Studying history at school or a higher educational institution, each student meets in different sources references to unusually cruel rulers who, when reaching the heights of power and power, showed methods incompatible with the concept of humanity. The extermination of entire nations, the execution of opponents and their insidious murders, the imprisonment of potential competitors in dungeons and other ways to strengthen the dictatorship were not uncommon in biblical times, and in the Middle Ages, and in centuries that were considered more enlightened. Despots and tyrants have always lived, only the scale of crimes and the methods of their commission differed.
Despots of antiquity
Thus, the ancient Jewish king Herod the Great, who had previously become famous for large-scale construction projects and the fight against hunger, ordered to exterminate all babies in order to protect his dictatorship from a possible threat (the gospel of Matthew).
Despotism is a form of government in which the will of the ruler is not limited by the laws governing the lives of all other members of society. Since the desire for justice is inherent in the very nature of man, the establishment of sole power requires certain efforts and is accompanied by acts of cruelty that wearoutspoken and demonstrative. Only the use of mass terror is capable of for some, sometimes long, time to inspire the people with the idea of the futility of resistance.
There are other methods by which despotism has traditionally been established. This is the creation of an illusion among the population about the divine origin and extraordinary abilities (personal qualities) of the ruler. To do this, for example, in ancient Egypt, the pharaohs, using the knowledge of the priests, who at that time were the "scientific elite", presented natural phenomena as a manifestation of their own supernatural power.
There is an opinion about the special sophistication that distinguished Eastern despotism. The totalitarianism of the Sumerian rulers, the kings of Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, the states of Mesopotamia, ancient China laid the foundation for the traditions followed by the dictators of subsequent centuries. At the same time, the laws by which society was supposed to live were written, and the code of Hammurabi became the prototype of the legal norms of our time. Compliance with them was mandatory for everyone, violation was severely punished, and the divine ruler was an exception.
Dark Middle Ages
The Ottoman Empire became a medieval state in which feudal despotism reached its apogee. This happened during the XIV-XVI centuries.
In Russia in the same XVI century, his tyrant, Ivan IV, nicknamed the Terrible, ruled. He acted with no less terrible methods, strengthening his sole power, although the number of victims of his reign (about 3 thousand people executed forvarious faults and simply because of its objectionability) is significantly inferior to the "achievements" of contemporary European rulers. For example, during the night of St. Bartholomew, on the orders of Charles IX, 30,000 Huguenots were put to death. In Britain, Henry VIII executed a third of the population for vagrancy.
A high price for progress?
It is interesting that despotism is such an era when, at the cost of incredible sacrifices, society, driven by fear, makes a breakthrough in its development, sometimes revolutionary. It is extremely uncomfortable for most of the population to live in times of “big changes”, but the results are sometimes impressive, if, of course, the changes are made in the right direction. Otherwise, the country has to spend a lot of effort in order to return to the starting point from the impasse into which it was led by the unlucky dictator.
A little about everyday tyrants
However, tyranny and despotism are not always political phenomena, they are found both in labor collectives and in families. Dictatorial inclinations are inherent in some leaders, husbands, wives, and sometimes even children. Despots arise when innate character traits are combined with appropriate education and reinforced by universal indulgence. And then punishment awaits everyone who does something wrong, as the tyrant wants.
