When did the hypocrisy to call a dictatorship "free, democratic, republic etc." start?

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It started at least with the rule of Gaius Octavius, a.k.a. Augustus. He was a dictator (Imperator) but Rome was continued to be called republic, consuls and Senate continued to be "elected". But the supreme power became lifetime, and the Imperator appointed a heir, usually a real or adopted son.

Since then, this is a custom in some dictatorships.

The term "People's democracy" was invented by Stalin (Soviet dictator, who claimed that he rules a democratic, constitutional state). The first "People's Democracies" were Eastern European states, PRC and North Korea. Then some countries in Africa and Asia followed the example.

Usually such countries have all attributes of democracy: a constitution and parliaments, even an "elected president". But really this is a rule of one person, who is secretly elected by a small band, called Politburo of the Communist party, usually for life time, unless the same Politburo stages a coup. The only difference is that in some of these countries this power is hereditary and in others it is not.

Correction. As Bartek Chom noticed correctly in his comment to another answer, the term was not invented by Stalin, but it was also used by the short lived Ukrainian and Belorussian People's republics. However these states were not communist dictatorships.

Upvote:10

The term people's republic was coined by the loyalist side in the Spanish civil war. It was intended to suggest a republic which would guarantee the welfare of all its citizens; their economic rights as well as political.

It was adopted by the east European countries, as a supposed third way between bourgeois democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Of course now we know that all the coalitions were just a stepping stone to communist takeover. Presumably the non-communists who used the term, like Eduard Benes of Czechoslovakia, were sincere when they used it.

Edit: a user pointed out that Ukraine and Belarus called themselves people's republics during their brief independence from ~1917 to ~1922. In the same period, several countries, including Azerbaijan, Georgia and Hungary called themselves democratic repulbic. All of these countries were more or less genuine democracies, as much as the war and general chaos would allow, but none of them survived.

So to answer your question, before ww2 if a country called itself democratic, it probably was. After ww2, it probably wasn't.

Upvote:22

The names People's Republic (more common), Democratic Republic or Democratic People's Republic come from Marxist-Leninist ideology. The idea is that socialist states (they never claimed to have fully realized communism) serve the interest of the vast majority of the people, whereas traditional or bourgeois democracies are not really democratic and only serve the elite. That would readily account for North Korea, Cambodia and the GDR but that's probably, in a loose way, the source of the name Democratic Republic of the Congo as well.

The country came to be known under that name for the first time under Mobutu. Although he was mostly aligned with the US and the West and had a difficult relationship with both China and the Soviet Union, he established a style of government highly reminiscent of some People's Republics (one-party rule, cult of personality, pioneer organization and propaganda). Later on, he embarked on a campaign to reestablish African authenticity and had the country renamed Zaïre (the whole project is called “zaïrianisation”) and abandoned the name “Democratic Republic”.

After he was forced to flee, in 1997, his successors, while not particularly democratically-minded got rid of all that and reverted to a more classical style of cronyism and authoritarianism. But renaming the country République du Congo would once again create an h*m*nymy with the neighbouring Congo-Brazzaville so it was renamed République Démocratique du Congo, I assume without any particular political or ideological undertone. Nobody would call the country anything else than simply “Congo” without that h*m*nymy.

Incidentally, “GDR”, “DDR” (in German) and similar acronyms in other languages similarly became very widely used because you could not simply call either part of the country “Germany” when it was divided.

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