We’re now more than two months into Russia’s war of aggression with Ukraine. Every morning, after coffee and breakfast, my wife and I come home and turn on the news specifically to see if Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is still alive. So far he’s 67 for 67.

You know what else is 67 for 67? At least one talking head per day predicting that neither sanctions nor lack of military success will deter Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, from his misguided (and entirely counterproductive) moves to put the old USSR band back together as a foil to NATO and the West. This, whether Ukraine, Crimea and Moldova like it or not.

I don’t know about that. From where I sit, it’s not entirely improbable that a Soviet leader, like Putin, could be shown the door, without a coup. That’s because it’s happened before, in 1964 to be exact, when Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party and chairman of the Council of Ministers (though Russia’s current governing structure is different than that of the USSR, this is roughly equivalent to the position that Putin now holds), was convinced to “retire,” without much more than the exchange of a few angry words.

Khrushchev was an interesting historical figure. He came to power advocating for “de-Stalinizing” the USSR. He advocated for a better relationship with the West, viewing capitalist nations as rivals rather than enemies. This was a bold view to hold in public, especially causing damage and distrust among the Chinese communists and ultimately disrupting the Sino-Soviet relationship. Khrushchev also pushed the USSR (unsuccessfully) to achieve agricultural independence.

By the standards of his predecessors and successors, Khrushchev was, in many ways, a progressive figure. But he was also the leader of a communist empire eager to scrap its way to preeminence over the capitalist West.

With regard to that, the Soviet Union, under Khrushchev, enjoyed a series of successes: Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin, Tsar Bomba, Gary Francis Powers, the Berlin Wall — and had the West spooked. At the height of all of this, in 1962, Khrushchev and Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro agreed to locate a number of Soviet-made, medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter U.S. aggression, e.g., another Bay of Pigs.

Though the Soviet Union took great care to conceal both their shipments of missile supplies to Cuba and their construction of launch facilities on the island, United States Air Force U-2 overflights revealed construction that the CIA deemed, with high probability, to be nuclear missile launch sites.

On Oct. 22, 1962, U.S. President John F. Kennedy went on TV and addressed the nation with the news of the crisis in Cuba. I remember sitting in our living room in South Florida, about 150 miles away, watching this address on a black and white TV set with rabbit ears, thinking that the technology of the era had brought us to the brink of destruction.

The U.S. responded to all of this by enacting a naval blockade of Cuba. As tensions escalated, both sides prepared for war. Then, at the point where the unthinkable appeared to be a real possibility, Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the Soviet missiles from Cuba and to destroy the Cuban missile sites, in exchange for U.S. assurances not to invade Cuba and the withdrawal of (by then, obsolete) medium-range Jupiter missiles from Turkey.

This was widely perceived as a defeat of Soviet power — especially by Castro, who had urged Khrushchev to use nuclear weapons against the United States to punish any future aggression against his nation.

This, along with the accumulated weight of uprisings in Hungary and Poland, the failure of Soviet agricultural policies and the precipitous decline in the Sino-Soviet relationship, led to a loss of confidence in Khrushchev among the members of the Soviet Presidium (successor to the Politburo). In 1964, the chairman of the Presidium, Leonid Brezhnev, began plotting for Khrushchev’s ouster, along with colleagues in the Presidium.

Khrushchev’s long, five-month absence from Moscow in early 1964 gave the conspirators all the time that they needed to line up support for his removal. In October 1964 (a month that Khrushchev probably wished he could skip each year), while Khrushchev was on vacation in the Georgian Republic, the Presidium conspirators set their plan in motion, summoning Khrushchev from vacation for an emergency meeting, purportedly concerning agriculture.

Even though Khrushchev strongly suspected that something was amiss, he nonetheless flew to Moscow without any attempt to ameliorate potential trouble. He was met at the airport by a KGB security detail, informed of his ouster on the tarmac, told not to resist and escorted to the Kremlin where the news was made official by his eventual successor, Brezhnev.

This wasn’t even really a coup, since it all took place within the strictures of Soviet policies. It was the goodbye look.

Now Russia in the early 21st century is certainly different from the Soviet Union of the mid-20th century. But there are some parallels between then and now. In both times we have an autocratic ruler who sees himself as uniting an empire in the face of western hostility. Khrushchev was, and Putin is, entirely self-assured — based on a track record of surviving several crises, emerging with increased strength each time. Then, near the height of their respective powers, some event, or the accumulated weight of several events, caused things to change.

So will Putin get the goodbye look? I don’t know. But as his military continues to show that it’s not actually, despite its reputation, the second best military anywhere (except in Ukraine), as the Russian economy crumbles and as sanctions ratchet up unpleasant pressure on the oligarchs who are responsible for perpetuating his grip on power, who knows what might happen?

I’m pretty sure that Khrushchev thought he’d get by when he got off an airplane in Moscow that October day in 1964 when he, instead, got the goodbye look. A second time wouldn’t surprise me.

Associated Press and Idaho Club award-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding mountain bikes and motorcycles and playing guitars. His commentary may be found on Substack (martinhackworth.substack.com) and his video blog, “Howlin’ at the Moon in ii-V-I,” may be found at facebook.com/HowlinattheMoonin251 and youtube.com/channel/UC6C9D1ueAe_7HB55uhdPDhg.