  Humans have been arguing about the benefits of dictatorial versus democratic
regimes for millennia. Despite drastic differences between the dictatorships in
the world, one of the key common features is the \emph{Dictator's Dilemma} as
defined by Wintrobe [1]: a dictator will never know the true state of affairs
in his country and is perpetually presented distorted information, thus having
difficulties in making the right governing decisions. The dictator's dilemma is
essential to most autocratic regimes and is one of the key features in the
literature on the subject. Yet, no quantitative theory of how the distortion of
information develops from the initial state has been developed up to date. I
present a model of the appearance and evolution of such information distortion,
with subsequent degradation of control by the dictator. The model is based on
the following fundamental and general premises: a) the dictator governs aiming
to follow the desired trajectory of development based only on the information
from the advisors; b) the deception from the advisors cannot decrease in time;
and c) the deception change depends on the difficulties the country encounters.
The model shows effective control in the short term (a few months to a year),
followed by instability leading to the country's gradual deterioration of the
state over many years. I derive some universal parameters applicable to all
dictators and show that advisors' deception increases parallel with the decline
of the control. In contrast, the dictator thinks the government is doing a
reasonable, but not perfect, job. Finally, I present a match of our model to
the historical data of grain production in the Soviet Union in 1928-1940.
