"the same people and their descendants are living there today"

Not that I often agree with Teribus, but I think that statement is a laugh. How many of the Tsar's family still lived on in the USSR after "Russia" became a soviet socialist republic? How many of the dissenters and their families?

Although the countries may remain with the same or new names, the bloodless transition is a very rare thing.

Considering what happened "internally" in China and Cuba during their communist revolutions,and what happened under the French and U.S. and even English civil wars (sometimes also called revolutions)it seems to me that the historical weight of evidence is greater for a bloody confrontation, especially if the pressure is coming from an external source for the change.