First

Person : An Astonishingly Frank Self-

title:
portrait By Russia's President
Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich.; Gevorkyan,
author: Nataliya.; Timakova, Natalya.; Kolesnikov,
A. V.
publisher: PublicAffairs
isbn10 | asin: 1586480189
print isbn13: 9781586480189
ebook isbn13: 9780585201634
language: English
Presidents--Russia (Federation)--Biography,
subject
Presidents--Russia (Federation)--Interviews.
publication date: 2000
lcc: DK290.3.P87P874 2000eb
ddc: 947.086092
Presidents--Russia (Federation)--Biography,
subject: Presidents--Russia (Federation)--Interviews.
 Page iii

First Person
An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's
President Vladimir Putin
with Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya
Timakova, and Andrei Kolesnikov
Translated by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

PublicAffairs
New York
www.publicaffairsbooks.com

 Page iv
Copyright © 2000 by Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, and
Andrei Kolesnikov
Published in the United States by PublicAffairsTM, a Member of the
Perseus Books Group.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address
PublicAffairs, 250 W. 57th Street, Suite 1321, New York, NY 10107.
Book Design by Jenny Dossin
All photographs courtesy of Vladimir Putin.
Library of Congress Card Number: 00 132549
ISBN: 1-58648-018-9

 Page v

CONTENTS
Preface vii
Principal Figures in First Person ix
Part One:
The Son 1
Part Two:
The Schoolboy 13
Part Three:
The University Student 27
Part Four:
The Young Specialist 45
Part Five:
The Spy 65
Part Six:
The Democrat 83

 Page vi
Part Seven:
The Bureaucrat 103
Part Eight:
The Family Man 147
Part Nine:
The Politician 163
Appendix:
Russia at the Turn of the Millennium 209
Photographs

 Page vii

PREFACE
We talked with Vladimir Putin on six separate occasions, for about
four hours at a time. Both he and we were patient and tolerant; he,
when we asked uncomfortable questions or were too invasive; we,
when he was late or asked us to turn the tape recorder off. "That's very
personal," he would say.
These were meetings "with our jackets off," although we all still wore
ties. Usually they happened late at night. And we only went to his
office in the Kremlin once.
Why did we do this? Essentially, we wanted to answer the same
question that Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer asked in
Davos in January: "Who is Putin?" Rubin's question had been
addressed to a gathering of prominent Russian politicians and
businessmen. And instead of an answer, there was a pause.
We felt that the pause dragged on too long. And it was a legitimate
question. Who was this Mr. Putin?
We talked to Putin about his life. We talkedas people often do in
Russiaaround the dinner table. Sometimes he arrived exhausted, with
drooping eyelids, but he never broke off the conversation. Only once,
when it was well past mid-

 Page viii
night, did he ask politely, "Well then, have you run out of questions,
or shall we chat some more?"
Sometimes Putin would pause a while to think about a question, but
he would always answer it eventually. For example, when we asked
whether he had ever been betrayed, he was silent a long time. Finally,
he decided to say "no," but then added by way of clarification, "My
friends didn't betray me."
We sought out Putin's friends, people who know him well or who
have played an important role in his destiny. We went out to his dacha,
where we found a bevy of women: his wife, Lyudmila, two daughters-
Masha and Katya-and a poodle with a hint of the toy dog in her,
named Toska.
We have not added a single editorial line in the book. It holds only our
questions. And if those questions led Putin or his relatives to
reminisce or ponder, we tried not to interrupt. That's why the book's
format is a bit unusual-it consists entirely of interviews and
monologues.
All of our conversations are recorded in these pages. They might not
answer the complex question of "Who is this Mr. Putin?," but at least
they will bring us a little bit closer to understanding Russia's newest
president.
NATALIYA GEVORKYAN
NATALYA TIMAKOVA
ANDREI KOLESNIKOV

 Page ix

PRINCIPAL FIGURES IN FIRST PERSON

People
Vadim Viktorovich Bakatin:
USSR interior minister (1988-90); chairman of KGB (1991);
presidential candidate.
Boris Abramovich Berezovsky:
Prominent businessman influential in political affairs; part-owner of
ORT, pro-government public television station; former deputy
secretary of Security Council, October 1996-November 1997;
involved in the Chechen conflict; appointed executive secretary of the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS); dismissed by Yeltsin in
March 1999, elected member of parliament from Karachaevo-
Cherkessia in December 1999.
Pavel Pavlovich Borodin:
Chief of staff in the presidential administration from 1993 to 2000; In
January 2000, appointed state secretary of the Union of Belarus and
Russia.
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev:
General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from
1964-1982.

 Page x
Anatoly Borisovich Chubais:
Vice premier in the Chernomyrdin government (1992) and
government (1994); appointed member of the government
commission handling privatization and structural adjustment in 1993;
appointed first deputy chair of the government in 1994 and dismissed
by Yeltsin in January 1996; appointed by Yeltsin to post of chief of
presidential administration in July 1996; Minister of Finance, March-
November 1997.
Vladimir Churov:
Deputy chair of the Committee for Foreign Liason of the St.
Petersburg Mayor's Office in Sobchak administration.
Michael Frolov:
Retired colonel, Putin's instructor at the Andropov Red Banner
Institute.
Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich:
Putin's schoolteacher from grades 4 to 8 in School No. 193 in St.
Petersburg.
Sergei Borisovich Ivanov:
Foreign intelligence career officer with rank of lieutenant general;
appointed deputy director of FSB in August 1998; appointed secretary
of the Security Council in November 1999.
Katya:
Putin's younger daughter.
Sergei Vladilenovich Kirienko:
First deputy minister of energy in 1997; appointed chair of the
government (prime minister) in April 1998 and dismissed by Yeltsin
in August 1998, elected member of parliament from the party list of
the Union of Right Forces.
Aleksandr Vasilyevich Korzhakov:
Hired as Boris Yeltsin's bodyguard in 1985 when Yeltsin was first
secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee and continued to

 Page xi
manage Yeltsin's security in subsequent positions; awarded the rank of
general in 1992; joined the Yeltsin election campaign in 1996 and was
dismissed from all his posts in June 1996 after disagreements about
how to run the campaign.
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov:
Chairman of the Soviet KGB (1988-91) until arrested for the August
1991 coup; amnestied in February 1994.
Yuri Luzhkov:
Mayor of Moscow.
Masha:
Putin's older daughter.
Yevgeny Maksimovich Primakov:
Pravda columnist and former director of the USSR Institute of
Oriental Studies and the Institute of World Economy and International
Relations, first deputy chairman of the KGB (1991), director of the
Soviet Central Intelligence Service (1991), and then director of the
Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (1991-1996); appointed Foreign
Minister January 1996 and again in 1998; appointed by Yeltsin's
decree to the position of chair of the government (prime minister) in
September 1998 and dismissed by Yeltsin from this position in May
1999; elected to the State Duma (parliament) from the party list of
Fatherland-All Russia in December 1999.
Lyudmila Putina:
Vladimir Putin's wife (nicknames found in text: Luda, Ludik).
Sergei Roldugin:
Lead cellist in the Mariinsky Theater Symphony Orchestra, a friend of
the Putins, and godfather of Putin's older daughter, Masha.
Eduard Amvrosievich Shevardnadze:
Soviet foreign minister (1985-91) who resigned in protest of the
impending coup; co-chairman of Democratic Reform Movement
(1991-92); head of state and chairman of parliament of Georgia.

