"One of the more surprising and ironic developments of recent times has been the dictators resurgence of hereditary autocracies in self-declared socialistic republics that nominally despise inherited power but have in fact created modern monarchies. In 1980, Kim Il Sung decreed his decadent if ruthless son, Kim Jong Il, ‘the great successor to the revolutionary cause’. Kim Jong Il acceded to the throne of the Kims in 1994 and called the West’s bluff by becoming a nuclear power while his people starved. Another hereditary dictator is Ilhan Aliyev, president of Azerbaijan — who, in 2003, succeeded his father Gaidar Aliyev, ex-member oft he Soviet politburo and Azeri dictator since 1993."