The Weakness of Dictatorships

Written by 🇺🇦 journalist Bogdan Logvynenko. 

“The weakness of dictatorships is so unoriginal — whether in Tehran, Pyongyang, or Moscow. They dig bunkers for themselves and boast about their missiles, but they are mortally afraid of the simplest things. They fear the slightest manifestation of freedom. They fear a song that can be sung on the street. They fear a woman who looks straight into the camera, and even more so — one who lights a cigarette from a portrait of the dictator. This photo is the work of the Iranian photographer Newsha Tavakolian, “Untitled”, 2021. Tavakolian did not leave Iran; she stayed to document the decline of yet another dictatorship. The series to which this work belongs was dedicated to women who, with the regime’s tightening screws, were left with fewer and fewer personal freedoms. Her heroines often have their eyes covered or stand with their backs turned, because being visible is already a crime. Once, in the north of Norway, beyond the Arctic Circle, I was hosted by a family of Persians who had fled Iran due to persecution after the 2009 protests. I remember their confidence back then: “As soon as this regime falls, we will definitely return to rebuild our country.” I wonder if they still think that way? Not because of war, but because of the regime — millions of Iranians have ended up abroad. Every year, the authorities execute hundreds of people — the second-highest figure in the world after China. Now more than ever, we acutely feel what the struggle against this archaic evil truly means. The Russian-Iranian Shahed drones that fly over Ukrainian cities every night are the invention of the same regime that kills its own citizens on the streets. It is one and the same nightmare. In Tavakolian’s photograph, a woman stands so symbolically alone in the middle of an empty avenue, ready for resistance. Now, in the protests, there are hundreds of thousands of them, and every new photo becomes a symbol of the freedom that dictators fear so much. This people has a history, and this protest has continuity. And therefore, sooner or later, the regime will fall. And after it — another one. And eventually, the turn will come for the one that has neither its own history nor a history of protests. The one that, instead, has been trying for centuries to deprive us of freedom.”