 Page xii
Anatoly Aleksandrovich Sobchak:
Mayor and chair of the government of St. Petersburg (Leningrad)
from 1991 to 1996; co-chairman of Democratic Reform Move-ment
(1991-92); member of the Russian Presidential Council since 1992;
died in February 2000. His wife is Lyudmila Borisnova.
Oleg Nikolayevich Soskovets:
Appointed first deputy chair of the government in 1993 (deputy prime
minister) responsible for 14 ministries, including energy and
transportation; assigned to deal with the Chechen conflict in 1994;
joined Yeltsin presidential campaign team in 1996 but dismissed in
March from the campaign, and, in June, was relieved of his post as
first vice premier.
Yuri Skuratov:
Former Prosecutor General, suspended after a newspaper published a
photograph of him in a steam bath with two prostitutes.
Vladimir Anatolyevich Yakovlev:
First deputy mayor of St. Petersburg from 1993-1996; elected
governor of St. Petersburg in 1996.
Marina Yentaltseva:
Putin's secretary at the St. Petersburg City Council (1991-96).
Valentin Yumashev:
Chief of staff in the Yeltsin administration
Terms
FRG Federal Republic of Germany
FSB Federal Security Service
FSK Federal Counterintelligence Service
FSO Federal Guard Service


 Page xiii
GDR German Democratic Republic (East
Germany)
KGB Committee for State Security (Soviet era)
KomsomolYoung Communist League
Kukly Puppets, a satirical TV show
MVD Ministry of Internal Affairs or Interior
Ministry
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NKVD People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs,
or the Stalin-era secret police
OSCE Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe, 54-member security and human
rights body founded in 1975.
Pioneers Soviet-era children's organization
SED East German Communist Party

 Page xv
''In fact, I have had a very simple life. Everything is an open book.
I finished school and went to university.
I graduated from university and went to the KGB.
I finished the KGB and went back to university.
After university, I went to work for Sobchak.
From Sobchak, to Moscow and to the General Department.
Then to the Presidential Administration.
From there, to the FSB.
Then I was appointed Prime Minister.
Now I'm Acting President. That's it!"
"But surely there are more details?"
"Yes, there are. . . ."

 Page 1

PART 1
THE SON
Putin talks about his parents, touching on his father's World War II sabotage
missions, the Siege of Leningrad, and life in a communal flat after the war. It
isn't easyno hot water, no bathroom, a stinking toilet, and constant bickering.
Putin spends much of his time chasing rats with a stick in the stairwell.

 Page 3
I know more about my father's family than about my mother's. My
father's father was born in St. Petersburg and worked as a cook. They
were a very ordinary family. A cook, after all, is a cook. But
apparently my grandfather cooked rather well, because after World
War I he was offered a job in The Hills district on the outskirts of
Moscow, where Lenin and the whole Ulyanov family lived. When
Lenin died, my grandfather was transferred to one of Stalin's dachas.
He worked there a long time.
He wasn't a victim of the purges?
No, for some reason they let him be. Few people who spent much
time around Stalin came through unscathed, but my grandfather was
one of them. He outlived Stalin, by the way, and in his later,
retirement years he was a cook at the Moscow City Party Committee
sanitorium in Ilinskoye.
Did your parents talk much about your grandfather?
I have a clear recollection of Ilinskoye myself, because I used to come
for visits. My grandfather kept pretty quiet about his past life. My
parents didn't talk much about the past, either. People generally didn't,
back then. But when rel-

 Page 4
atives would come to visit, there would be long chats around the table,
and I would catch some snatches, some fragments of the conversation.
But my parents never told me anything about themselves. Especially
my father. He was a silent man.
I know my father was born in St. Petersburg in 1911. After World War
I broke out, life was hard in the city. People were starving. The whole
family moved to my grandmother's home in the village of Pominovo,
in the Tver region. Her house is still standing today, by the way;
members of the family still spend their vacations there. It was in
Pominovo that my father met my mother. They were both 17 years old
when they got married.
Why? Did they have a reason to?
No, apparently not. Do you need a reason to get married? The main
reason was love. And my father was headed for the army soon. Maybe
they each wanted some sort of guarantee. . . . I don't know.
Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich (Vladimir Putin's schoolteacher from grades 4
through 8 in School No. 193):
Volodya's* parents had a very difficult life. Can you imagine how
courageous his mother must have been to give birth at age 41? Volodya's
father once said to me, "One of our sons would have been your age." I
assumed they must have lost another child during the war, but didn't feel
comfortable asking about it.
In 1932, Putin's parents came to Peter [St. Petersburg]. They lived in the
suburbs, in Peterhof. His mother went to work in a factory and his father
was almost immediately drafted into the army, where he served on a
submarine fleet. Within a year after he returned, they had two sons. One
died a few months after birth.
* Russians use various diminutives for names, depending on degrees of
familiarity and affection. Vladimir Putin is often called Vovka and Volodya
by his friends and family.


 Page 5
Apparently, when the war broke out, your father went immediately to
the front. He was a submariner who had just completed his term of
service . . .
Yes, he went to the front as a volunteer.
And your mama?
Mama categorically refused to go anywhere. She stayed at home in
Peterhof. When it became extremely hard to go on there, her brother
in Peter took her in. He was a naval officer serving at the fleet's
headquarters in Smolny.* He came for her and the baby and got them
out under gunfire and bombs.
And what about your grandfather, the cook? Didn't he do anything to
help them?
No. Back then, people generally didn't ask for favors. I think that
under the circumstances it would have been impossible, anyway. My
grandfather had a lot of children, and all of his sons were at the front.
So your mother and brother were taken from Peterhof, which was
under blockade, to Leningrad, which was also blockaded?
Where else could they go? Mama said that some sort of shelters were
being set up in Leningrad, in an effort to save the children's lives. It
was in one of those children's homes that my second brother came
down with diphtheria and died.
How did she survive?
My uncle helped her. He would feed her out of his own rations. There
was a time when he was transferred some-
*Smolny was a private girls' school before the Revolution, when Lenin
took it over and made it the headquarters of his revolutionary government.
Since then it has been the seat of local government in St. Petersburg.


 Page 6
where for a while, and she was on the verge of starvation. This is no
exaggeration. Once my mother fainted from hunger. People thought
she had died, and they laid her out with the corpses. Luckily Mama
woke up in time and started moaning. By some miracle, she lived. She
made it through the entire blockade of Leningrad. They didn't get her
out until the danger was past.
And where was your father?
My father was in the battlefield the whole time. He had been assigned
to a demolitions battalion of the NKVD. These battalions were
engaged in sabotage behind German lines. My father took part in one
such operation. There were 28 people in his group. They were
dropped into Kingisepp. They took a good look around, set up a
position in the forest, and even managed to blow up a munitions depot
before they ran out of food. They came across some local residents,
Estonians, who brought them food but later gave them up to the
Germans.
They had almost no chance of surviving. The Germans had them
surrounded on all sides, and only a few people, including my father,
managed to break out. Then the chase was on. The remnants of the
unit headed off toward the front line. They lost a few more people
along the road and decided to split up. My father jumped into a
swamp over his head and breathed through a hollow reed until the
dogs had passed by. That's how he survived. Only 4 of the 28 men in
his unit made it back home.
Then he found your mother? They were reunited?
No, he didn't get a chance to look for her. They sent him right back
into combat. He wound up in another tight spot,


 Page 7
the so-called Neva Nickel. This was a small, circular area. If you
stand with your back to Lake Ladoga, it's on the left bank of the Neva
River. The German troops had seized everything except for this small
plot of land. And our guys held that spot through the entire blockade,
calculating that it would play a role in the final breakthrough. The
Germans kept trying to capture it. A fantastic number of bombs were
dropped on every square meter of that bit of turfeven by the standards
of that war. It was a monstrous massacre. But to be sure, the Neva
Nickel played an important role in the end.
Don't you think that we paid too high a price for that little piece of
land?
I think that there are always a lot of mistakes made in war. That's
inevitable. But when you are fighting, if you keep thinking that
everybody around you is always making mistakes, you'll never win.
You have to take a pragmatic attitude. And you have to keep thinking
of victory. And they were thinking of victory then.
My father was severely wounded in the "Nickel." Once he and another
soldier were ordered to capture a prisoner who might talk during
interrogation. They crawled up to a foxhole and were just settling in to
wait, when suddenly a German came out. The German was surprised,
and so were they. The German recovered first, took a grenade out of
his pocket, threw it at my father and the other soldier, and calmly went
on his way. Life is such a simple little thing, really.
How do you know all this? You said your parents didn't like to talk
about themselves.
This is a story that my father told me. The German was probably
convinced that he had killed the Russians. But my


 Page 8
father survived, although his legs were shot through with shrapnel.
Our soldiers dragged him out of there several hours later.
Across the front line?
You guessed it. The nearest hospital was in the city, and in order to get
there, they had to drag him all the way across the Neva.
Everyone knew that this would be suicide, because every centimeter
of that territory was being shot up. No commander would have issued
such an order, of course. And nobody was volunteering. My father
had already lost so much blood that it was clear he was going to die
soon if they left him there.
Coincidentally, a soldier who happened to be an old neighbor from
back home came across him. Without a word, he sized up the
situation, hauled my father up onto his back, and carried him across
the frozen Neva to the other side. They made an ideal target, and yet
they survived. This neighbor dragged my father to the hospital, said
goodbye, and went back to the front line. The fellow told my father
that they wouldn't see each other again. Evidently he didn't believe he
would survive in the "Nickel" and thought that my father didn't have
much of a chance either.
Was he wrong?
Thank God, he was. My father managed to survive. He spent several
months in the hospital. My mother found him there. She came to see
him every day.
Mama herself was half dead. My father saw the shape she was in and
began to give her his own food, hiding it from the nurses. To be sure,
they caught on pretty quickly and put a


