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Re:Russia opposition leader poisoned with Novichok by smt88 on Wednesday September 02, 2020 @12:44PM (#24355030)
Historically, almost all autocrats have been overthrown because people sacrificed their lives to oppose them.

In some cases, it happened literally in a revolution. In other cases, it was because a popular figure was assassinated.

Since a revolution is impossible against a major military power, it's likely that the latter is one of the only ways to inspire popular action (other than total collapse of the economy, of course).

Re:Russia opposition leader poisoned with Novichok by Const-me on Wednesday September 02, 2020 @01:52PM (#24355813)
> other than total collapse of the economy, of course

It already happened there in 1990. That time the collapse of the soviet economy was in part caused by economic sanctions for the war in Afghanistan in 1979-1989: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War This time the sanctions are for the war against Ukraine, which started in 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War

One difference however, in 1985-1991 Russians were lucky to have a leader (Gorbachev) smart enough to not start a full-scale civil war when Moscow started to lose control, instead he managed to dissolve USSR with only moderate amount of bloodshed.

The bloodshed only happened in remote regions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Abkhazia_(1992%E2%80%93... The majority of population of modern Russia was unaffected. Probably for this reason Russians have not learned their lesson, elected Putin, and did nothing while he was transforming the country towards authoritarian dictatorship.