It’s the holiday that almost isn’t. In 1994, President Boris Yeltsin declared Aug. 22 as Flag Day – marking the 1991 routing of the attempted Soviet coup d’etat and the establishment of the tricolor as Russia’s flag. Today, however, most Russians great it with apathy, not hurrahs.

Wednesday’s Flag Day was a real non-starter. The only event of notice to mark the day in Moscow was a memorial honoring the three men killed during the coup attempt. Thousands came out later in the evening to attend a rock concert organized by the Union of Right Forces (SPS), but one suspects that many of the attendees were just there to listen to free live music.

Ironically, the political figures who participated in those events or benefited from them have been bizarrely quiet. Indeed, the most vocal of those who participated in the events at a high level are none other than the very coup plotters whose defeat this day commemorates. A 10-year anniversary is a weighty thing in terms of symbolic value, and it seems odd at first glance that Boris Yeltsin – since this was after all his finest hour – and President Vladimir Putin would make no attempt to capitalize on it. Although Yeltsin was said to be ill, Putin’s silence, in fact, was pointed. For a president to make no statement whatsoever is a statement in itself.

However, popular apathy is not a sufficient cause for the official silence. While many Russians are unaware of Flag Day, the events precipitated by the abortive 1991 coup polarize society to this day, especially among the Russian elite, who on the right portray it as a glorious victory for truth, freedom and democracy, and on the left as a day of black treachery on the part of Yeltsin and the democrats.

It is not at all surprising that the biggest trumpeters of the day have turned out to be The Union of Right Forces (SPS.) It is the group represented by this faction and its own leadership, above all Anatoly Chubais, who benefited the most,, both politically and materially, from the failure of the coup. It is also ironic, since the self-professed democrats in the party have, in fact, usually turned out to be far from democratic in practice when their preferred agendas have been called into question.

Given Yeltsin’s passion for grandstanding, the lack of a statement on his part does appear odd, unless the perennial Yeltsin excuse – ill health – is actually valid in this case.

Putin’s silence is not surprising either – but it is disappointing. Seen from one side, it is an understandable political move. Putin has built his administration on a program of achieving stability through being all things to all people – a populist to the Communists, a liberal to SPS and a staunch patriot to nationalists of all stripes. Supporting one branch on the ideological tree and lopping off all the others is not Putin’s style.

However, making no statement on an issue as divisive as this one is divisive in itself. By so pointedly keeping silent on such an important anniversary he has called a lot of attention to himself, and it hasn’t exactly been positive.

Putin, after all, is an ex-KGB man and makes no bones about it. In fact, he seems to perceive it as one of his main selling points in a country that has longed for stability, sometimes by any means necessary, for so long. His staff is teeming with people from the special services. Given these facts and the moves over the past 18 months toward centralization and hierarchalization of power, especially with respect to the mass media, it is with complete justification that elements on the liberal end of the political continuum worry that, once political control is completely consolidated, Putin will suddenly transmogrify into Andropov II. In abstaining entirely from even mentioning the coup, he has just heaped a great deal of fuel on their fire.

Many people in Russia are worried about erosion of whatever civil liberties they were able to wrest out of the collapse of the U.S.S.R. We hope that Putin’s unwillingness or inability to take a stand this past week are not a sign that they are right.