 Page 9
stop to it. The doctors noticed that he was fainting from hunger. When
they figured out why, they gave him a stern lecture and wouldn't let
Mama in to see him for awhile. The upshot was that they both
survived. Only my father's injuries left him with a lifelong limp.
And the neighbor?
The neighbor survived, too! After the blockade, he moved to another
city. He and my father once met by chance in Leningrad twenty years
later. Can you imagine?
Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich:
Volodya's mother was a very nice personkind, selfless, the soul of
goodness. She was not a very educated woman. I don't know if she
finished even five grades of school. She worked hard her whole life. She
was a janitor, took deliveries in a bakery at night, and washed test tubes in
a laboratory. I think she even worked as a guard at a store at one time.
Volodya's papa worked as a toolmaker in a factory. He was much liked and
appreciated as a ready and willing worker. For a long time, incidentally, he
didn't collect disability, although one of his legs was really crippled. He
was the one who usually cooked at home. He used to make a wonderful
aspic. We remember that Putin aspic to this day. Nobody could make aspic
like he did.
After the war my father was demobilized and went to work as a
skilled laborer at the Yegorov Train Car Factory. There is a little
plaque in each metro car that says, "This is car number such-and-such,
manufactured at the Yegorov Train Car Factory."
The factory gave Papa a room in a communal apartment in a typical
St. Petersburg building on Baskov Lane, in the center of town. It had
an inner airshaft for a courtyard, and my parents lived on the fifth
floor. There was no elevator.


 Page 10
Before the war, my parents had half of a house in Peterhof. They were
very proud of their standard of living then. So this was a step down.
Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich:
They had a horrid apartment. It was communal, without any conveniences.
There was no hot water, no bathtub. The toilet was horrendous. It ran
smack up against a stair landing. And it was so coldjust awfuland the
stairway had a freezing metal handrail. The stairs weren't safe eitherthere
were gaps everywhere.
There, on that stair landing, I got a quick and lasting lesson in the
meaning of the word cornered. There were hordes of rats in the front
entryway. My friends and I used to chase them around with sticks.
Once I spotted a huge rat and pursued it down the hall until I drove it
into a corner. It had nowhere to run. Suddenly it lashed around and
threw itself at me. I was surprised and frightened. Now the rat was
chasing me. It jumped across the landing and down the stairs. Luck-
ily, I was a little faster and I managed to slam the door shut in its nose.
Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich:
There was practically no kitchen. It was just a square, dark hallway
without windows. A gas burner stood on one side and a sink on the other.
There was no room to move around.
Behind this so-called kitchen lived the neighbors, a family of three. And
other neighbors, a middle-aged couple, were next door. The apartment was
communal. And the Putins were squeezed into one room. By the standards
of those days it was decent, though, because it measured about 20 meters
square.

 Page 11
A Jewish familyan elderly couple and their daughter, Havalived in our
communal apartment. Hava was a grown woman, but as the adults
used to say, her life hadn't turned out well. She had never married, and
she still lived with her parents.
Her father was a tailor, and although he seemed quite elderly, he
would stitch on his sewing machine for whole days at a time. They
were religious Jews. They did not work on the Sabbath, and the old
man would recite the Talmud, droning away. Once, I couldn't hold
back any longer and asked what he was chanting. He explained about
the Talmud, and I immediately lost interest.
As is usually the case in a communal apartment, people clashed now
and then. I always wanted to defend my parents, and speak up on their
behalf. I should explain here that I got along very well with the elderly
couple, and often played on their side of the apartment. Well, one day,
when they were having words with my parents, I jumped in. My
parents were furious. Their reaction came as a complete shock to me;
it was incomprehensible. I was sticking up for them, and they shot
back with, ''Mind your own business!" Why? I just couldn't
understand it. Later, I realized that my parents considered my good
rapport with the old couple, and the couple's affection for me, much
more important than those petty kitchen spats. After that incident, I
never got involved in the kitchen quarrels again. As soon as they
started fighting, I simply went back into our room, or over to the old
folks' room. It didn't matter to me which.
There were other pensioners living in our apartment as well, although
they weren't there long. They played a role in my baptism. Baba Anya
was a religious person, and she used


 Page 12
to go to church. When I was born, she and my mother had me
baptized. They kept it a secret from my father, who was a party
member and secretary of the party organization in his factory shop.
Many years later, in 1993, when I worked on the Leningrad City
Council, I went to Israel as part of an official delegation. Mama gave
me my baptismal cross to get it blessed at the Lord's Tomb. I did as
she said and then put the cross around my neck. I have never taken it
off since.

 Page 13

PART 2
THE SCHOOLBOY
Interviews with Putin's schoolteacher reveal a bad student with a bright mind.
Putin is always late for school and doesn't make it into the Pioneers. But then,
at age 10, he discovers the martial arts and, after reading novels and
watching spy movies, develops a single-minded ambition to join the KGB. At
16 he troops over to the KGB headquarters where he's told that he has to go to
law school and keep his mouth shut if he really wants to be a spy. Despite the
pleas and threats of his parents and judo coaches, he decides to do just that.

 Page 15
Do you remember first grade?
I was born in October, so I did not start school until I was almost eight
years old. We still have the photo in our family archive: I am in an
old-fashioned, gray school uniform. It looks like a military uniform,
and for some reason I'm standing with a flowerpot in my hand. Not a
bouquet, but a pot.
Did you want to go to school?
No, not especially. I liked playing outside, in our courtyard. There
were two courtyards joined together, like an air-shaft, and my whole
life took place there. Mama sometimes stuck her head out the window
and shouted "Are you in the courtyard?" I always was. As long as I
didn't run away, I was allowed to go play in the courtyard without
asking for permission.
And you never once disobeyed?
When I was five or six, I walked out to the corner of the big street
without permission. It was on the First of May. I looked around me.
People were rushing around and making a lot of noise. The street was
very busy. I was even a little afraid.
Then one winter, when I was a little bit older, my friends

 Page 16
and I decided to leave the city without telling our parents. We wanted
to go on a trip. We got off the train somewhere and were completely
lost. It was cold. We had brought some matches and somehow
managed to start a fire. We had nothing to eat. We froze completely.
Then we got back on the train and headed home. We got the belt for
that stunt. And we never wanted to go on another trip again.
So you stopped looking for adventures?
For a time. Especially when I went to school. From first through
eighth grade, I went to School No. 193, which was in the same lane as
my house, about a seven-minute walk. I was always late for my first
class, so even in the winter, I didn't dress very warmly. It took up a lot
of time to get dressed, run to school, and then take off my coat. So in
order to save time, I never put on a coat, and just shot out to school
like a bullet and got right behind my desk.
Did you like school?
For a time. As long as I managed to bewhat would you call it?the
unspoken leader. The school was right next door to my house. Our
courtyard was a reliable refuge, and that helped.
Did people listen to you?
I didn't try to command people. It was more important to preserve my
independence. If I had to compare it with my adult life, I would say
that the role I played as a kid was like the role of the judicial branch,
and not the executive. And as long as I managed to do that, I liked
school.
But it didn't last. It soon became clear that my courtyard skills were
not enough, and I began to play sports. And in


 Page 17
order to maintain my social status I had to start doing well in school.
Up until the sixth grade, to be honest, I had been a pretty haphazard
student.
Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich:
I met Volodya when he was still in the fourth grade. His teacher, Tamara
Pavlovna Chizhova, once said to me, "Vera Dmitrievna, take my class. The
kids aren't bad."
I went to visit the class and organized a German language club. It was
interesting to see who showed up. About 10-12 students came. Tamara
Pavlovna asked me who was there. I told her: Natasha Soldatova, Volodya
Putin . . . She was surprised. "Volodya, too? That doesn't seem like him."
But he showed great interest in the lessons.
She said, "Well, just you wait. He'll show you." "What do you mean?" I
asked. She replied that he was too sneaky and disorganized. He wasn't
even in the Pioneers. Usually you are accepted into the Pioneers in the
third grade. But Volodya wasn't because he was such a cutup.
Some classes studied English, and others German. English was more in
fashion than German, and there were more English classes. Volodya ended
up in my class. In fifth grade, he hadn't really proven himself, but I sensed
that he had potential, energy, and character. I saw his great interest in the
language. He picked it up easily. He had a very good memory, a quick
mind.
I thought: This kid will make something of himself. I decided to devote
more attention to him and discourage him from hanging out with the boys
on the street. He had friends from the neighborhood, two brothers by the
name of Kovshov, and he used to prowl around with them, jumping from
the roofs of the garages and sheds. Volodya's father didn't like that very
much. His papa had very strict morals. But we couldn't get Volodya away
from those Kovshov brothers.
His father was very serious and imposing. He often had an angry look. The
first time I came to see him, I was even frightened. I thought, "What a
 strict man." And then it turned out that he was very kindhearted. But there
were no

