Qarn-i Dīktātur'hā: Persiska (Farsi) 1402

The cursed of history “It is remarkable that dictatorship is now contagious, as freedom once was.” Paul Valéry, Views of today's world If dictatorship is as old as history, the phenomenon took a major turn at the end of the First World War with the advent of Soviet and fascist totalitarianism, before the crisis of 1929 favored the triumph of Nazism. For four generations, on all continents, regimes haunted by ideology will bring about an iron order, presiding over the wars and exterminations of a barbaric century which turned progress against humanity. This absolute form of absolutism is orchestrated by ruthless and cruel leaders, all of whom essentially play a preponderant role within a regime that they brand with their mark. Their profiles and their characters are different, often opposed, but they share the same thirst for power based on the trivialization of terror, the same distrust of their fellow human beings and the deepest contempt for human life and, more broadly, for any form of freedom. For the first time, the portrait of the most edifying of them, whether famous, little-known or forgotten, is painted here; twenty-two large-scale portraits where the exhaustiveness of the investigation combines with the narrative art of the best current journalists and historians brought together purposefully by Olivier Guez who signs a masterful preface.