Last year, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez launched a campaign to distribute over a million free copies of Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote" -- a book he often cites in speeches -- to mark the 400th anniversary of its publication. Chavez likes to quote other books as well; for instance, Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" is one of his favorites.

Russian rulers have also been big fans of literature. Tsar Nicholas I took it upon himself to be Alexander Pushkin's personal censor, which flattered and irritated the poet at the same time. Vladimir Lenin's articles often alluded to the Russian classics; one such article was titled "Leo Tolstoy as the Mirror of the Russian Revolution," and no Soviet-era student of Tolstoy could deviate from this take on the author. Lenin was not the first Russian ruler to be a capable writer; Ivan the Terrible wrote exquisite, sardonic letters to his political opponents.

Josef Stalin had strong views on literature, too. He pronounced Maxim Gorky's unpretentious poem "Maiden and Death" to be "stronger than Goethe's 'Faust,'" a phrase that has been used ironically ever since (or at least since Stalin's death). His other famous incursion into poetic matters concerned the fate of Osip Mandelstam. After writing a fiercely anti-Stalin epigram, Mandelstam was arrested and charged with anti-Soviet conspiracy. At this point, Stalin called another great poet, Boris Pasternak -- who at first thought it was a prank -- and asked him if Mandelstam was a master. Pasternak cautiously defended his colleague but was evasive about the mastership issue, and Stalin, frustrated, slammed down the receiver. Mandelstam's sentence turned out to be lenient. But he would be arrested again, with fatal consequences, several years later.

Stalin's writings, like Lenin's, comprised many volumes; he made judgments about subjects ranging from genetics to the origins of the Russian language. The next Russian ruler with a thing for literature was Leonid Brezhnev, whose four ghostwritten books of memoirs became compulsory school reading and won the Lenin prize for literature, the country's highest literary award, which was more than a little funny. Brezhnev's successor, Yury Andropov, was more secretive about his literary ideas, but after his death it became known that he wrote some very bad poetry.

In post-Soviet times, both Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin published several volumes of memoirs -- which happens in any country, except they did it while still in office. Russia's heavy reliance on its literature is a popular idea; it seems that the country's rulers uphold it.