 Page 18
kisses. There was none of that lovey-dovey stuff in their house.
Once when I came to visit, I said to Volodya's father,"Your son is not
working to his full potential." And he said, "Well, what can I do? Kill him,
or what?" And I said, "You have to have a talk with him. Let's work on
him together, you at home, and I at school. He could be getting better than
C's. He catches everything on the fly." At any rate, we agreed to work on
him; but in the end, we had no particular influence.
Volodya himself changed very abruptly in the sixth grade. It was obvious;
he had set himself a goal. Most likely he had understood that he had to
achieve something in life. He began to get better grades, and did it easily.
Finally, he was accepted into the Pioneers. There was a ceremony and we
went on a trip to Lenin's home, where he was inducted into the Pioneers.
Right after that he became chair of his unit's council.
Why weren't you taken into the Pioneers until the sixth grade? Was
everything really so bad up until then?
Of course. I was a hooligan, not a Pioneer.
Are you being coy?
You insult me. I really was a bad boy.
Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich:
Most of the kids liked to go to dances. We had evening events at the
school. We called it the Crystal Club. And we put on plays. But Volodya
didn't take part in any of this. His father really wanted him to play the
accordion and forced him to take lessons in the early grades. Volodya
resisted it. Although he did love to pluck away on the guitar. He sang
mainly Vysotsky,* all of the songs from the album Vertical, about the stars,
and about Seryozha from Malaya Bronnaya Street.
But he didn't like socializing much. He preferred sports. He started doing
martial arts in order to learn how to defend himself. Four times a week he
took
 *Vladimir Vysotsky was a popular Russian folksinger.

 Page 19
classes somewhere near the Finland Station, and he got pretty good. He
loved his sambo. And then he started taking part in competitions, which
often required him to travel to other cities.
I got into sports when I was about 10 or 11. As soon as it became clear
that my pugnacious nature was not going to keep me king of the
courtyard or schoolgrounds, I decided to go into boxing. But I didn't
last long there. I quickly got my nose broken. The pain was terrible. I
couldn't even touch the tip of my nose. But even though everyone was
telling me I needed an operation, I didn't go to the doctor. Why? I
knew it would heal by itself. And it did. But I lost my boxing bug
after that.
Then I decided to go in for sambo, a Soviet combination of judo and
wrestling. Martial arts were popular at the time. I went to a class near
my house and began to work out. It was a very plain gym that
belonged to the Trud athletic club. I had a very good trainer there,
Anatoly Semyonovich Rakhlin. He devoted his whole life to his art,
and is still training girls and boys to this day.
Anatoly Semyonovich played a decisive role in my life. If I hadn't
gotten involved in sports, I'm not sure how my life would have turned
out. It was sports that dragged me off the streets. To be honest, the
courtyard wasn't a very good environment for a kid.
At first I studied sambo. Then judo. Coach decided that we would all
switch to judo, and we did.
Judo is not just a sport, you know. It's a philosophy. It's respect for
your elders and for your opponent. It's not for weaklings. Everything
in judo has an instructive aspect. You come out onto the mat, you bow
to one another, you follow ritual. It could be done differently, you
know. Instead of bowing to your opponent, you could jab him in the
forehead.


 Page 20
Did you ever smoke?
No. I tried it a couple of times, but I never smoked regularly. And
when I began to do sports, I simply ruled it out. I used to work out
every other day, and then every day. Soon I had no time left for
anything else. I had other priorities; I had to prove myself in sports,
achieve something. I set goals. Sports really had a strong influence on
me.
And you didn't try karate? That was popular in those days, even
thought it was banned.
We thought karate and all other noncontact sports were like ballet.
Sports was only sports if you had to shed sweat and blood and work
hard.
Even when karate became popular and karate schools of all sorts
began springing up, we viewed them purely as moneymaking
enterprises. We, on the other hand, never paid any money for our
lessons. We all came from poor families. And since karate lessons cost
money from the start, the kids taking karate thought they were first
class.
Once we went to the gym with Leonid Ionovich, the senior coach
from Trud. The karate students were working out on the mat, although
it was our turn. Leonid went up to their trainer and told him it was
time for our class. The karate trainer didn't even look his wayas if to
say, get lost. Then Leonid, without saying a word, flipped him,
squeezed him lightly, and dragged him off the mat. He had lost
consciousness. Then Leonid turned to us and said, "Go on in and take
your places." That was our attitude toward karate.
Did your parents encourage you to take these lessons?
No, just the opposite. At first, they were very suspicious. They
thought I was acquiring some sort of ugly skill to use on

 Page 21
the street. Later, when they met the trainer and he began to visit our
home, their attitude changed. And when I achieved my first successes,
my parents understood that judo was a serious and useful art.
You started winning?
Yes, within about a year or two.
Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich:
I taught Volodya from fifth through eighth grade. And then we had to
decide what school to send him to. Most of the class went to School No.
197 on Petra Lavrova Street. But Volodya and Slava Yakovlev chose a
school with a special focus on chemistry. I think Slava talked him into it.
I was surprised at the time. But Volodya told me, "We'll study there a
while, and then we'll see." He was never hasty. He also got good grades in
that school. He had a wonderful teacher named Minna Moiseyevna
Yuditskaya. She also taught German. And oddly, I visited the Putins' home
even more often than I had before, as I was helping Volodya with his
German. I wanted him to speak German well. He would help me too.
Besides teaching elementary school, I taught in the evenings at a technical
school for architects and builders. Once, my husband had to go away on a
business trip. My daughters were still little at the time. So I said, "Volodya,
help me out. I'm coming home late and my girls might be afraid if they
wake up." He would come and look in on them and even stay the night.
I think Volodya is a good person. But he never forgives people who betray
him or are mean to him. In any case, that's what I think.
Volodya wasn't very popular in his new school, as far as I could tell. But
he did have a literature class with a teacher named Kochergin who made
the lessons really creative and interesting. I remember one of the topics
quite well that he assigned for student compositions. It was unusual for
those times: "A revolution has a beginning, a revolution has no end." Well,
you could write a whole treatise on that one!


 Page 22
Right after graduating from school, Volodya announced that he was going
to law school. I don't know what influenced his choice. Why law school?
We had thought originally that he would go to a technical institute. Lena
Gryaznova went to the technical institute, and they were close. There was
much that linked Volodya and Lena. She had starting coming over to the
Putin house as early as sixth grade. Volodya was not especially interested
in girls; but they were certainly interested in him.
So all of a sudden, he announced to everyone: ''I'm going to university."
And I said "How?" And he said "I"ll solve that problem myself."
Even before I graduated from school, I wanted to work in intelligence.
It was a dream of mine, although it seemed about as likely as a flight
to Mars. And sure, my ambitions sometimes changed. I also wanted to
be a sailor. And at one point I really wanted to be a pilot.
The Academy of Civil Aviation is in Leningrad, and I was hell-bent
on getting in. I read the literature and even subscribed to an aviation
journal. But then books and spy movies like The Sword and the Shield
took hold of my imagination. What amazed me most of all was how
one man's effort could achive what whole armies could not. One spy
could decide the fate of thousands of people. At least, that's the way I
understood it.
The Academy of Civil Aviation quickly lost its thrill. I had made my
choice. I wanted to be a spy.
My parents didn't understand this right away. My coach had gone to
see them and told them that as an athlete, I could get into an institute
practically without passing exams. So they tried to talk me into going
to an institute. My coach took their side. He couldn't understand why I
was resisting. "He has a 100 percent chance of getting into that
Academy of


 Page 23
Civil Aviation," he told my parents. "And if he doesn't get into
university, then he'll have to go into the army."
It was a difficult situation. My father had a very commanding
personality. But I dug my heels in and said I had made up my mind.
Then another coach of mine from the Trud Club, Leonid Ionovich,
came to visit. He was a clever guy. "Well," he said to me. "Where are
you going?" Of course he already knew. He was just acting sly. I said,
''To university." "Oh, that's great, good for you," he said, "in what
department?" "The law school," I answered. Then he roared: "What?!
To catch people? What are you doing? You'll be a cop. Do you under-
stand?!" I was insulted. "I'm not going to be a cop!" I yelled back.
For a year, they put pressure on me every day. That only increased my
desire to go to law school. But why law school? Let me explain.
In order to find out how to become a spy, sometime back around the
beginning of the ninth grade, I had gone to the office of the KGB
Directorate. A guy came out and listened to me. "I want to get a job
with you," I said. "That's terrific, but there are several issues," he said.
"First, we don't take people who come to us on their own initiative.
Second, you can come to us only after the army or after some type of
civilian higher education."
I was intrigued. "What kind of higher education?" I asked. "Any!" he
said. He probably just wanted to get rid of me. "But what kind is
preferred?" I asked. "Law school." And that was that. From that
moment on, I began to prepare for the law faculty of Leningrad
University. And nobody could stop me.

