Police in 1802, but made sure that he was financially well compensated and given a prestigious position in the French Senate.  He eventually hired Fouche again in 1804 before keeping him as Chief of Police until 1810.

Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in January 1933 because the Nazi party could, with the help of other political parties, master a majority in the Reichstag parliament. Germany had been hard hit by the Great Depression with high unemployment and there was also resentment about the wording of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and the associated economic penalties imposed on Germany after the First World War.

Hans Frank, a Nazi lawyer and later Governor General of Poland, described what he thought was the secret of Hitler’s power. “He stood up and pounded his fist, and shouted, I am the Man. And he shouted about his strength and determination. And, so the public surrendered to him with hysterical enthusiasm.”

Ernst Roehm was the most prominent party leader alongside Adolf Hitler at the 1933 Victory Rally, but his personal ambition and agenda was soon in conflict with those of Hitler. Roehm’s photo was appearing more than that of Hitler in the newspaper SA Man and many SA members took the word socialism in the party’s National Socialism title seriously and wanted to destroy capitalism in a second revolution.

But now that he was in power, Hitler, wanted none of this? And he warned the SA leadership: “I will suppress every attempt to disturb the existing order as ruthlessly as I will deal with the so-called second revolution, which would lead only to chaos.”

Roehm exacerbated his difficulties with Hitler by putting the Army generals offside. A reconciliation lunch was held and after Hitler and the generals had left, Roehm said of Hitler, who had been a corporal in the First World War: “What that idiot corporal says means nothing to us! I have not the slightest intention of keeping this agreement. Hitler is a traitor and needs a long vacation. If we can’t get there with him, we’ll get there without him.”

Hitler’s response when later told about this comment was to burst into Roehm’s hotel room and arrest him. When Roehm refused to commit suicide the next day he was shot. Hitler’s official announcement was short and to the point: “The former Chief of Staff Rohm was given the opportunity to draw the consequences of his treacherous behaviour. He did not do so and was thereupon shot.”

Hitler then faced no significant internal challenges until the failed 20 July 1944 assassination attempt by German military officers.

Benito Mussolini was appointed Prime Minister by the Italian King Victor Emmanuel III in 1922. There was much domestic economic and political turmoil after the First World War, and Mussolini was a gifted propagandist who played on fears of a so-called March on Rome by thousands of fascists to demand the resignation of then Prime Minister  Luigi Factor.

The King may have feared Civil War because Mussolini  had considerable support in the military and in various industrial and agrarian groups which were fearful of socialism.

As editor of a newspaper in 1917, Mussolini had written that Italy needed a man: “A man who has when needed the delicate touch of an artist and the heavy hand of a warrior. A man who is sensitive and full of will-power. A man who knows and loves people, and who can direct and bend them with violence if required.” 

Thereafter, Mussolini continually tried to live up to his self-image. Following several killings of members of Parliament in 1924, Mussolini announced to Parliament in early 1925 that the “only solution is force”.

And he meant his force! Enormously popular with the population, Mussolini was able to increasingly assume dictatorial powers.

Mussolini was even more audacious with his promotion of self than was Napoleon Bonaparte.  Several months after joining the war on the side of Germany, Italy invaded Greece via Albania, but it’s army was soon repelled. By March1941, Italy had strengthened it’s force  and Mussolini went there expecting to take charge of a victorious march into Greece.

But the Greeks held on. After three weeks of sitting around, Mussolini returned to Rome, putting out this startling story that he had been commanding the “greatest and most bloody battle in modern history”.

 Turkey’s Mustafa Kemal, who eventually took the surname of Ataturk in 1934, became a very successful general in the First World War, including beating back an attempt by the allies to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula and gain control of the Dardanelles Straits. He acquired effective dictatorial powers while leading nationalist military forces fighting for Turkish independence after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and was given the title of Gazi –meaning hero or warrior!

In 1923, the Turkish Republic was proclaimed with Mustafa Kemel as president.  Many other nationalist leaders were wary of his dictatorial ways right from the beginning.  One of his lieutenants later wrote of late 1922 to the 1923 period: “Had it not been for his influence in the army. Mustafa Kemal would not have been able to get his way in the National Assembly, or even in Ankara. The vigilant guard which surrounded him, as if he were in constant danger, was proof of this.” 

In 1925, using the excuse of a Kurdish revolt, Mustafa Kemal forced through the National Assembly the Law for Maintenance of Public Order, which allowed for the suppression of any signs or advocacy of reaction and rebellion.  Mustafa Kemal explained that the new law had “given all government officials the task of preventing an incident before it happens rather than repressing it after it had happened and is necessary to suppress those who create confusion in the innocent mind of the nation”.

The new law was to be enforced by Independent Tribunals, which had been set up despite their resistance of some members of Mustafa Kemal’s own Republican People’s Party. The Tribunals were then used to suppress other military leaders who have been prominent during the struggle for Turkish independence.

History, or at least how they see history, is important to long lived dictators. In October 1927, Mustafa Kemel spent six days giving a single speech to a Congress of his monopoly People’s Party, which gave his view of how he had founded the Turkish State. While he had indeed been the leader in his creation, he could not help but denigrate the role of others as he put it: “Writing history is just as important as making history. The reality is that humankind will be confused if he who writes does not remain loyal to he who makes history.”

