How is Kim Jong Un doing? It might be time to test my kiss-up theory of dictatorship.
The idea is that, the more frequent the change of top man (it's usually a man) in an authoritarian system, the more loyalties are disrupted down the chain of command, and the greater the chance of mutiny and revolution.
Repeated shakeups increase the chance – and even then, it’s only a chance – for liberalization.
Turnover was one reason the Soviet Union fell in 1991. The nation had three changes in its top dictator seat within nine years. Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko died one after the other after the other, and finally Mikhail Gorbachev got the job.
By the time the Communist Central Committee and Supreme Soviet named Gorbachev, loyalties were uncertain. Once the chiefs of the army, the secret police, the courts, the censorship bureau and the propaganda department lost track of which officials they were suppose to be kissing up to, rebellion became an option.
While Gorbachev started tinkering to 'reform' Soviet socialism, Soviet Politburo member Boris Yeltsin pushed for much faster change. In 1989, Yeltsin got himself a seat in the legislature of Russia (the largest of the 15 Soviet 'republics'), and he persuaded it to hold free elections in June 1991 for a Russian president. Yeltsin won.
No shots were fired in this revolt until August 1991, when a group of Communist officials kidnapped Gorbachev in an attempt to install a new Soviet dictator who would stop Yeltsin and his democratic Russia. In an intense Moscow standoff, Yeltsin faced down the Communists' tanks from the top of his own tank.
Communist forces killed three Russian civilians, but gave up when more civilians on the scene showed support for their freely elected president. Later, three of the Communists who kidnapped Gorbachev committed suicide, and within four months, Gorbachev resigned and the Soviet Union was no more. Yeltsin's free Russia and the other former Soviet states went their own way.
There were many reasons for the collapse of Soviet socialism (the rigid rules, the poverty, the chronic shortages, the individual powerlessness, the stifled creativity, the censorship, the Gulags, the demoralizing Afghanistan invasion, the shaming "evil empire speech" and the Chernobyl disaster among them), but the real opportunity for change was the rapid 1980s succession of dictator deaths, which undid the kiss-up loyalties on which an unelected nomenklatura depends.
Overthrowing any nation's government is dangerously difficult. In an intensely totalitarian police state like North Korea, it probably would take several leadership changes within a short time -- similar to what happened in the Soviet Union -- to unleash and enable the desire for change.
Kim's sister, Kim Yo Jong, reportedly is ready to take charge if Kim goes. Right now, we might ask: What does she want for North Korea, and whose loyalties can she depend on? Or has Kim Jong Un kept the key posts of his regime so close to himself that even his sister is exposed to overthrow?
Frank Warner
Recent Comments