 Page 24
But my parents and my coaches tried. They threatened me with the
prospect of the army for a long time. What they didn't understand was
that the army suited me just fine. Of course it would have slowed my
progress a little, but it wouldn't deter me from my decision.
The coaches, however, had more tricks up their sleeves. When I went
to enroll in preparatory classes at the university, I learned that they
had made up lists of athletes who were to be given priority in
university admissions. I knew for a fact that I wasn't on any list. But
when I was enrolling in classes, my gym teacher tried to force me to
join the Burevestnik Club. I asked him, "How come I have to switch
over to this?" And he said, "We helped get you into the university, so
please be so kind . . ." I knew something was up.
I went to the dean. I walked in and and told him outright, "I'm being
forced to transfer into Burevestnik. I don't think I should do that." And
the dean, Prof. Alekseyev, a kind-hearted, good man, said, "Why are
they forcing you?" And I said, "Because they supposedly helped me,
as an athlete, to get into the university, and now I must pay them back
by joining Burevestnik."
He said, "Really? That can't be! Everyone gets into this university on
equal terms, judged according to their knowledge, not by some list of
athletes. Wait a minute, and I'll find out." Then he reached into his
desk, got a list out, glanced at it, and asked me my last name. "You're
not on the list," he said, "So you can safely tell everybody to get lost."
Which I did.
Nevertheless, in intervarsity championships I played on behalf of the
university team, as I could do this without trans-

 Page 25
ferring from one sports club to the other. Still, the coaches didn't let up
their efforts to recruit me. I told them a hundred times that I would not
leave Trudall my friends were there, and my first coach. I said I would
never join another club. I would play for the one I wanted.

 Page 27

PART 3
THE UNIVERSITY STUDENT
Putin studies hard at the university, but still finds time to cruise Leningrad in
his Zaporozhets car and compete in judo tournaments. Over the summer he
works in construction with his buddies. He has romances and breakups, but
his primary passion remains intact: finding a way into the KGB.

 Page 29
Was it hard to get into university?
Yes, it was, because there were 100 slots and only 10 of them were
reserved for high school graduates. The rest were for army guys. So
for us high-schoolers, the competition was fierce; something like 40
kids per slot. I had gotten a B in composition but A's in all my other
subjects, and I was accepted. By the way, at that time, they didn't take
into account the total grade point average of the applicant. So in tenth
grade I could completely devote myself to the subjects that I would
have to pass to get into university. If I hadn't dropped the other
subjects, I wouldn't have gotten in.
Thank God, we had very smart teachers with sharp tactics in our
school. Their main goal was to prepare students to get into college.
And as soon as they realized that I wasn't going to become a chemist
and wanted to major in the humanities, they didn't interfere. In fact,
quite the oppositethey approved.
You evidently studied hard in university, with your future in mind?
Yes, I studied hard. I didn't become involved in any extracurricular
activities. I wasn't a Komsomol functionary.

 Page 30
Was your stipend enough to cover your living expenses?
No, it wasn't enough. At first, my parents had to support me. I was a
student, and didn't have any money. I could have earned extra money
working construction like a lot of people. But what would have been
the point? I was on a construction crew once. I went to Komi, where I
chopped trees for the lumber industry and repaired houses. I finished
the job and they handed me a packet of money, probably about 1,000
rubles. In those days, a car cost 3,500 or 4,000 rubles. But for a month
and a half of work, we got 1,000! So it was good money. Actually,
fantastic money.
We earned our pay. And then we had to spend it on something. My
two friends and I went to Gagry on vacation without even stopping
back in Leningrad. We got there, and on the first day we got drunk
chasing shish kebabs down with port wine. Then we tried to think of
what to do next. Where could we go to spend the night? There were
probably some hotels around, but we didn't have much hope of getting
into them. Late at night, we finally found an old lady who agreed to
take us in and give us a room.
We spent several days swimming, tanning, and getting good rest. But
soon we had to get out of there and somehow get back home. We were
running out of money. We came up with a plan; we would finagle
places on the deck of a steamship on its way to Odessa. Then we
would take a train to Peter, buying tickets for the top bunks in the
sleepers, which were cheaper.
We pooled our pocket change and realized we had nothing but a few
kopecks left for provisions. We decided to buy some tushonka, some
canned stew, for the trip. One of the fellows was rather carefulhe had
more money left over than the other, who was a spendthrift. When we
told the


 Page 31
more economical friend that he should share his dough, he thought for
a minute and then said, "That canned meat is pretty hard on the
stomach. That's not really the right thing to get." And we said,
"Whatever you say. Let's get going."
When we got down to the docks, a huge crowd had gathered. The ship
was giant as wella beautiful white ocean-liner. We were told that only
passengers with tickets to the cabins were being allowed on, and those
with deck seats were not yet being admitted. All the deck passengers
had little tickets made out of hard cardboard, but we had larger-sized,
mixed-passage tickets that looked like the ones first-class passengers
would have had.
My friend who had refused to chip in for the canned meat said, "You
know, I don't like the look of this. I don't think it's going to work out.
Let's try to get on right now." I said, "It's awkward, let's just stand here
and wait our turn." He said, "Well, you can stand around if you want.
We're going to get on." So they went to board the ship, and of course I
ran after them.
The ticket-taker asked us what kind of tickets we had. "We have the
big ones," we answered. He waved us on.
So we were let on board the ship with the first-class passengers. And
then the foreman or somebody else yelled, "Are there any others for
first class?" The crowd on the dock was silent.
He asked once again, "Are there only deck passengers left?" The
crowd, hoping they would now be allowed on, cried out excitedly,
"Yes, just deck passengers!" To which he shouted, "Raise the plank!"
They lifted the walkway, and suddenly panic broke out on the dock.
People were furious. They had been deceived. They had paid money,
and now they weren't being let on the ship.


 Page 32
Later they were told that there was a freight overage and that the ship
was full.
If we hadn't gotten on board when we did, we would have been left
standing on the dock. And we didn't have a single kopeck left. I don't
know what we would have done.
So we settled into some lifeboats, which hung out over the water. And
that was how we got home, as if we were lying in hammocks. For two
nights I looked up at the sky, and I couldn't take my eyes away. The
ship sailed on, and the stars seemed to just hang there. Do you know
what I mean? Sailors may be used to that, but for me it was a
wondrous discovery.
That first evening we ogled the cabin passengers. It made us a little
wistful to see how wonderful their lives were. All we had were the
lifeboats, the stars, and the tins of tushonka.
Our thrifty friend didn't have any canned meat. He couldn't hold out
any longer, and went to the restaurant. But the prices there were so
high that he quickly came back and said indifferently, "Well, I suppose
I wouldn't mind scarfing down a little tushonka." But my other friend,
who kept strictly to the rules, said, "You know, you should worry
about your stomach. It's not good for you." So the thrifty guy starved
for a day after that. It was cruel, of course, but it was also fair.
When I went to university, I started concentrating on my studies.
Athletics took second place. But I did work out regularly and took
part in all the All-Union competitions, although it was just by habit,
really.
In 1976, I became the city-wide champion. The people in our section
included not only amateurs, like me, but also professionals and
European and Olympic champions in both sambo and judo.
I became a sambo master black belt after entering univer-

