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.
