What usually happens to a country's leadership when a dictator dies? [closed]

Question

I don't know how succession happened in Soviet Russia, but I remember a succession of leaders, and they all appeared to be by election — although those elections may have been rigged. Were they?

My guess is that Putin does not arrange a successor because he knows his successor would kill him. He's KGB. So how does Russia decide who's next?

Would Russiaactually hold a real election, Or would there be an internal fight to decide who would run the fake election?

And in the general case, when dictators get old, do they pretend they're going to live forever and just ignore the fact that his country will be leaderless?

MY GUESS: Putin will say, "Of course,it will just be an ordinary election, just like I was elected."

Answer 1

That's an impossible question to answer. Every country, every period and every dictator is different. Even in the Soviet Union succession was not something written in a constitution. Or, if it was, adhered to. The succession of Stalin following Lenin was very different from Stalin to Georgy Malenkov which differed from Nikita Khrushchev's succession. And so on. The people involved were different, the situation each time was different, and later on the USSR didn't even exist anymore.

Lenin in his last few weeks advised against Stalin. He much rather saw Trotsky succeeding him. The Politburo found Trotsky a bit too revolutionary, so they elected the dull grey bureaucrat Stalin. Who was lots of things but not quite what was expected of him (dull and grey).

His highly unexpected succession was a literal Game of Thrones. Stalin was found in his bedroom paralyzed (or dead already). In the end, several contenders* to the red throne were dead or removed from power, Malenkov was appointed. After the dangerous era of Stalin, power was shared. The chairman being more of a chairman and less of a Great Leader.

Even so, old habits die hard. Leonid Brezhnev revived the Great Leader a bit, if only because of his relatively long reign. You never become that in a few years.

The USSR collapsed, and became the Russian Federation. It was never a democratic society, more like some of the party elites became old style nobility revived. Putin rules as an autocrat, that is how most successful Russian leaders rule their country. Catherina & Peter the Great weren't exactly democratic.

Elsewhere more or less the same, being no fixed pattern. Franco of course knew he was going to die. He had already groomed and prepared an heir to the throne, in his case, a real heir to the throne. His preferred choice had been murdered in a bomb attack by Basque separatists. But he never foresaw that his final successor changed back to democracy as soon as he could.

It's different in every country, in every system and with every succession.

* this movie is a comedy, not a documentary. But it gives, in a humorous way, some insight in the political machinations going on.

Answer 2

Dictatorships start in different ways, they develop in different ways, and they end in different ways. Trying to generalize can be misleading, but there are some observations:

• In theory, the leaders of Communist dictatorships believe that they know what is best for all mankind (their own ideology, Communism). They also believe that the rest of mankind will have trouble to understand unless taught by a cadre party, and that many individuals will resist them for their own egoistical motives.
  But that's just the theory. The requirements of gaining and keeping power, ostensibly for the benefit of all mankind, puts people in power who are good at gaining and keeping power. Still, Communist systems would be predisposed to collective leadership. Anyone can join and rise by studying the theory of dialectic materialism.
• In theory, the leaders of Nationalist dictatorships believe that they know what is best for their people (their own brand of nationalism). They also believe that other peoples will fight for their own benefit, and that it takes a strong leader to keep their people unified against external threats and internal deviation from the traditional culture.
  Again, that's the theory. The leaders of these dictatorships often came to power in a bitter struggle against other groups, e.g. the Communists or the Liberals, and they feel the need to defend their position against counterrevolutionary threats from those groups. Members of their own ethnic group can usually join and rise in the dictatorship, even if they are not related to the dictator, as long as they follow the ideology.
  Read about how Japan entered WWII. Objectively, a completely insane decision, but each step made sense to their leaders in their context.
• The leaders of Tribal dictatorships believe that their clan or ethnic group should rule over other ethnic groups in the state. Often this happens where borders are the remnants of a colonial age, and where they have good reason to believe that other clans would do to their clan exactly what they will do to those others -- if they can. The only way to get to the top is to be born in the right clan, and to murder all other aspirants.
  The United States published a report called Iraqi Perspectives Project to find out why Saddam Hussein did what he did. It seems that almost to the end, the US were only the second or third most serious threat on his list.

In practice, you get very strange cases. Consider North Korea, which started out in the traditional Communist pattern and now has the third generation of the Paektu bloodline in charge. Or South Africa, where an ethnic minority upheld the forms of democracy among their own while they bloodily repressed the majority.

Predicting what happens to Russia in the future is out of scope for history. But things to watch are the mothers of the dead soldiers -- will they stay quiet or speak out at some point?