On the idea of dictatorship (trans. from Fr. by Ivan Dubytskyi)/ In My [We], book 4 (11), 1939, pp. 68-75.

The article is a translation of Paul Valéry’s “Note in Lieu of a Preface” from the French edition of António Ferro’s book on the Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar (Salazar. Le Portugal et son chef, 1934). The author analyzes the conditions for the emergence of dictatorship and identifies the advantages of this form of government. His starting point is the view that a civil system made up of different interest groups promotes the division and decline of the state as a whole. Dictatorship, guided by a single will, is therefore regarded as a response to the imprudent and irrational politics that arises from the discord of interests, at the moment when preserving the integrity of the state becomes the priority.