A British diplomat recorded that the opening words of the president’s speech were characteristic of the tone of the whole: “On the nineteenth of May 1919, I landed at Samcoun. The great Turk in instructing his faithful disciples, who in turn are to go out to spread the good news of Turkey’s resurrection and thereby make the villager, shopkeeper and landowner appreciate the debt they owe to the Gazi and to his political party.”

By beginning with, “I landed”, Mustafa Kemal equated himself with Turkey. He eventually went further than this. Given the single name of Mustafa at birth,  with Kemal acquired along the way, Mustafa Kemal later decide that all Turks should have a surname. And in 1934 designated himself, father Turk — that is Ataturk!

When the news is bad, the successful dictator knows how to minimize his own responsibility. Nikita Khrushchev recalled the situation during the first part of the war when the Soviet armies were in retreat: “Stalin’s signature name never appeared on a single document or order. ‘High Command’, ‘General Staff’, or some other term was used, but never his name.”

Admiral Kuznetsov recalled that whilst Stalin had become Supreme Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces on eight August 1940 “not many people knew”. “It was only after victories at the front that Stalin began to be called Supreme Commander in Chief in the communiqués published in the press and naturally at the eventual victory parade in Red Square in Moscow in June 1945 “all successes and victories were attributed to him alone”. 

Stalin’s opportunity for supreme power arose with the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, and he eventually emerge victorious after an internal communist party power struggle that lasted several years.

American Admiral William H. Standley later reflected on his time in Moscow from October 1941 to October 1943, including a period of US Ambassador to the USSR:  

“We must also remember that Stalin was able to capitalize on his relationship with Vladimir Lenin. At every opportunity, he glorified the Great Lenin as the idol of the Russian people, the Communist deity of the Soviet Union. Life-sized pictures of the Great Lenin with his disciple Stalin on his left were displayed in the Red Square, in all schoolrooms, on public buildings, and in every public place. During the War, Stalin issued weekly bulletins in which he extolled the virtues of the Great Lenin and urged the people to hold sacred and to preserve the heritage handed down to them by the Great Lenin. It was as a devoted disciple of the Great Lenin that Stalin maintained his control of the Communist Party and his power over the Russian people.”

We now get to consider the case of Vladimir Putin who, like Josef Stalin, came to power in a way not directly associated with war, revolution or civil strife. Putin was handed power as Prime Minister in 1999 and then acting president with the resignation of Boris Yeltsin as president in December 1999. Putin’s presidency was then confirmed in an election several months later.

Exactly how Putin successfully emerged at the top in Moscow is subject to much dispute with many people claiming to be responsible for persuading Yeltsin to support him. Some have called him an accidental president, which may be true to the extent that he was in the right place at the right time, although this does not exclude ambition and manoeuvring to get there. And there was probably some surprise on Putin’s part when he actually did get there!

According to Gleb Pavlovsky, a Kremlin spin doctor who worked for both Yeltsin and Putin, Prime Minister Putin “was given the task of carrying out a purge of the Federal Security Service (FSB successor to the KGB) and he applied himself to that very actively. He fired a lot of people. That was something no one else had done before. People were afraid. And that pleased President Yeltsin”.

 Nevertheless, Vladimir Putin’s rise to power was somewhat different to that from Josef Stalin because according to Alexander Voloshin, the presidential chief of staff from 1999 to 2003, Putin “from the moment he became president, he held all power in his hands”.

There are probably four main reasons for Putin’s almost immediate grip on power. Firstly, was Yeltsin’s 1999 designation of Putin as his successor. Secondly, Putin’s early 2000 presidential election victory. The third reason contributed to the first two. Journalist Marcia Geesen wrote: “Everyone could invest this grey, ordinary man with what they wanted to see in him.”

This is often the case with people who later amassed dictatorial powers after a period of turmoil.  The case of Napoleon has already been referred to, and Putin came to power after a decade of economic chaos after the collapse of the USSR and the erratic leadership of Boris Yeltsin. Similarly historian, professor Tim Blanning has said that Napoleon Bonaparte was “able to secure his authority so easily from 1799 because he was not associated in people’s minds with any particular political grouping. He was only associated with military victory and so he could be all things to all people”.

The fourth reason for Putin’s quick consolidation of power once he became president was that prior to being  prime minister Yeltsin had, as already noted, appointed him head of the FSB, the Federal Security Service (former KGB). And he had carried out a purge firing lots of people. This would’ve enabled Putin to put his own long-term cronies or associates in important positions, and he even managed to usurp some of the prerogatives of Yeltsin as president.

For example, when Putin became head of the FSB, he appointed Nikolai Patrushev as Secretary of the Security Council and then when Putin became prime minister Patrushev became head of the FSB with both Patrushev and the chief of the general staff of the Russian military reporting directly to Putin as prime minister — rather than as traditionally reporting to Yeltsin as president!

