Are you aware of any other dictators that managed a normal, peaceful retirement? It’s pretty damn rare, because they present a hell of a pretender to whoever comes next.
Pinochet stepped down after losing a referendum by a margin too large to cover, and with the military unwilling to cover his ass. He spent some time as a free man, a decade or so I think, before his long history of atrocities started to catch up to him.
Chun Doo-hwan managed to step down, though he was pressured by the US, and did serve a criminally (ha) short prison sentence.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk formally stepped down from positions of power and legitimately stepped back from political life to focus on drinking and smoking himself to death, though he remained immensely influential through unofficial channels. YMMV on whether that’s really retirement.
All of those are dictators who stepped down in the context of a democratic government though, rather than of another autocracy. I’m sure there are examples out there, but I can’t think of any at the moment.
TIL Ataturk did that. And generally who Chun Doo-hwan was. Not getting killed or permanently imprisoned was what I meant, and it makes sense that you can manage it if the country is now a democracy and people don’t hate you too much.
It occurs to me that Romulus Augustulus died a natural death as far as is known. You might exclude it on the grounds that the reigns of power were handed pretty directly to Odoacer, but I think it would be an example because he could have been used in a restoration attempt - if anyone had wanted that.
Oh, I’m being fucking stupid. Sulla, of course, who took indefinite dictatorial power to reform the Roman Republican government to get rid of those pesky democratic plebbish influences, and then legitimately retired to a nice Mediterranean island with his actor boytoy, and died of worms in his gut (good riddance). Though, like the other three, that’s in the context of… not democratic, per se, but let’s say being replaced by constitutional government.
Are you aware of any other dictators that managed a normal, peaceful retirement? It’s pretty damn rare, because they present a hell of a pretender to whoever comes next.
Define normal and peaceful?
Pinochet stepped down after losing a referendum by a margin too large to cover, and with the military unwilling to cover his ass. He spent some time as a free man, a decade or so I think, before his long history of atrocities started to catch up to him.
Chun Doo-hwan managed to step down, though he was pressured by the US, and did serve a criminally (ha) short prison sentence.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk formally stepped down from positions of power and legitimately stepped back from political life to focus on drinking and smoking himself to death, though he remained immensely influential through unofficial channels. YMMV on whether that’s really retirement.
All of those are dictators who stepped down in the context of a democratic government though, rather than of another autocracy. I’m sure there are examples out there, but I can’t think of any at the moment.
TIL Ataturk did that. And generally who Chun Doo-hwan was. Not getting killed or permanently imprisoned was what I meant, and it makes sense that you can manage it if the country is now a democracy and people don’t hate you too much.
It occurs to me that Romulus Augustulus died a natural death as far as is known. You might exclude it on the grounds that the reigns of power were handed pretty directly to Odoacer, but I think it would be an example because he could have been used in a restoration attempt - if anyone had wanted that.
Oh, I’m being fucking stupid. Sulla, of course, who took indefinite dictatorial power to reform the Roman Republican government to get rid of those pesky democratic plebbish influences, and then legitimately retired to a nice Mediterranean island with his actor boytoy, and died of worms in his gut (good riddance). Though, like the other three, that’s in the context of… not democratic, per se, but let’s say being replaced by constitutional government.