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It’s August: Keep an Eye on Russia

- August 17, 2009

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Feeling a little relieved since the Russians found their “missing cargo ship”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/world/europe/18ship.html?hp? Don’t count your chickens yet. If the past twenty years is anything to go by, August – the month we usually think of as being a little quieter politically – tends to be a big month for news in Russia. In a piece entitled “The August Syndrome”:http://www.rferl.org/content/The_August_Syndrome/1790106.html, Brian Whitmore of RFE/RL’s “The Power Vertical”:http://www.rferl.org/archive/The_Power_Vertical/latest/884/884.html blog points out that August has brought:

bq. The ill-fated hardliner coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev (1991)

bq. Russia’s debt default and currency collapse (1998)

bq. The sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine (2000)

bq. Last summer’s Russia-Georgia war (2008)

For more, see “The August Syndrome”:http://www.rferl.org/content/The_August_Syndrome/1790106.html over at RFE/RL.