Granted. It was not so much that Putin is a genius (he isn't) but that the Romanovs in general were not very bright, Nicholas II in particular.
You remember that moment in the Soviet Putsch in 1991, when the Soviet army turned around and returned to their bases and Yeltsin had his moment? I don't think Putin would allow his army to avoid crushing any unrest. The Russians are scared whitless of what they call "color revolutions" which, according to the current thinking, is a revolt whipped up by the US to overthrow a legitimate government through rioting and unrest. They consider Ukrainian Maidan revolution of February 2014 to be wholly created by the CIA/State Department. The also consider Libya and Syria to be much the same, and point to these as examples of the chaos the US color revolutions create.
For this reason, I think Putin would go down swinging if some form of popular unrest were to break out in Moscow. He would send in the army and tell the army commanders: "If you don't crush that mob, the FSB will kill your family."