MOSCOW — The history of authoritarian rule in Russia displays a certain depressing regularity. Such regimes rarely perish from external shocks or opposition pressure. As a rule, they die unexpectedly from some internal disease — from irresistible existential disgust at themselves, from their own exhaustion.

Czarist rule withstood many harsh tests during its long history: peasant revolts, conspiracies and the alienation of the educated class.

In January 1917, from his Swiss exile, Nikolai Lenin noted with bitterness and hopelessness that: "We, the old, will hardly live till the decisive battles of that forthcoming revolution. But the young maybe will be lucky not only to fight, but finally win in the approaching proletarian revolution."