@davidsheep88,
A KREMLIN PLOT
Putin is ousted, incapacitated or assassinated
For all the talk of a managed succession, the record shows that occupants of the Kremlin tend to leave feet first: Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin both died of natural causes, as did Leonid Brezhnev and — in short order — his two immediate successors. The last serving head of state to be assassinated was Czar Alexander II, in 1881.
There are, however, precedents for leaders being forced out of office — Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 and Mikhail Gorbachev, whose fall in 1991 brought the final curtain down on the Soviet Union. As often as not, the struggle for succession has been fought out among Kremlin insiders — famously compared by British wartime leader Winston Churchill to “a bulldog fight under a rug.”
The Troika
Perhaps the closest historical parallel to the autocratic Putin is that of Stalin, whose death in 1953 sparked a power struggle in which a short-lived “troika” ended with the execution of one of its members, hated former secret police chief Lavrenty Beria. Khrushchev went on to sideline premier Georgy Malenkov in 1955, emerging unchallenged as leader of both the Communist Party and the government. A year later, he gave a secret speech denouncing the cult of personality around Stalin, initiating a thaw after years of terror.
It’s tempting to conclude that, were Putin to be ousted, incapacitated or assassinated, and replaced by a collective leadership, his demise might lead to a de-escalation of Russia’s proxy war with the West. “The center of gravity of the elite is against the war. They have never liked it,” argues Nigel Gould-Davies, a British former ambassador to Belarus who is now a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Regime change in autocracies typically comes from within, observes Gould-Davies, who rates the probability of a managed transition at “zero.” Putin missed the chance to orchestrate his succession when he rewrote the constitution two years ago, he adds: “Now his position is in greater jeopardy — there is no guarantee of a peaceful after-life.”
Speculating on who might conspire to oust Putin is a fool’s errand but, if history is anything to go by, the representatives of the “power ministries” on the Security Council would be in the mix — however loyal to Putin they may now seem. Watch out for Patrushev Sr., FSB boss Alexander Bortnikov, Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (a wily survivor who has, however, had a terrible war).
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