Muammar Gaddafi was a controversial and highly divisive world figure. Reception According to Bearman, Gaddafi "evoked the extremes of passion: supreme adoration from his following, bitter contempt from his opponents". Bearman added that "in a country that formerly suffered foreign domination, [Gaddafi]'s anti-imperialism has proved enduringly popular". Gaddafi's domestic popularity stemmed from his overthrow of the monarchy, his removal of the Italian settlers and both American and British air bases from Libyan territory, and his redistribution of the country's land on a more equitable basis. Supporters praised Gaddafi's administration for the creation of an almost classless society through domestic reform. They stressed the regime's achievements in combating homelessness, ensuring access to food and safe drinking water, and to dramatic improvements in education; under Gaddafi, literacy rates rose significantly, and all education to university level was free. Supporters have also applauded achievements in medical care, praising the universal free healthcare provided under the Gaddafist administration, with diseases like cholera and typhoid being contained and life expectancy raised. Biographers Blundy and Lycett believed that under the first decade of Gaddafi's leadership, life for most Libyans "undoubtedly changed for the better" as material conditions and wealth drastically improved, while Libyan studies specialist Lillian Craig Harris remarked that in the early years of his administration, Libya's "national wealth and international influence soared, and its national standard of living [had] risen dramatically". Such high standards declined during the 1980s, as a result of economic stagnation; it was in this decade that the number of Libyan defectors increased. Gaddafi claimed that his Jamahiriya was a "concrete utopia", and that he had been appointed by "popular assent", with some Islamic supporters believing that he exhibited barakah. His opposition to Western governments earned him the respect of many in the Euro-American far right, with the UK-based National Front, for instance, embracing aspects of the Third International Theory during the 1980s. His anti-Western stance also attracted praise from the far left; in 1971, the Soviet Union awarded him the Order of Lenin, although his mistrust of atheist Marxism-Leninism prevented him from attending the ceremony in Moscow. First noted that, during the early 1970s, various students at the Paris 8 University were hailing Gaddafi as "the only Third World leader with any real stomach for struggle". Opposition and criticism The Libyan anti-Gaddafist movement brought together a diverse array of groups, which had varied motives and objectives. It comprised at least