When 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 peoples, the execution of opponents and their insidious murders, imprisonment of possible competitors in the dungeons, and other ways to strengthen the dictatorship were not uncommon in biblical times, and in the Middle Ages, and in centuries, which were considered more enlightened. Despots and tyrants have always lived; only the scale of the crimes and the methods of their commission differed.
Despots of antiquity
So, the ancient Jewish king Herod the Great, who was famous earlier for large-scale construction projects and the fight against hunger, ordered to destroy all babies in order to protect his dictatorship from a possible threat (Matthew's gospel).
Despotism is a form of government, in which the will of the ruler is not limited to the laws governing the life 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 are frank and demonstrative. Only the use of mass terror is capable for some time, sometimes for a long time, to inspire 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 the illusion of the population of the divine origin and extraordinary abilities (personal qualities) of the ruler. For this, for example, in Ancient Egypt, the pharaohs, using the knowledge of the priests, who at that time were the "scientific elite", gave out natural phenomena as a manifestation of their own supernatural power.
There is an opinion about the particular sophistication that distinguished Eastern despotism. The totalitarianism of the Sumerian rulers, kings of Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, the states of the Mesopotamia, ancient China laid the foundation for the traditions that were followed by the dictators of subsequent centuries. At the same time, the laws by which society was supposed to live were written, and the Hammurabi Code became the prototype of the legal norms of our time. Their observance was mandatory for everyone, the violation was severely punished, and the divine ruler made an exception.
Dark Middle Ages
The Ottoman Empire became a medieval state in which feudal despotism reached its zenith. This happened during the XIV-XVI centuries.
In Russia in the same XVI century, his tyrant, Ivan IV, nicknamed the Terrible, ruled. He acted by no less terrible methods, strengthening the sole authority, although the number of victims of his reign (about 3 thousand people executed for various misconduct and simply because of their objection) is significantly inferior to the "achievements" of modern 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, a third of the population was executed for vagrancy.
High price for progress?
It is interesting that despotism is such an era when, at the cost of incredible sacrifices, a society driven by fear makes a breakthrough in its development, sometimes revolutionary. Most of the population is extremely uncomfortable to live in times of “big changes”, but the results are sometimes impressive, if, of course, the transformations are carried out 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 the unlucky dictator led it.
A little bit about household 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 children. Despots arise when congenital character traits are combined with appropriate upbringing and reinforced by universal indulgence. And then the punishment awaits everyone who does something different than the tyrant wants.