“THE GHOSTS OF 1917 have not been laid to rest.” That’s how Orlando Figes closed A People’s Tragedy, his magisterial history of the Russian Revolution. Figes was writing in the mid-1990s, at a time when the success of democracy in ex-Soviet bloc nations did not seem a fait accompli. Sound familiar? Of course it does. The spirit of the day touts Ukraine as ground zero for liberty-loving peoples everywhere. To borrow from an oft-used dictum, we are all Ukrainians now. And the democratic “Orange Revolution” may well reverberate throughout the former Soviet Union. At least Russian liberals hope so. Moscow’s meddling in the Ukrainian election has become a stark emblem of Vladimir Putin’s anti-democratic–and increasingly anti-Western–governance. “[I]t is time to see Mr. Putin as a challenger, and not a friend,” opined the Economist last week.

Other commentators have gone further, proclaiming the onset of a second Cold War. Such talk is premature. Putin’s Russia is not the USSR. Not even close. And it’s too soon–way too soon–to say the Kremlin is resurrecting an “evil empire.” But it’s not too soon to discuss Russia’s complete and utter failure to properly account for its Communist past. That failure, indeed, is closely linked to Putin’s illiberal rule at home and abroad.