As far as I'm aware, there are zero countries that has ever successfully developed without initial phase of authoritarianism / wide scale abuse - europeans had their colonies, US her slaves - it's basically a prerequisite. The second requirement being either on the good books and gaining the support of reigning hegemons or at least not be actively contained by them (East Germany).
Historically, developing countries simply require massive repression (and the occasional dose of cultural genocide) to establish stable national identities and enviroments where people behave like good cogs in the machine to build up the material conditions to enable less opression / more liberalization for later generations. Authoritarianism is the worst form of government for developement... except for all the others that have been tried.