Matthew Lenoe in *The Kirov Murder and Soviet History* (the basic thesis of which is that Nikolaev probably acted alone) notes that
"...in August-September 1933, he [Stalin] was involved in two accidents, both of them potentially fatal. In the first, his automobile nearly collided head-on with a truck on a dark road outside Sochi. In the second a border detachment fired on his motorboat by accident near Gagra on the Black Sea. Stalin ordered measures taken to investigate each incident and prevent anything similar in the future, but he did not treat either as a potential assaissination plot..."
https://books.google.com/books?id=VTyQA8z-XQ4C&pg=PT684
So suppose one of these accidents in 1933 had indeed been fatal to Stalin? Who succeeds him as General Secretary? Or might the post itself be abolished? (Even if it is, someone is likely to become de facto head of the party; "collective leadership" seems unlikely to last.) Will his succeasors accept that the death was indeed accidental? (Maybe if the truck driver was also killed instantaneously--though even then it might be a murder/suicide by "hostile elements"...) And what changes in policy (if any) can we expect?
(We have to remember that even in the Soviet Union in the 1930's, people--including people whose deaths would be convenient for other people--did sometimes die accidentally. Thus for example, Borisov's death in a "traffic accident" has always seemed one of the most suspicious elements of the Kirov assassination--yet Lenoe, relying among other things on "the recent examination of photos of Borisov's exhumed skull by a Canadian forensics expert" concludes that Borisov really did die in a traffic accident...
https://books.google.com/books?id=EjVoAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA202 )
"...in August-September 1933, he [Stalin] was involved in two accidents, both of them potentially fatal. In the first, his automobile nearly collided head-on with a truck on a dark road outside Sochi. In the second a border detachment fired on his motorboat by accident near Gagra on the Black Sea. Stalin ordered measures taken to investigate each incident and prevent anything similar in the future, but he did not treat either as a potential assaissination plot..."
https://books.google.com/books?id=VTyQA8z-XQ4C&pg=PT684
So suppose one of these accidents in 1933 had indeed been fatal to Stalin? Who succeeds him as General Secretary? Or might the post itself be abolished? (Even if it is, someone is likely to become de facto head of the party; "collective leadership" seems unlikely to last.) Will his succeasors accept that the death was indeed accidental? (Maybe if the truck driver was also killed instantaneously--though even then it might be a murder/suicide by "hostile elements"...) And what changes in policy (if any) can we expect?
(We have to remember that even in the Soviet Union in the 1930's, people--including people whose deaths would be convenient for other people--did sometimes die accidentally. Thus for example, Borisov's death in a "traffic accident" has always seemed one of the most suspicious elements of the Kirov assassination--yet Lenoe, relying among other things on "the recent examination of photos of Borisov's exhumed skull by a Canadian forensics expert" concludes that Borisov really did die in a traffic accident...
https://books.google.com/books?id=EjVoAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA202 )