It’s ‘Black August’ in Russia, but Putin is sweeping this summer’s crisis under the rug

Over the past few decades, “Black August,” or “the August curse,” has become a sort of journalistic shorthand in Russia for dramatic crises that seem to happen in the last weeks of summer.

In some respects, Black August is Russia’s rough equivalent to the “silly season” in British journalism, the late-summer lull when frivolous headlines seem to dominate while parliament is out of session and royals are on holiday – or announce surprise returns home. But Russian folk wisdom is more pessimistic: a scan of recent Russian history appears to support the belief that dramatic, Black Swan events do tend to strike in August. Thirty-five years ago, a group of Communist hardliners led a failed putsch against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, unleashing the centrifugal forces that ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. In August 1998, a financial crisis hit Russia, causing a default on domestic debt and a collapse of the ruble. And one year later, a group of militants led an incursion into the southern Russian republic of Dagestan, kicking off the second Chechen War, a conflict that launched a political unknown, a former KGB officer named Vladimir Putin, into the top echelon of power. Putin became Russian leader on New Year’s Eve of 1999, after a surprise handover by President Boris Yeltsin. But the new tough-guy leader was not immune from the August Curse either. One of his first major tests in office was the sinking of the Kursk, a nuclear submarine that went down with 118 sailors on board. And in August 2008, Russia went to war with neighboring Georgia, showing the belligerent new face of Putin’s foreign policy.