davidf,

"..all countries that were not democracies were not dictatorships".

I'm curious - any examples?

Dear rache,

Jordan and many other countries are monarchies. Monarchies may have freedom of speech along with an independent judiciary and are not democracies. If one looks through the SBS World Guide one can find many countries which are neither dictatorships nor democracies. Andorra is possibly the most unusual. It is ruled jointly by the president of France and the Bishop of See de Urgel in Spain.

"Unfortunately since 1917 many countries have been under one sort of dictatorship or another."

And prior to 1917 countries were not under one sort of dictatorship or another? Other than the fact WWI was raging in Europe in 1917 and the Russian Revolution took place in that year, not much else happened in 1917. Was Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany who were around at the time dictators? Otto von Bismark and Napoleon Bonaparte what were they.
Just because you assume the title of king, emperor, chief or whatever takes your fancy, does not make you any less of a dictator than those who do not. There have been dictators around since before the days of Julius Caesar. If Kim Jong-un of North Korea wanted to crown himself emperor, then he could claim some sort of heredity legitimacy as did the Kings of England and others, but would he be any lesser a dictator than Stalin, who was not even a prince. I think not.

Dear Paul1405,

If you wish to play games with words you can call any ruler a dictator. I would rather not play such games.

Hi David, you can just as easily say post 1945 with the overwhelming allied victory in WWII, nothing was done by the victors to placate the people of the third world, and thus stem the tide of totalitarianism. From the 1950's to the present day dictators have risen with monotonous regularity, as many with extreme right leanings as those from the left, and crazy nutters in between. So to simply say 1917, which I assume you were targeting the Russian Bolshevik Revolution as the catalysts for the rise of dictatorships.
To their credit, the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin, the absolute dictator, was peacefully able to install a government, that although hard line communist, was not dictatorial. Nikita Khrushchev was not a dictator, and was very much answerable to a collective government. in the context of prior world events, the death of Stalin could have plunged the Soviet Union into a catastrophic civil war, Khrushchev did more than anyone to prevent that occurring. A Russian civil war in the 1950's would have spilled over into Western Europe, and no doubt WWIII would have been at hand. Khrushchev despite his posturing and shoe banning, done as much as anyone, if not more, to prevent the Cold War escalating into all out World War.

What we can thank Stalin for generally, if we can thank him for anything, is his belief in wanting his form of socialism in one country, and unlike Hitler he was not a great expansionist.

Cubans are relaxed about being in a 1950s time warp. Many of Trump's people would like to have that.