ABSTRACT
One searches history in vain for a case of a peaceful and bloodless succession to a dictator who has climbed to power by force and based his rule upon force without troubling to restore the ruptured fabric of legitimacy. There had been "disorder and panic" when Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini died, for the lack of a procedure for the succession to a dictator was reinforced by the armies closing in on the rubble of their cities. On the surface everything seems designed to last forever and to ensure a simple, quiet, peaceful succession. Even in Lenin's day, before the Central Committee and Politburo had been drained of all political life and power, it proved impossible to arrange a succession by purely peaceful means, or by means which, at least within the party purview, might be regarded as lawful and legitimate. Lenin got three solemn warnings from the "angel of death" in the form of three cerebral hemorrhages.
