Quotes of the Day

On Monday, August 18, twelve years ago to the night that the hard-line Communist coup began in Moscow back in August 1991, President Vladimir Putin signed orders to mount a massive military-administrative exercise in the Russian Far East. Four major territories are practicing this week how to clamp the state of emergency on their 9 million citizens, complete with setting up an ad hoc administration to take over the civilian authorities, impose a curfew, suspend most media outlets and censor those few left.

Sure, once you have the State of Emergency Law on the books, you want to know how to go about using it. And there's also the excuse of needing to train to handle some 100,000 refugees expected to flood the Far East, once the aggressive United States wantonly attacks your innocent North Korean neighbor. But doesn't Russia have other laws Putin might want to test drive? Like the Citizens' Freedom of Movement Law that allows the Russians to choose their place of settlement freely, but is reduced to a joke by curbs, clamped at will by local authorities? Or how about an exercise to invoke the Labor Code that strictly disallows wage arrears? That could help millions of people who've been left unpaid for months on end. So, why go to all the trouble of exercising for the state of emergency, if the controls are already in place, and nobody so much as squeaks?

Read your Lenin! went a cheerful Soviet song that radio and TV had kept drumming into our heads for decades before August 1991. That is as good a piece of advice as any: if you want to understand what Putin is up to, read your Lenin.

"The best way to mark an anniversary of the Great revolution is to resolve its unresolved issues," Lenin wrote. The latest (can't really say "last") attempt of a Communist revolution back in August 1991 left its issues unresolved. They sought to reinstate tight state controls over political life — now, a decade later, Putin does it. They wanted to re-establish state controls over the economy — Putin accomplishes that. They wanted to tame the unruly media — well, the Russian media mostly keeps mum on Putin's Far Eastern exercise, let alone Chechnya.

Still, the top issue on the 1991 putsch leaders' agenda remains unresolved: they wanted to save the Empire — and still don't seem to realize that their flat-footed reliance on force rather than freedom gave the Empire the final push. Now, Putin thinks he is saving his country, too. Much in the same way the putschists did — and much to the same end, it seems.

• YURI ZARAKHOVICH
• Putin forces through steps to protect and survive