The gastronomic whims of the most brutal dictators

Cobra roast. Hallucinogenic root. Chicken from KFC. All these are the favorite dishes of the most brutal dictators of the XX century. The book by Victoria Clark and Melissa Scott "Dictators' Dinners: A Tasteless Guide to Tyrant Entertainment" (Dictators" Dinners: A Bad Taste Guide to Entertaining Tyrants) tells amazing facts from the life of dictators, including table manners, gastronomic preferences and fears of poisoning. Some recipes are also provided here.

Kim Jong Il loved shark fin and dog meat soups, as well as lard. The North Korean dictator thought that dog meat soup gave him invulnerability and masculinity. In addition, Kim Jong Il was considered a great lover of Hennessy cognac.

Kim Jong Il ruled from 1994 to 2011, and while he was in power, North Korea plunged into a deep crisis that turned into a mass famine. While the Koreans were starving, the leader kept a large team of specially trained women who had to check that all the rice in his plate was the same size, shape and color.

Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian and at the end of his life ate only mashed potatoes and broth. Some believe that his adherence to a vegetarian diet is due to ideological motives, but it is believed that he considered abstaining from meat a way to combat chronic bloating and constipation.

Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, is known for the seizure of vast territories in Europe and North Africa during the Second World War and the mass extermination of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and other people. He was so afraid of being poisoned that he kept a group of 15 tasters and ate only if none of them died within 45 minutes of eating.

Leader Joseph Stalin was very fond of his native Georgian cuisine, which is dominated by walnut, garlic, plum, pomegranate and wine.

He liked to compete in the amount of alcohol he drank and enjoy feasts that could last for six hours in a row. A complex menu was prepared by a whole team of chefs.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini liked a simple salad with coarsely chopped garlic, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with fresh lemon juice. He believed that French cuisine was "nothing".

Mussolini, who founded the fascist party in Italy and built a totalitarian state, preferred to dine at home with his wife Raquel and five children. Dinner at Mussolini's house was held at a strictly defined time, and everyone had to sit at the table with full plates waiting for the head of the family.

The former dictator of Uganda, General Idi Amin, loved roast goat, cassava and millet bread. He also ate 40 oranges a day, believing that it was "natural viagra". Later, when he was living in exile in Saudi Arabia, he liked to eat chicken at KFC and pizza.

Idi Amin overthrew the elected government in a military coup and declared himself president. He ruled Uganda brutally for eight years. During his reign, about 300 thousand citizens died. Idi Amin had a period when he loved everything British and even started a tradition of evening tea drinking. There were also rumors about his cannibalism.

Cambodian dictator Pol Pot loved venison, boar meat, snakes, fresh fruit, brandy and Chinese wine. He also liked the cobra roast.

Pol Pot and his communist Khmer Rouge movement organized a tough program of social reconstruction, because of which up to 2 million Cambodians were executed, died from overwork at work or from hunger. Pol Pot held lavish feasts, and his subjects were allowed to eat only water with a few grains of rice.

Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu liked vegetarian lasagna with a sauce of egg whipped with sour cream, aspic carp in Romanian, as well as simple salads of tomatoes, onions and cheese with steak.

Ceausescu ruled socialist Romania from 1965 to 1989. He did not eat food that was not properly tested and threw food out of the plate on the floor at official events, kicking it with his feet.

Francisco Macias Nguema, the first president of Equatorial Guinea, who exterminated or made political refugees from one to two thirds of the country's population and under whom Equatorial Guinea began to be called "African Dachau", liked to drink bang tea from female cannabis sprouts and iboga, the root of an African shrub with hallucinogenic properties.

Little is known about Nguema's drinking habits, but there were rumors that he was a cannibal and collected skulls in the refrigerator.

Haitian dictator Francois Duvalier, also known as Papa Doc, was already diabetic and had heart problems when he came to power in the 1950s. By 1971, before his death, his wife was feeding him with a spoon.

After dinner, Papa Doc liked to have fun by going down into the catacombs, the walls of which were painted blood-red, and watching through a small crack as his enemies were tortured.