Putin’s idol Stalin poisoned Lenin, Khruschev smothered a dying Stalin with a pillow, Breschnev merely deposed Khruschev and K died under house arrest, counting his removal as an improvement in the Soviet system.
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On the flip side of the coin, everyone was so afraid of Mao that even when he had a degenerative disease in the last few years and couldn’t even speak, no one dared a coup or usurpation of powers.
Khruschev smothered a dying Stalin with a pillow.
.........
Is that totally confirmed? Link? I’d be interested to read about it.
“”On the flip side of the coin, everyone was so afraid of Mao that even when he had a degenerative disease in the last few years and couldn’t even speak, no one dared a coup or usurpation of powers.””
Putin won’t be easy either, he has had decades to build a protective bubble around himself and kill/destroy those who threaten him, and structure the controlling power and heads of control in Russia.
Ukraine ping
z3n: [On the flip side of the coin, everyone was so afraid of Mao that even when he had a degenerative disease in the last few years and couldn’t even speak, no one dared a coup or usurpation of powers.]
Fear of such a coup is said to have been the reason Mao mounted the Cultural Revolution - to pre-empt its possibility. He basically sicced a mob of plebes onto many of the high-ranking people who had risen along with him to the top of the Party aristocracy. The implicit promise was presumably that the plebes would become the new aristocrats.
The people Mao put in charge (his wife, Jiang Qing and his anointed heir, Hua Guofeng) in his last years were just minions without any organic ties to the organs of state security, meaning that lacking Mao, they would quickly be deposed. That did in fact occur after Mao died, with the de facto head (Jiang) getting purged/arrested by the de jure head (Hua, now chairman of the CCP) with help from Deng. Then Deng toppled Hua and became the big cheese.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Qing#1976_coup
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua_Guofeng#Ousting_and_death
The reason coups are few and far between? The question of who benefits. That’s key because the cost of failure is usually death, which may or may not encompass the plotters’ close kin. As noted by SunkenCiv, Beria did the work, by poisoning Stalin, only to have Khrushchev reap the benefits, by killing him and taking power for himself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria#Arrest,_trial_and_execution
Killing the king is only the beginning. Grabbing power for yourself - that’s not an surefire thing in the free-for-all that usually accompanies the king’s death.
Ukraine ping
z3n: [On the flip side of the coin, everyone was so afraid of Mao that even when he had a degenerative disease in the last few years and couldn’t even speak, no one dared a coup or usurpation of powers.]
I wouldn’t bet fear was the reason. The issue is that most of the people who might have mounted the coup had already been sidelined during the Cultural Revolution. Deng Xiaoping was supposedly exiled to the sticks, where he may or may not have worked on farm equipment as a mechanic.
Fear of such a coup is said to have been the reason Mao mounted the Cultural Revolution - to pre-empt its possibility. He basically sicced a mob of plebes onto many of the high-ranking people who had risen along with him to the top of the Party aristocracy. The implicit promise was presumably that the plebes would become the new aristocrats.
The people Mao put in charge (his wife, Jiang Qing and his anointed heir, Hua Guofeng) in his last years were just minions without any organic ties to the organs of state security, meaning that lacking Mao, they would quickly be deposed. That did in fact occur after Mao died, with the de facto head (Jiang) getting purged/arrested by the de jure head (Hua, now chairman of the CCP) with help from Deng. Then Deng toppled Hua and became the big cheese.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Qing#1976_coup
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua_Guofeng#Ousting_and_death
The reason coups are few and far between? The question of who benefits. That’s key because the cost of failure is usually death, which may or may not encompass the plotters’ close kin. As noted by SunkenCiv, Beria did the work, by poisoning Stalin, only to have Khrushchev reap the benefits, by killing him and taking power for himself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria#Arrest,_trial_and_execution
Killing the king is only the beginning. Grabbing power for yourself - that’s not an surefire thing in the free-for-all that usually accompanies the king’s death.