 Page 33
sity, and then a judo master two years later. I don't know how it is
nowadays, but back then you had to collect a certain number of
victories over opponents of a certain level, and to place in serious
competitions. For example, you had to be among the top three in the
city or get first place in the All-Union competition for Trud.
I remember a couple matches vividly. After one of them I couldn't
even breathe, only croak. My opponent was a strong guy, and I had
used up so much energy that I just wheezed instead of inhaling and
exhaling. I won, but only by a slim margin.
And then there was the time I lost to the world champion, Volodya
Kullenin. Later he began to drink heavily and was murdered on the
street. But in university he was a fine athlete, really brilliant and
talented. He hadn't started drinking when I fought him. We were
competing for the city championship. He was already world
champion. Right away, during the first minutes, I threw him across my
backand did it gracefully, with ease. In principle, the match should
have ended right then, but since Kullenin was world champion, it
wouldn't have been right to stop the fight. So they gave me some
points and we continued. Of course Kullenin was stronger than me,
but I fought hard. Under the rules of this martial art, any sort of crying
out is considered a signal of defeat. When Kullenin twisted my elbow
backward, the judge seemed to hear me make some grunts. So
Kullenin was declared the victor. I remember that match to this day.
And I was not ashamed to lose to a world champion.
There was another match I'll remember for the rest of my life,
although it wasn't one I took part in. I had a friend in university whom
I had talked into joining the gym. First he took judo, and he did quite
well. Once there was a competi-


 Page 34
tion and he was fighting. He took a jump forward and landed headfirst
on the mat. His vertebrae were dislocated and he was paralyzed. He
died 10 days later in the hospital. He was a good guy. And to this day
I regret talking him into taking judo. . . .
Traumas like this were quite frequent during the competitions and
matches. People would break their arms or legs. Matches were a form
of torture. And training was hard, too. We used to go to an athletic
center outside of Leningrad on Khippiyarvi Lake. It's a fairly large
lake, about 17 kilometers wide. Every morning when we got up, we
ran around the lake first thing. After our run, there would be exercise,
then training, breakfast, more workouts, lunch, rest after lunch, and
then workouts again.
We used to travel around the country a lot. Once we went to a match
in Moldavia, in preparation for the Spartakiad competition of the
peoples of the USSR. It was horribly hot. I was coming out of our
workout with my friend Vasya, and wine was for sale everywhere. He
said to me, "Let's toss back a bottle of wine each." "It's too hot out," I
replied. "Then let's just relax," he said. "Alright, alright. Let's get
some wine," I said.
We each took a bottle, went back to our room, and flopped down on
our beds. He opened his bottle. "It's too hot," I said. "I'm not going
to." "Really?" he said. "Okay, have it your way." He gulped the bottle
straight down. Then he looked at me. ''Are you sure you aren't going
to have any?" "I'm sure," I said. So he took the second bottle and
knocked it back. He put the empty bottles on the table, and instantly
he was out like a light. There he was, suddenly snoring. I really
regretted not drinking along with him! I


 Page 35
squirmed and squirmed. I couldn't hold out any longer, and poked
him. "Hey, you. You're snoring, stop it! You're snoring like an
elephant."
That was pretty much the exception. We didn't party much, because
drinking made the workouts that much harder. There was this one
huge guy that worked out with us. His name was Kolya. Not only was
he gigantic, but he had this incredible face. He had a massive jaw that
jutted forward and a huge overhanging brow. One night some
hooligans started picking on him in a dark alley, and he said, "Guys,
calm down. Pipe down for just a second." Then he took out a match,
struck it, and held it up to his face. "Just look at me," he said. And that
was the end of that incident.
Sergei Roldugin (soloist in the Mariinsky Theater Symphony Orchestra, a
family friend of the Putins, and godfather of Putin's older daughter,
Masha):
Volodya went to school with my brother. When I moved to Leningrad, my
brother told me about Vovka. He brought him over to our house, and we
hit it off. I think it was in 1977. After that, he became like a brother to me.
When I had nowhere to go, I would go over to his house. I would eat and
sleep there.
I was drafted into the army and served in Leningrad. Once, Vovka came
over to see me in his Zaporozhets. I jumped over the fence and went
AWOL. We went cruising around Leningrad all night. The muffler was
broken, and we raced around, singing songs. I can even remember the song
we sang:
"We had just one night,
Someone's train left this morning,
And then someone's plane a little later . . . "
We sang and sang, very loudly, without any inhibitions. After all, the
muffler was broken.


 Page 36
Once my mother was given a state lottery ticket instead of change at a
cafeteria, and she won a Zaporozhets car. I was in the third year of
university and we couldn't decide what to do with that car for a long
time, since we were living very modestly. I had just bought my first
coat when I came back from working construction, a year after the
vacation with my friends in Gagry. This was my first decent coat.
Money was tight in our family, and to give the car to me was absolute
madness. We could have sold it, after all, and gotten at least 3,500
rubles for it. That would have settled our family budget well in
advance. But my parents decided to spoil me. They gave me the
Zaporozhets. I lived the good life in that car. I used to drive it
everywhere, even to my matches.
I was a pretty wild driver, but I was terrified of crashing the car. How
would I ever repair it?
Once you did get into an accident, though. You ran over a man.
It wasn't my fault. He jumped in front of me or something. . . .
Decided to put an end to his life. . . . I don't know
what on earth he was doing. He was an idiot. He ran off after I hit
him.
They say you chased him.
What? You think I hit a guy with my car and then tried to chase him
down? I'm not a beast. I just got out of the car.
Are you able to remain calm in critical situations?
Yes, I remain calm. Even too calm. Later, when I went to intelligence
school, I once got an evaluation, where they wrote the following as a
negative character assessment: "A


 Page 37
lowered sense of danger." That was considered a very serious flaw.
You have to be pumped up in critical situations in order to react well.
Fear is like pain. It's an indicator. If something hurts, that means
something's wrong with your body. It's a sign. I had to work on my
sense of danger for a long time.
Evidently you aren't a gambler?
No, I'm not a gambler.
Toward the end of university we went to military training camp. Two
of my friends were there, one of whom had gone to Gagry with me.
We spent two months there. It was much easier than the athletic
camps, and we got really bored. The main source of entertainment
was cards. Whoever won went to the village and bought milk from an
old lady. I refused to play, but my friends didn't. And they lost
everything quickly. When they had nothing left, they would come and
plead for money. They were real gamblers. And I would ask myself,
"Should I give them anything? They'll just lose it." And they would
say, "Listen, your few kopecks won't save you anyway. Why not just
give them to us." And I would say to them "Alright. After all, I have a
lowered sense of danger," and hand over the cash.
Boy, did they make out like bandits! They couldn't lose for winning.
And we went to buy milk from the lady every night.
University is a time for romances. Did you have any?
Who didn't? But nothing serious . . . if you don't count that one time.
First love?
Yes. She and I even planned to tie the knot.


 Page 38
When did that happen?
About four years before I actually got married.
So it didn't work out?
That's right.
What got in the way?
Something. Some intrigue or other.
She married someone else?
Someone else? Yes, later.
Who decided that you wouldn't get married?
I did. I made the decision. We had already applied for a marriage
license. Everything was ready. Our parents on both sides had bought
everythingthe ring, the suit, the wedding dress. . . . The cancellation
was one of the most difficult decisions of my life. It was really hard. I
felt like a real creep. But I decided that it was better to suffer then than
to have both of us suffer later.
That is, you literally ran away and left her at the altar?
Almost. Except that I didn't run away. I told her the truthas much of it
as I considered necessary.
Do you not want to talk about it?
No, I don't. It's a complicated story. It's the way it was. It was really
hard.
Do you have any regrets?
No.


 Page 39
Sergei Roldugin:
I liked his girlfriend, she was a pretty girl; a medical student with a strong
character. She was a friend to him, a woman who would take care of him.
But did she love him? I don't know. Lyuda, his wifeor Lyudik, as we call
hernow, she really loves him.
I got along very well with that girl. I think her name was also Lyuda. She
used to worry about his health. It wasn't just, "Oh, honey, how do you
feel?" She would say, "Now, I can tell your stomach is hurting." I don't
know what happened between them. He didn't tell me anything. He just
said that it was all over. I think the falling-out was just between them,
because their parents had agreed to the match.
Vovka suffered, of course. The thing is, we are both Libras and we take
things like that very much to heart. And at that time I saw that he . . . that
his . . . that he was a very emotional person but he simply could not
express his emotions. I often used to tell him that he was terrible at making
conversation. Why did he have such trouble talking?
Of course, he is Cicero now, compared to the way he talked back then. I
used to explain to him, "You talk very quickly, and you should never talk
so quickly." As a stage performer, I thought I could help him out. He had
very strong emotions, but he could not put them into any form. I think his
profession left its imprint on his speech. Now he speaks beautifully.
Expansively, intelligibly, and with feeling. Where did he learn to do that?
So you didn't collaborate with the KGB while you were an
undergraduate?
They didn't even try to recruit me as an agent, although it was a
widespread practice at the time. There were many people who
collaborated with the security agencies. The cooperation of normal
citizens was an important tool for the state's viable activity. But the
main point was the kind of basis this cooperation was established
upon. Do you know what a "seksot" is?


