In blogging terms, this is ancient history (published yesterday), but the always-sharp Julia Ioffe has a great breakdown in the New Yorker of why the 20th anniversary of the 1991 Soviet coup against Gorbachev which led to the unraveling of the USSR has become a complicated memory for many Russians.

If you are a Russian under twenty years old, Putin has been your leader for over half of your life. When a man like that rules your country and its media and its textbooks for most of the time you’ve been alive, you’re bound not to know much about the event that was both the worst and best thing that ever happened to him.