Ukraine

Once an authoritarian state reaches a certain degree of power, they're no longer vulnerable to their own populations. They just have too much control over the information, domestic security, economy, etc. Hypothetically you can imagine: if everyone who stands up gets their head cut off, and that goes on for 500 years, this will create a very different sort of population than we are accustomed to.

At that point they can only really be toppled by a foreign power or an uprising from their own elites. The peasants are simply no longer a factor.