Favorite dishes of the dictators – where Putin and Co. really hungry

An invitation to dinner is a nice affair – but not when the host’s name is Josef Stalin. The Soviet dictator liked to invite people to the table, but the announced “snack” often degenerated. Until the early morning hours of the next day, including an unbridled drink.

Because at Stalin’s table, only one person set the rules: Stalin. The despot loved drinking games, but preferred to use social gatherings for power games. Humiliation of the guests included, of course. Abstinence was no excuse, for refusing the obligatory sip after a toast would have been an insult to Stalin – one not to be messed with.

It was therefore no surprise that during a dinner organized by Stalin, the guests stumbled into the garden to puke more or less secretly. Once, however, the Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito had to come up with an alternative as quickly as possible; and threw the contents of his stomach into his own sleeve.

However, Stalin not only drank, but, of course, also ate. Because the drink needed a base in the form of gluttony. Georgian-born Stalin had a soft spot for his homeland’s cuisine.

Other despots raved about other dishes. In their book “Dining with Dictators”, the two authors Victoria Clark and Melissa Scott list the “favorite dishes” of 26 autocrats. Or dishes that came very close to them. With the help of countless anecdotes and facts, the tyrants in question can be grasped from a different perspective.

The book contains the recipe for satsivi, a Georgian dish with chicken that Stalin was not averse to. However, not every food made its way into the stomachs of its guests, as Clark and Scott write. The dictator who, without a twinge of conscience, unleashed the so-called Great Terror in 1936, in which thousands and thousands lost their lives, joked about throwing tomatoes at the banquet participants. Like a childish bully at the dinner table.

Even with another dictator, it was anything but relaxed for the guests at the table. Adolf Hitler, who stuck to vegetarian dishes, could not resist calling the carnivores at his table “corpse eaters”. However, the mass murderer did not refrain from eating meat for animal welfare reasons.

No, the digestion of the “leader” was anything but good, so his “personal doctor” Theodor Morell “stuffed” him with all kinds of remedies in addition to the meatless diet. But what Hitler detested in meat, he made up for in sweets. The dictator loved pies and pies. In the early 1930s, however, the “Führer” is said to have pursued another culinary weakness: “stuffed pigeons”. Clark and Scott list a recipe for this in their book.

However, it is likely that not all ingredients for “dictators’ dishes” are as easy to obtain as those listed so far. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, president or autocrat of the African state of Malawi since 1966, loved mopane worms. Although “worm” is zoologically incorrect, it is actually a caterpillar of a moth. In dried form, Kamuzu Banda always had some on hand. In addition to being eaten as a snack, the mopane worms can also be cooked with sauce, as you read in “At the Dictators’ Table”.

The aforementioned Tito, who once had a big quarrel with Stalin, thought it was a bit more heartfelt. The dictator of Yugoslavia was a part-time entertainer for a variety of political and movie celebrities, and Italian megastar Sophia Loren once cooked for him. Causing? Pasta. She would have been very good.

While Tito was considered a good host, the same cannot be said of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi, who was feared in the West as a prince of terror, made no effort to control his intestinal gas. On the contrary, Clark and Scott cite British journalist John Simpson as key witness to the fact that Gaddafi “used” the gas deposits in his body in negotiations, at a time when what was being said was particularly important to him. Oh yeah.

As difficult as Gaddafi was as a host, he was just as uncomfortable as a guest. In 1989 he pitched his tent, yes, a tent, in Belgrade, and his camels were there too. It just couldn’t work without them, as the dictator was an avid consumer of camel milk. Which in turn would have been (partly) responsible for his immense flatulence. Which in a way completes the circle. Incidentally, camel meat with couscous can be found as a recipe at Gaddafi.

China’s Mao Zedong also turned out to be a fussy eater – and a dictator and self-proclaimed nutritionist all in one. China’s longtime despot once had a specimen of his favorite edible fish follow him for many hundreds of miles. Fish must be fresh, that’s how it went in Asterix’s village. However, Clark and Scott’s recipe is more meat than fish, Hong Shao Rou, red braised pork belly.

Now a tyrant can enjoy unlimited culinary pleasures, but not carefree enjoyment. Because potentates are always afraid of poisoners, as was the case with Adolf Hitler. But the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein also wanted to prevent one meal from quickly becoming his last. Therefore, the food was not only tested for poison, but also for nuclear contamination.

Because Hussein was plagued by quite pronounced paranaoia, he was also constantly changing his whereabouts. Conveniently, he owned numerous palaces. But because he had ordered his meals to be on the table as quickly as possible, cooks were standing by everywhere. They knew what Saddam liked to eat: grilled carp.

Idi Amin, who has ruled Uganda with an iron fist since 1971, is said to have completely different tendencies: cannibalism. “I don’t like human flesh, it tastes too salty for me,” the despot barred such accusations, as Clark and Scott quote. Rumors of cannibalism or not, Amin terrorized his country in the worst possible way and made sad history as the “Butcher of Africa”.

To keep fit, Amin ate dozens of oranges every day, and he also thought it was a kind of Viagra. However, his favorite food was roasted goat meat along with cassava bread and millet. In addition, local branches of major fast food chains would not have been safe from his appetite later in his Saudi exile.

Dictators and their food – one fact becomes clear during the culinary foray through the history of the tyrants: on the one hand, there were the rampant gluttons like Mobutu Sese Seko from Zaire, who also ruined his country with huge feasts, at which only the best of the most delicious table came. On the other hand, some dictators “cultivated” a cult of supposed asceticism. The housekeeper of António de Oliveira Salazar from Portugal had to tell him what the food and drink had cost before he ate.

To be sure, some participants in Stalin’s banquets would have wanted moderation in spending, as in Portugal.

But what does the current ruler of Russia like? “Our president is very athletic, he likes healthy food,” the Rheinische Post quoted then Kremlin chief Mikhail Zhukov in 2004. Things are “moderate” under Vladimir Putin, even with smoothies, porridge and quail eggs, reported the “Spiegel” in 2014. Even an ice cream is not rejected in time.