away from other dictators, but someone (maybe Masha Gessen or maybe Timothy Snyder or the new biographer of Stalin?) said it is more constructive not to view them as left/right but rather as two sides of the same coin, so I study both Hitler and Stalin, and Pol Pot and Pinochet. There are similarities and I think it's crazy to make special excuses for far left dictators. One difference is they are already closed systems, so a democracy isn't being wrecked when a new dictator comes to power. They are assuming a power that in theory already belongs to them. (True also of N Korea).