Test Your Knowledge of Dictator Literature

[BobG]

How well do you know your dictator literature? Test yourself by matching the literary sample to the dictator that authored it:

A. Saddam Hussein
B. Kim Jong Il
C. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
D. Muammar al-Qaddafi
E. Joseph Stalin

#1

This is the city: a mill that grinds down its inhabitants, a nightmare to its builders. It forces you to change your appearance and replace your values; you take on an urban personality, which has no colour or taste to it... The city forces you to hear the sounds of others whom you are not addressing. You are forced to inhale their very breaths... Children are worse off than adults. They move from darkness to darkness... Houses are not homes -- they are holes and caves...

Yesterday a young boy was run over in that street, where he was playing. Last year a speeding vehicle hit a little girl crossing the street, tearing her body apart. They gathered up her limbs in her mother's dress. Another child was kidnapped by professional criminals. After a few days, they released her in front of her home, after they had stolen one of her kidneys! Another boy was put into a cardboard box by the neighbourhood boys in a game, but was run over accidentally by a car.

#2 (edited to eliminate giving away the location)

Even an animal respects a man's desire, if it wants to copulate with him. Doesn't a female bear try to please a herdsman when she drags him into the mountains...? She drags him into her den, so that he, obeying her desire, would copulate with her? Doesn't she bring him nuts, gathering them from the trees or picking them from the bushes? Doesn't she climb into the houses of farmers in order to steal some cheese, nuts and even raisins, so that she can feed the man and awake in him the desire to have her?

#3 (edited to eliminate give-away words)

In film directing, the basic factor is also to work well with the artists, technicians and production and supply personnel who are directly involved in film-making. This is the essential requirement of the (deleted)-inspired system of directing. This system is our system of directing under which the director becomes the commander of the creative group and pushes ahead with creative work as a whole in a coordinated way, giving precedence to political work and putting the main emphasis on working with the people who make films. This system embodies the fundamental features of the (deleted) system and the basic principle of the (deleted) idea that man is the master of everything and decides everything. Hence, it fully conforms with the collective nature of film-making and the characteristic features of direction.

#4 (edited to avoid giving away the location)

The pinkish bud has opened,
Rushing to the pale-blue violet
And, stirred by a light breeze,
The lily of the valley has bent over the grass.

The lark has sung in the dark blue,
Flying higher than the clouds
And the sweet-sounding nightingale
Has sung a song to children from the bushes

Flower, oh my (deleted)!
Let peace reign in my native land!
And may you, friends, make renowned
Our Motherland by study!

#5

Open the door of the tavern and let us go there day and night,
For I am sick and tired of the mosque and seminary.
I have torn off the garb of asceticism and hypocrisy,
Putting on the cloak of the tavern-hunting shaykh and becoming aware.
The city preacher has so tormented me with his advice
That I have sought aid from the breath of the wine-drenched profligate.
Leave me alone to remember the idol-temple,
I who have been awakened by the hand of the tavern's idol.

 

[arildno]

Khomeini enjoyed a certain renown as a poet, with tendencies towards sufism and earthly pleusures.
So, nr. 5 belongs to him, I think.

 

[BobG]

Khomeini enjoyed a certain renown as a poet, with tendencies towards sufism and earthly pleusures.
So, nr. 5 belongs to him, I think.

Correct.

In fact, two of those dictators had dreams of being a poet when they were younger. Being dictator for life was just their fallback plan.

 

[russ_watters]

Along a similar vein, can you identify who said which quote: Kanye West or Hitler?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RMdwA8GWB8

 

[Newai]

Along a similar vein, can you identify who said which quote: Kanye West or Hitler?

That is hilarious!

 

[fuzzyfelt]

#4 Stalin? Reminds me of this-

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,794511,00.html

 

[BobG]

#4 Stalin? Reminds me of this-

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,794511,00.html

Yes. I figured Stalin had to be either #4 or #5, just because poets seem to either have a special place in Russian society or because Russian poets are extremely self centered and happen to do most of the writing in Russia - I've never been quite sure why poets seem to hold some sort of special status in just about anything I've read about Russia. Anyway, assuming the former, that Russia holds its poets in higher stature than most countries do, I figured Stalin to be the most likely to have tried his hand at poetry at some time in his life.

The only surprising thing was that he was so bad at it. I would have picked Stalin for #5 and Kim Jong Il for #4. (Yeah, I know #5 has Muslim references, but none of the religions, whether Christian or Muslim, seem very popular with Russian Communists, while alcohol is very popular in Russia.)

It is very interesting that Khomeini wrote #5. Khomeini changed a lot during his time in exile and, considering all of his works were banned in Iran by the Shah, it's considered very likely that Iranians really didn't understand who they were putting into power when he returned. They thought they were putting the pre-exile Khomeini into power.

 

[Astronuc]

#2 is just nuts.

 

[rootX]

http://www.random.org/integers/?num=5&min=1&max=5&col=5&base=10&format=html&rnd=new"
A. Saddam Hussein - 5
B. Kim Jong Il - 3
C. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini - 2
D. Muammar al-Qaddafi - 1
E. Joseph Stalin - 4

I would say
A. Saddam Hussein - 4
B. Kim Jong Il - 2
C. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini - 5
D. Muammar al-Qaddafi - 1
E. Joseph Stalin - 3

 

[BobG]

#2 is just nuts.

How so? It's a statement about foreign policy. Who the bear is should be obvious.

Well, maybe not. It turns out that he wasn't that great of a writer and definitely wasn't very adept at metaphors.

 

[BobG]

I was watching an old episode of the Simpsons where Homer is plagued by an enraged giant grizzly bear until Homer accidentally removes the bear's tracking tag that was causing it pain. After Homer removes the tag, the bear decides Homer is a true friend and drags him off to the bear's cave and cares for him.

I wonder if Saddam Hussein had been watching old Simpson's episodes just before writing quote #2. English being a second language to him, he could have misinterpreted what was going on in the episode.