Mikhail Kasyanov later related that when he was appointed prime minister in 2000, President Putin “told me not to step on his toes and not get involved with sovereign ministries such as military organizations, special services, the army and so on”.

Charles Maurice Talleyrand, the French Foreign Affairs minister, was well aware of Napoleon Bonaparte’s aims and ambitions when he suggested to the newly appointed First Consul in 1799  that Napoleon directly control the important ministries of interior, the police, foreign affairs and the armed forces leaving the Second and Third Consuls to handle the ministries of justice and finance.

Talleyrand told Napoleon that this would “occupy and amuse them, and you, General (Bonaparte), having at your disposal all the vital parts of the government, will be able to reach the end you aim at”. Napoleon later said to Bourrienne, his secretary: “What he Talleyrand advises, you know, I’m anxious to do. He is right. One gets on quicker by oneself.”

In 1926, Benito Mussolini was Prime Minister as well as minister for six of the 13 ministerial departments, and he later increased this. He also became chairman of the main committees of government, including those involving defence, statistics and serial production. When eventually asked if this was excessive, he replied that “it is really simpler to give orders myself instead of having to send for the minister concerned and convince him about what I want done”.

For all dictators, whether it’s Napoleon, Mussolini, Putin, or any of the others in this study, it’s much easier to get things done if you have all power or as much power as possible consolidated it in your own hands.

As well as control over government, Vladimir Putin also wanted power over society and soon after his election as president he took his first steps. After coming to power in 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte introduced fairly severe censorship, which saw the number of Parisian journals fall from about 70 to about three in a short space of time.

However, most Russians in the late 1990s and early two thousands when Putin came to power got their news from television with printed media having a relatively minor role. So Putin concentrated on television!

NTV was an independent television channel, which had been critical of both Yeltsin and Putin. Four days after Putin’s May 2000 presidential inauguration, NTV was raided by men from the Russian Interior Ministry. MTV’s owner was arrested. And forced to sell his shares to state owned Gazprom, and he eventually left Russia permanently.

Putin then moved against Boris Berezovsky, who controlled TV station ORT and imagined himself as some sort of intellectual power behind the Putin throne and had criticized some of Putin’s measures to exert control over Russia. Berezovsky was hit with fraud related criminal charges and had to sell his shares to Sibneft (controlled by Putin friendly Roman Abramovich). Television station TV6, also owned by Berezovsky, which increased its audience share as it moved from entertainment to opposition commentary was later taken off the air.

This left three television stations: RTR (renamed Rossiya), Channel One and NTV — all owned by the state!

But in between acting against television stations, Putin also moved quickly to assert his authority over business. In July 2000 Putin summed 21 leading business magnets, generally known as Oligarchs, to the Kremlin and told them that the “initial period of capital accumulation was over”.

There would be no attempt to reverse privatizations no matter how they had obtained these assets, but from now on the oligarchs were told that they should stay at arms-length  from the state, and not be involved in politics: “You yourselves have created this situation, to a large extent through political and quasi-political structures which you control.”

 Terrorist attacks – Dubrovka theatre in October 2002, and Beslan school in 2004 — were followed by further measures to tighten control over Russia, including the appointment rather than the election of regional governors and changes to the electoral system for the parliamentary Duma.

In October 2003 businessman Michail Khodorkovsky, who controlled oil conglomerate YUKOS, was arrested on fraud and tax related charges. Khodorkovsky had been one of the 21 businessmen at the July 2000 Oligarch meeting with Putin but had decided to remain active in public and private political discussion. He was eventually to lose YUKOS and be jailed.

Thereafter Putin, while he was both president and also prime minister during the four-year presidency of Dimitry Medvedev, took less high profile steps to strengthen his grip on power.

However, even as prime minister, Putin was not being shy about showing his power! In 2009, RUSAL, the big aluminium company headed by Oleg Deripaska, had closed a plant in region where it was the only large employer and there were unpaid wages. Hundreds of workers blocked the main highway to Moscow and threatened to block the railway.

Putin biographer Philip Short wrote about Putin’s reaction to this and his abilities in the PR department:  

“Two days later, Putin helicoptered in to confront Deripaska and two of his colleagues. ‘Why did you start running around like cockroaches the moment you heard I was coming’, he asked. ‘You have made thousands of people hostages to your ambition and incompetence and perhaps your greed.’ He ordered Deripaska to restart production immediately and pay workers what was owed. Then, pointing to a copy of an agreement they had drafted, he threw his pen across the table and told him to sign. As a further humiliation, once the magnate had complied, Putin snapped: ‘Now give me back my pen.’ Within hours the money had been transferred to workers accounts and Russian television showed them lined-up withdrawing money.”

 This demonstration of power by Putin as prime minister made it seem unlikely that Medvedev would actually be able to get the second presidential term that he so clearly desired. Ultimately, Medvedev did not have the psychological strength or courage to face down Putin and push himself forward for a second term.

We are now in 2025 and Putin has been in power for 25 years and, like all the other dictators already discussed, Putin wants to be seen as essential to the future of his country. It’s for this reason that the speaker of the Russian Duma coined a slogan to boost support for Putin: “No Putin. No Russia.”