 Page 40
It means secret colleague or collaborator.
Right. But do you know why it has acquired such a negative
connotation?
Ideological.
Yes, ideological. They did political sleuthing. Everyone thinks that
intelligence is interesting. Do you know that ninety percent of all the
intelligence information is obtained from an agent's network made up
of ordinary Soviet citizens? These agents decide to work for the
interests of the state. It doesn't matter what this work is called. The
important thing is upon which basis this cooperation takes place. If it
is based on betrayal and material gain, that's one thing. But if it is
based on some idealistic principles, then it's something else. What
about the struggle against banditry? You can't do anything without
secret agents.*
So when did you join the KGB?
All those years in university I waited for the man at the KGB office to
remember me. It seemed that he had forgotten about me. After all, I
had gone to see him as a school kid. Who would've thought that I
could have such spunk? But I recalled that they didn't like people to
show their own initiative, so I didn't make myself known. I kept quiet.
Four years passed. Nothing happened. I decided that the case was
closed, and I began to work out different options for
* This segment of questions and answers was published in newspapers, but
was not included in the Russian edition of Vladimir Putin's book, First
Person. Several other passages from the interviews that were published
only in newspapers are included in this English edition.


 Page 41
finding employment either in the special prosecutor's office or as an
attorney. Both are prestigious fields.
But then, when I was in my fourth year of university, a man came and
asked me to meet with him. He didn't say who he was, but I
immediately figured it out, because he said, "I need to talk to you
about your career assignment. I wouldn't like to specify exactly what
it is yet."
I picked up on it immediately. If they didn't want to say where, that
meant it was there.
We agreed to meet right in the faculty vestibule. He was late. I waited
for about 20 minutes. Well, I thought, what a swine! Or was someone
playing a prank on me? And I decided to leave. Then suddenly he ran
up, all out of breath.
"I'm sorry," he said.
I liked that.
"It's all arranged," he said. "Volodya, there's still a lot of time, but how
would you feel if you were invited to work in the agencies?"
I didn't tell him that I had dreamed of this moment since I was a
schoolboy. I didn't tell him, because I remembered my conversation in
the KGB office long ago: "We don't take people who come to us on
their own initiative."
And when you agreed to work in the agencies, did you think about
1937?
To be honest, I didn't think about it at all. Not one bit. I recently met
up with some old colleagues from the KGB Directorateguys who I
worked with at the very beginning and we talked about the same
thing. And I can tell you what I said to them: When I accepted the
proposition from the Directorate's personnel department (actually, my
recruiter turned out to be an official in the subdivision that served the
universities), I didn't think about the [Stalin-era] purges. My notion

 Page 42
of the KGB came from romantic spy stories. I was a pure and utterly
successful product of Soviet patriotic education.
You knew nothing about the purges?
I didn't know much. Yes, of course, I knew about Stalin's cult of
personality. I knew that people had suffered and that the cult of
personality had been dismantled. . . . I wasn't completely naïve. Keep
in mind that I was 18 when I went to university and that I graduated at
age 23.
But those who cared to know, knew all about it.
We lived under the conditions of a totalitarian state. Everything was
concealed. How deep was that cult of personality? How serious was
it? My friends and I didn't think about that. So I went to work for the
agencies with a romantic image of what they did.
But after that conversation in the vestibule, I heard nothing more. The
man disappeared. And then there was a phone call; an invitation to the
university's personnel department. Dmitry GantserovI can still
remember his namewas the one to speak to me.
But there was almost a slipup at the employment commission. When
they got to my name, a representative from the department of law
said, "Yes, we're taking him into the bar." Then the agent who was
monitoring the students' assignments suddenly woke uphe had been
asleep somewhere in the corner. "Oh, no," he said. "That question has
already been decided. We're hiring Putin to work in the agencies of
the KGB." He said it right out loud like that, in front of the job-
assignment commission.
And then several days later I was filling out all sorts of application
forms and papers.


 Page 43
They told you they were hiring you to work in intelligence?
Of course not. It was all very systematic. They put it sort of like this:
"We are proposing that you work in the field where we'll send you.
Are you ready?" If the applicant was wishy-washy and said that he
had to think about it, they would simply say, "Okay. Next!" And that
person wouldn't have another chance. You can't pick your nose and
say, "I want this and I don't want that." They can't use people like that.
You evidently said you were ready to work where they sent you?
Yes. Of course. And they themselves didn't even know where I would
be working. They were just hiring new people. It's actually a routine
matter, recruiting personnel and determining who should be sent
where. I was made a routine offer.
Sergei Roldugin:
Vovka told me right away that he was working in the KGB. Practically
right away. Maybe he was not supposed to do that. He told some people
that he was working in the police. On the one hand, I treated these guys
with caution, because I had had some run-ins with them. I had traveled
abroad and knew that there were always people posing as inspectors or
officials from the Ministry of Culture. You had to keep your mouth shut
when you were around them.
I once told a colleague of mine, "Come on, they're normal, they're nice
guys." And he said, "The more you talk to them, the more dirt they will
have in your file at 4 Liteiny Street."*
I never asked Volodya about his work. Of course I was curious. But I
remember once I decided to corner him and find out something about some
special operation. I got nowhere.
*4 Liteiny Street was the address of the KGB headquarters in Leningrad
and currently houses the KGB's successor, the FSB (Federal Security
Service).


 Page 44
Later I said to him, ''I am a cellist. I play the cello. I could never be a
surgeon. Still, I'm a good cellist. But what is your profession? I know,
you're a spy. I don't know what that means. Who are you? What do you
do?"
And he said to me, "I'm a specialist in human relations." And that was the
end of our conversation. And he really did think that he was able to judge
personalities. When I divorced my first wife, Irina, he said, "I predicted
that that's exactly how it would turn out." I disagreedyou couldn't know
what would happen between me and Irina from the start. But his comment
made a big impression on me. I believed what he said: that he was a
specialist in human relations.

 Page 45

PART 4
THE YOUNG SPECIALIST
After a stint in counterintelligence with some stodgy hard-liners, Putin is sent
to the Andropov Red Banner Institute in Moscow for additional training. The
officers quickly take notice of the smart and unflappable trainee. He's offered
a spot in the most coveted of divisions: foreign intelligence. Meanwhile, he
meets a stunning airline stewardess, Lyudmila. He impresses her with hard-
tocome-by tickets for three nights at the theater, procured through his KGB
connections. Their courtship lasts three years. They marry and are transferred
on Putin's first assignment abroad: Dresden, East Germany.

 Page 47
At first they assigned me to the Secretariat of the Directorate, and then
to the counterintelligence division, where I worked for about five
months.
Was it like you imagined it would be? What you were expecting?
No, of course it wasn't what I had imagined. I had just come from
university, after all. And suddenly I was surrounded by old men who
had been in their jobs during those unforgettable times. Some of them
were just about to go into retirement.
One time a group was drafting a scenario. I was invited to join the
meeting. I don't remember the details, but one of the veteran agents
said that the plan should be followed in such-and-such a way. And I
piped up: "No, that's not right." "What do you mean?" he said, turning
to me. "It's against the law,'' I said. He was taken aback. "What law?" I
cited the law. "But we have instructions," he said. Once again I cited
the law. The men in the room didn't seem to understand what I was
talking about. Without a trace of irony, the old fellow said, "For us,
instructions are the main law." And that was that. That's how they
were raised and that's how they worked. But I simply couldn't do
things that way. And it

