It certainly "could". But not necessarily...and not without help. These kinds of regimes don't fold easily. The Soviets didn't. They didn't "just" collapse, or by the milk of human kindness springing from Gorbachev's breast, as the liberals want to believe.
They were pushed over the cliff by Ronald Reagan,
.
Reagan's administration empowered the internal opponents and dissenters by our strongest shows of support.
We had a confrontational strategy then. Which was magnanimous in victory:
Unfortunately, what we have now is one of denial and self-delusion about the nature of their regime. And with that self-delusion, we have empowered their regime, rewarding them immensely with an exponentially-increasing economic windfall...all for merely pretending to be one of the club.