Fifth term secured: but what happens when Putin is gone?

Putin has “absolute support” from the people

The Kremlin has made it clear that it sees no alternatives to its system of one-man rule. “If we assume that the president will run, then it is clear that at the current stage there can be no real competition for the presidency,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, 56, said, adding that Putin “enjoys absolute support ‘. of the population.

Some Kremlin observers, such as CNN journalist Nathan Hodge, note that Putin’s re-election highlights a problem: the system built up over the past two decades under his rule is fragile, gerontocratic and vulnerable to a major shock, when the person at the top disappears. . For the man who is now the longest-serving Russian leader since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), this may not be an urgent issue – but it should be.

The Kremlin chief was dangerously close to losing power

In recent years, Putin has come perilously close to losing power: in June 2023, he faced the greatest threat to his power when his former ally Yevgeny Prigozhin (1961-2023) launched an armed uprising and called on his troops to move to Moscow march and to overthrow the Russian military leadership. And who knows what will happen if Russia loses the war in Ukraine. There are also rumors about his poor health. So what happens if Putin is suddenly gone?

It is tempting to believe that if Putin were removed from power, for example by a coup, Russia would throw off its dictatorial shackles, normalize its relations with the West and embark on the path of democracy. However, such thinking is wrong. History shows that the prospects for Russia are difficult.

The surest guarantee that Russia will not implement democratic reforms is the power of its security and intelligence services. At crucial moments in Soviet and post-Soviet history, amid coups, near-coups, reforms and revolutions, the KGB and its successors have always acted as kingmakers. Their power has remained constant. There’s little reason to believe they won’t do it again. But what if Putin dies?

Autocrats are followed by autocrats

In 2015, the magazine ‘Foreign Policy’ conducted an analysis of 79 dictators who died in office between 1946 and 2014. This also shows that the death of a dictator almost never heralds democracy. The regime is usually not overthrown. Instead, in the vast majority (92 percent) of cases, the regime continues to exist even after the autocrat’s death.

The deaths of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 2013, Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia in 2012 and Kim Jong Il in North Korea in 2011 illustrate this trend. Compared to other forms of leadership change in autocracies – such as coups, elections or term limits – which lead to regime collapse about half the time, the death of a dictator is remarkably insignificant.

And The Washington Post found that in 87 percent of cases where a head of state died in office, the regime — or the group that was in power and set the rules for governing — remained intact the following year. And in 76 percent of cases, the country was still in power five years later. For Russia, this means: even without Putin, things will likely continue as before.