MOSCOW -- A new catchphrase is making the rounds in Moscow: "We have already seen that." Summing up the results of the first four-year term of President Vladimir Putin, the expression is a far cry from flattery, as it refers not to the reforms of Peter the Great but to the return of the cult of personality and other phenomena peculiar to the years of stagnation under the rule of Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev.
Back in place, for instance, are tasteless public buildings, carefully orchestrated state events and soaring exports of oil and gas paying for both.
Communism's creator, Karl Marx, remarked that history happens twice, first as a tragedy and then as a farce. In the case of Brezhnev and Putin, the order is reversed: Brezhnev's rule, which lasted from 1964 to 1982, was a farce, signifying the pathetic demise of the authoritarian regime. Putin's restoration of authoritarianism arrives as a tragedy, as it erases the 1990s' democratic revolution.