On Wednesday, the Kremlin reinstituted price controls on a range of agricultural products in an attempt to control runaway inflation. Those words, in and of themselves, should strike fear into the hearts of the most indomitable men. Certainly, they do mine.

To counter what Vladimir Putin believes to be politically-unacceptable food prices, the government has slapped price controls on bread, cheese and milk, eggs, sugar, and vegetable oil. In this way, the government now controls, directly and immediately, the prices of all the major staple non-meat food products in Russia.

The government claims this to be a ‘voluntary’ agreement with companies, but this - as almost all claims of innocence by the Russian government - is a sham. One only has to look at the way that oil giants Yukos and Russneft were taken over by the Kremlin or pro-Kremlin lackeys to see what ‘voluntary’ means in Putin’s Russia.

There is no opacity to this ploy. The scheme is clearly and undeniably an attempt by Putin’s government to curry favour with the Russian electorate ahead of parliamentary elections in December by employing what are cynical and economically-misguided populist measures.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that price controls can’t possibly work. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Putin’s premise is right: that prices are ‘too’ high. High prices come about because there is an excess of demand over supply. The institution of price controls only works when they reduce the price paid for by the market. This, of course, increases demands and further restricts supply.

Hence, price controls are self-defeating: driving up the natural market prices, reducing economic output, and creating an official rate-market rate price differential that is exploited by the black market. Price controls don’t work. They don’t respect the rights of the individual. They belong in the Soviet era of direct economic control. They have no place in a free society.

Ayn Rand’s novel We the Living, published 70 years ago, focuses the outcome of price controls, of rationing, and similarly motivated and similarly ill-reasoned policies. What followed, in fiction and in history, was a catastrophic nightmare for Russia then. Unless this government or the next is willing to step back from the edge and reverse this Soviet-esque policy, there can be no surprise when Russia once again finds itself facing catastrophe.