但万幸的是，1991年的那场政变最后以失败收场，腐朽的苏维埃政权再也无力镇压俄罗斯内部蓬勃发展的民主运动 — — 谁知解体10年后普京却完成了这个任务。
But that putsch, thankfully, ended as a farce. The decaying Soviet regime was unable to crush Russia’s growing democratic movement – it would take Vladimir Putin to do that a decade later.