A dictatorship is an authoritarian or autocratic type of office or government where there is absolute control of one person. In other words, the dictator has total power and rules everything.
Well-Known Dictatorships
Here are examples of dictatorships with the dictator, his country, and time of rule.
European Dictators
- Vlad III – Wallachia – 1456 to 1462
- Vladimir Lenin – Soviet Union – 1917 to 1924
- Leonid Brezhnev – Soviet Union – 1964 to 1982
- Kaiser Wilhelm II – Germany Empire – 1888 to 1918
- Ismail Enver Pasha – Ottoman Empire – 1913 to 1918
- Nicholas II – Russia – 1894 to 1917
- Josef Stalin – Soviet Union – 1924 to 1953
- Leopold II – Belgium – 1885 to 1908
- Adolf Hitler – Nazi Germany – 1933 to 1945
- Alexander Lukashenko – Belarus – 1994 to present
Asian Dictators
- Chiang Kai-shek – China – 1943 to 1948
- Ho Chi Minh – North Vietnam – 1945 to 1969
- Saddam Hussein – Iraq – 1979 to 2003
- Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – Iran – 1989 to present
- General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan – Pakistan – 1969 to 1971
- Hideki Tojo – Japan – 1941 to 1944
- Mao Zedong – People’s Republic of China – 1949 to 1976
- Kim Jong-Il – North Korea – 1994 to 2011
- Kim Il Sung – North Korea – 1948 to 1994
- Emperor Hirohito – Japan – 1926 to 1989
- Pol Pot – Democratic Kampuchea – 1975 to 1979
- Bashar al-Assad – Syria – 2000 to present
- Sonthi Boonyaratglin – Thailand – 2006 to present
- Islam Karimov – Uzbekistan – 1991 to present
- Ilham Aliyev – Azerbaijan – 2003 to present
- Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedow – Turkmenistan – 2006 to present
African Dictators
- Robert Mugabe – Zimbabwe – 1980 to present
- Omar al-Bashir – Sudan – 1989 to present
- Idi Amin Dada – Uganda – 1971 to 1979
- Paul Kagame – Rwanda – 1994 to present
- Yakubu Gowon – Nigeria – 1966 to 1975
- Mengistu Haile Mariam – Ethiopia – 1974 to 1991
- Gamal Abdel Nasser – Egypt – 1954 – 1970
- Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo – Equatorial Guinea – 1979 to present
- José Eduardo dos Santos – Angola – 1979 to present
- João Bernardo Vieira – Guinea-Bissau 1980-1984 and 2005 to present
- Paul Biya – Cameroon – 1982 to present
- Idriss Déby – Chad – 1990 to present
- Yahya Jammeh – The Gambia – 1994 to Present
- Michael Sata – Zambia – 2011 to present
Dictators in the Americas
- Oswaldo López Arellano – Honduras – 1963 to 1971 and 1972 to 1975
- Raul Castro – Cuba – 2006 to present
- Nicolás Maduro – Venezuela – 2013 to present
- Manuel Noriega – Panama – 1983 to 1989
- Anastasio Somoza Debayle – Nicaragua – 1967 to 1979
- Carlos Castillo Armas – Guatemala – 1954 to 1957
- Alberto Fujimori – Peru – 1992 to 1993
- Hugo Chávez – Venezuela – 1999 to 2012
- João Baptista de Oliveira Figueiredo – Brazil – 1979 to 1985
- Eric Gairy – Grenada – 1974 to 1979
- Raoul Cédras – Haiti – 1991 to 1994
Dictatorships have, and do, exist throughout the world and throughout history.