Thread by @DrRadchenko

We've heard a lot of discussion in recent days about how our real exit game in this nightmare could be a palace coup or a popular revolution against Putin. Putting my historian's hat on, let's dissect this proposition. I am not very hopeful. 👇🏿

Russia/USSR does not have a very convincing track record when it comes to doing away with No. 1. Consider Stalin. He unleashed a bloodbath like Russia had never seen and even terrorised his closest comrades. But they were afraid to gang up on him.

Now, I know some will say: but there are rumours of him having been poisoned. I've never seen any convincing evidence to support this theory. As far as we can tell, he died from a stroke in March 1953.

That same year, there was a successful move on Beria who was arrested during a Presidium meeting and later executed. But Beria, as terrifying as he was, wasn't really No. 1 in 1953. Note that Georgii Zhukov's (and the military's) involvement was crucial to make this happen.

Next, we have Khrushchev. There was an attempted coup against Khrushchev in 1957, involving Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich. The latter two were hardline Stalinists but it's more sensible to interpret this coup as just pure power struggle.

Khrushchev was savvy enough to undercut his opponents (with Zhukov's help), staying in power. He ultimately lost power in a successful coup in 1964, when his proteges (notably Leonid Brezhnev) plotted against him while he was on vacation in Abkhazia.

Brezhnev ruled for a long time, overseeing Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, and died peacefully in his sleep. There were no attempted coups against his sickly successors Andropov and Chernenko.

But of course we had an attempted coup against Gorbachev in August 1991, once again when Gorbachev, like Khrushchev, had gone on vacation. The plotters (KGB, Defence, other hangers-on) entered history as the most incompetent coup crew on record. The coup failed after 3 days.

Then we have Yeltsin and his stand-off with the Russian Parliament in 1993. We remember how that ended: Yeltsin ordered tanks to fire on the parliament. The tsar survived. The opposition was arrested.

In any case, the track record of palace coups is not encouraging. Only one successful coup in the last century. A popular revolution is also a non-starter. The Russians have a wonderful tradition of high-minded dissidents speaking truth to power. Many have suffered.

But the "masses" have never been a factor in replacing rulers. Even though we saw street action in Russia in 1990-91, it only happened because Gorbachev untightened the screws first, making it safer to speak out. Putin is going in the opposite direction.

This doesn't mean that we won't see him overthrown (after all, 1964 did happen). It's just that the odds are not great.