What’s it like to grow up as the children of dictators? Amidst absolute power, constant fear and limitless luxury, the children of the most ruthless people in history lived lives that were often as dramatic as their parents’ regimes. From broken loves and family betrayals, to isolation, violence and personal tragedies – their stories reveal a shocking reality: absolute power spares no one, not even its own blood. From Mussolini to Mao, this is the dark side of the families that ruled the world with fear
In the late 1960s, the Duval family, which ruled Haiti, was torn apart by a bitter conflict between two of its men. Francois “Papa Doc” Duval, the patriarch of the family and the country’s brutal leader, arrested 19 friends of one of his sons-in-law.
He then ordered his son-in-law, Max Dominik, the husband of his daughter, Marie-Denis, to join the 19 others on a long journey. Marie-Denis was certain that her husband was heading for his death. She followed the caravan in her car, swearing to herself that if her husband were killed, she would “shoot his father with a pistol that I had hidden in the back seat.” Dominik survived, although he was forced to participate in the murder of his friends. Jay Nordlinger’s book “Children of Monsters” examines the lives of the children of 20 brutal dictators, revealing that while some followed in their father’s footsteps, others lived amidst normalcy and great privilege.
NIKOLAE CAUSHESCU, ROMANIA (1965-1989)
His son, Valentin, became a respected physicist; his daughter, Zoia, a mathematician. Both were later imprisoned on charges of “destroying the national economy” and “corruption.” Zoia was also a nymphomaniac, obsessed with sex, and who “drank alcohol like a fish.” Both children distanced themselves from their father’s horrific violence. But not Ceausescu’s youngest son, Niku. “By his mid-teens, he had become an out-of-control alcoholic and rapist,” Nordlinger writes.
“He raped with complete will, and his will was wild and irresponsible. He had complete freedom to do anything, without any kind of punishment.” Niku went on to represent Romania at official meetings with North Korea and China, and inexplicably, was named leader of the year at the International Youth Conference, organized by the UN in 1985. When Ceausescu was overthrown from power in 1989 – he and his wife were killed by a firing squad – Zoia and Valentin were arrested, but released after 10 months. Niku, who had spent all those years abusing, was sentenced to 20 years in prison. But he served only 3 years, and died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 45.
MAO CE DUN, CHINA (1945-1976)
Mao officially had 10 children. Some died young, and his personal physician later wrote: “I never saw him express any emotion about these tragedies!” Mao had three sons with his second wife, Yang Kaihui, who was killed in the street at the age of 29 after she refused to leave him. The boys moved to Shanghai, where they lived almost on the streets. The youngest died of dysentery when he was only 4 years old, while the others sold newspapers to survive. They then emigrated to the Soviet Union, where Stalin used them as a tool of pressure against Mao for 10 years.
The eldest, Anying, joined his father when he was 23. Mao sent him to a labor camp in order to make him “a better man of the proletariat.”
Often on the move, due to rivalries and wars, Mao created an even more horrific pattern with his third wife, He Zizhen, forcing her to bear children and then abandon them. Between 1929 and 1935, she gave birth to four children. One died, the others were abandoned. Over time, Mao took another wife, without telling his wife. This time Mao had two daughters, Li Na and Li Min, who showed how different the children of a dictator can be. Li Na was her father’s daughter, as she “took revenge on anyone who was considered not very obedient.”
During the Cultural Revolution, Nordlinger notes that a friend of Li Na’s was injured in a torture camp after a fight. Li Na was sent by her father to a “re-education institution,” where “hard agricultural labor was combined with ideological studies.” Li Min, on the other hand, tried to live as normal a life as possible under the circumstances. She was humble, gentle, quietly married, and had two children. She tried to have some kind of relationship with her father, but to no avail. “Li Min went to the door of her father’s residential compound several times, but he refused to see her. She suffered a nervous breakdown, and suffered from depression for years.”
BENITO MUSSOLINI, ITALY (1922-1943)
Benito Mussolini officially had five children. So great was Mussolini’s love for his eldest child, daughter Eda, that when she married Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini “chased her to his car as the newlyweds were leaving for their honeymoon.” She finally stopped him, and asked him to turn back. At the end of the war, when the defeat of the Axis powers seemed inevitable, Ciano, then a member of the Fascist Grand Council, joined an initiative to remove Mussolini from the leadership of the country. Later, when Hitler temporarily reinstated Mussolini as head of Italy, the people who voted against him, including Ciano, were sentenced to death.
Eda did everything she could to save her husband’s life, begging her father to forgive her, but when Mussolini had a chance to deal with his case, Ciano was shot by the Germans on January 11, 1944. The bond between father and daughter was broken. Eda wrote to him: “You are no longer my father. I renounce the surname Mussolini!” The Italian leader was shocked, and some people claim that he never recovered from that episode. But there are also cases when the children of dictators lead normal lives. For example, Mussolini’s son, Romano, became a jazz pianist. He married Sophia Loren’s sister, and toured the world with his band “Romano Mussolini All Stars”, playing alongside famous singers such as Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie. (bota.al)