 Page 48
wasn't just me. Practically all my peers felt the same way.
For several months I went through the formalities and knocked off
some cases. I was sent to agent training for six months. Our school in
Leningrad wasn't too exceptional. My superiors believed I had
mastered the basics but that I needed some field preparation. So I
studied in Moscow, and then came back to Petersburg for about half a
year in the counterintelligence division.
What year was this?
What year? It was at the end of the 1970s. Now people say that was
when Leonid Brezhnev was beginning to tighten the screws. But it
was not very noticeable.
Did you join the Communist Party while you were at the KGB?
To join the intelligence service, you had to be a party member. There
were no exceptions. That rule made for some strange episodes. For
instance, if a person had worked in a security unit for less than a year
and was transferred to another unit. In the interim period, he grew out
of Komsomol age. It was impossible to admit him to the party because
nobody could give him a recommendation. To receive a
recommendation, you had to have worked with a unit for at least a
year. Nobody knew this person for a period longer than a year, so
nobody could recommend him for party membership. He was
ineligible for the Komsomol because of his age and he couldn't be
admitted to the party. An intelligence man has to be a party member,
so he was dismissed from the service. It's ridiculous, but it's true.
They say that security people didn't like party appointees.
That is true. Party appointees were disliked. People who joined the
intelligence service after being full-time party offi-


 Page 49
cials invariably turned out to be good for nothings, loafers and
careerists. There were all kinds, but they usually had overblown egos.
They were brought from some mid-level party post immediately into a
top post with the KGB. They envisioned themselves only as big
directors, and they didn't want to be operatives. Naturally, they always
caused resentment among the professionals.
What other things caused resentment among the professionals?
I know for a fact that they resented it when non-establishment artists
were harassed. In Moscow they used bulldozers to sweep away
paintings. I still don't understand who came up with the ideasome
member of an ideological department in the regional or central party
committees. The KGB objected, saying that it was a stupid thing to
do, but some guy in the ideological department of the Central
Comittee in Moscow put his foot down for reasons I can't understand.
I guess he was just conservative. And because the KGB was a highly
regarded division of the party, they had to do as the party told them.
Did you always think along these lines?
For better or for worse, I was never a dissident. My career was
shaping up well. But you know, a lot of things that our law-
enforcement agencies began indulging in since the 1990s were
absolutely impossible back then. Things were stricter. I'll give you an
example. Let's say a group of dissidents were gathering in Leningrad
for some kind of protest. Let's say it is timed to coincide with the
birthday of Peter the Great. Dissidents in Peter generally timed their
demonstrations to coincide with those sorts of dates. They also liked
the anniversaries of the Decembrists.
They would think up some act of protest and then invite


 Page 50
diplomats and reporters in order to attract the attention of the
international community. What could we do? We couldn't disperse
them because we had no orders to do so. So we would organize our
own laying of the wreaths at exactly the same place where the
reporters were supposed to gather. We would call in the regional party
committee and the trade unions, and the police would rope everything
off. Then we'd show up with a brass band. We would lay down our
wreaths. The journalists and the diplomats would stand and watch for
awhile, yawn a couple of times, and go home. And when they left, the
ropes would come down and anyone who wanted to protest could. But
they wouldn't get any attention.
Did you take part in that activity?
My group was not particularly involved in these activities.
How do you know the details, then?
Nobody made a secret of it. We met in the cafeteria and chatted
openly about it. Why am I saying this? Because what the agents did
was wrong, of course. They were a manifestation of a totalitarian
state. But the way they did things was covert. It was considered
indecent to be too obvious. Things were not always so crude.
And the Sakharov affair wasn't crude?*
The Sakharov affair was crude.
*Dr. Andrei Sakharov, a prominent Russian physicist and human rights
campaigner, was kept under constant KGB surveillance and harassment in
the 1970s and 1980 for his dissident activities. He was arrested for his
outspoken criticism of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 and
exiled without trial to the closed city of Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod).
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev released Dr. Sakharov from exile in
1986 and he was subsequently elected to the Soviet parliament, where he
continued to criticize Soviet human rights violations and suppression of
 democracy until his death in 1989.

 Page 51
Sergei Roldulgin:
Sometimes Vovka and I would go to the Philharmonic after work. He
would ask me about the proper way to listen to a symphony. I tried to
explain it to him. If you ask him about Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, he
can tell you a lot because he loved it terribly when he first heard it and I
explained it to him. And then Katya and Masha took up music. I'm the one
to blame for that.
I'm absolutely convinced that our lecturers with their highfalutin talk about
music are wildly wrong. The propaganda for classical music is really
missing the mark. I explained to Volodya what a normal person should see
and hear. I would say, "Listen, the music has started. That's the peaceful
lifethey're building communism. You hear that chord, ta-ti, pa-pa? And
now the fascistic theme is coming in. Look, there it goesthose brass
instruments are playing. That theme will now grow. And there's the
peaceful theme, from the beginning. The two will clash now, here and
there, here and there." He just loved this terribly.*
Volodya has a very strong character. Let's say I was a better soccer player.
I would lose to him anyway, simply because he's as tenacious as a bulldog.
He would just wear me down. I would take the ball away from him three
times and he would tear it away from me three times. He has a terribly
intense nature, which manifests itself in literally everything. Don't forget:
He was the judo champion for Leningrad in 1976.
Once, right before Volodya went to Germany, we went to visit our friend
Vasya Shestakov at a sports camp. Vasya was a coach for young kids. We
got there at night, and he showed us some cots where we could get some
sleep. In the morning, the kids from the camp woke up and said, "Hey,
look at those two guys. We can take them, no sweat."
The boys went to work out on the mats. They were practicing judo. And
Vasya said to Volodya, "Do you want to fight?" Volodya answered, "What,
are
*Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony was written in 1937, at the height of
Stalin's Great Terror, when millions were being summarily executed or
 deported to hard labor. The composer's "Lady Macbeth of the Mtinsk
District" had been attacked in Pravda (a government newspaper) in 1936.
The Fifth Symphony was interpreted as Shostakovich's response to the
threats against him and the purges of his associates.

 Page 52
you kidding? I haven't stood on a mat for years." So I pitched in: "Come
on! What's wrong with you? Those kids said they could take us with no
sweat. . . ."
And Vasya kept egging him on. "Alright, alright," Volodya finally said.
"You talked me into it." He needed a kimono, and he went up to a kid and
said, "Listen, will you lend me your robe to fight in?'' The kid said rudely,
"Take somebody else's." So Volodya borrowed somebody else's kimono
and came out onto the mat. The rude kid was his opponent. Vovka flipped
that kid so fast that he earned a clear victory right away. Vasya took the
microphone and announced, "And the winner is the master Vladimir Putin,
1976 Leningrad champion!" Volodya took the robe off, gave it back, and
calmly walked away. I turned to the kid and said, "You're lucky I'm not the
one who was fighting you!"
Once, at Eastertime, Volodya called me to go to see a religious procession.
He was standing at the rope, maintaining order, and he asked me whether I
wanted to go up to the altar and take a look. Of course I agreed. There was
such boyishness in this gesture"nobody can go there, but we can." We
watched the procession and then headed home. We were waiting at a bus
stop, and some people came up to us. Not thugs, but students who had
been drinking. "Can I bum a cigarette off you?" one of them asked. I kept
silent, but Vovka answered, "No, you can't." "What are you answering that
way for?" said the guy. "No reason," said Volodya.
I couldn't believe what happened next. I think one of them shoved or
punched Volodya. Suddenly somebody's socks flashed before my eyes and
the kid flew off somewhere. Volodya turned to me calmly and said, "Let's
get out of here." And we left. I loved how he tossed that guy! One move,
and the guy's legs were up in the air.
During my six months in counterintelligence training, the officers
from foreign intelligence began to notice me. They wanted to talk.
First one conversation, then another, then a third and a fourth . . .
Intelligence is always looking for people for themselves, including
people from the security agen-


 Page 53
cies. They took people who were young and had certain appropriate
qualities.
Of course I wanted to go into foreign intelligence. Everyone did. We
all knew what it meant to be able to travel abroad under the conditions
of the Soviet Union. And espionage was considered the white-collar
job in the agencies. There were many people who exploited their
position in order to trade in foreign goods. It was an unfortunate fact.
Naturally, I agreed to go into intelligence, because it was interesting. I
was sent for special training in Moscow, where I spent a year. Then I
returned to Leningrad and worked for awhile in the "first department,"
as we used to call it. The first chief directorate is intelligence. It had
subdivisions in all the large cities of the Soviet Union, including
Leningrad. I worked there for about four and a half years, and then I
went to Moscow for training at the Andropov Red Banner Institute,
which is now the Academy of Foreign Intelligence.
Mikhail Frolov (retired colonel, instructor of the Andropov Red Banner
Institute):
I worked at the Red Banner Institute for 13 years. Vladimir Putin came to
me from the Leningrad Directorate of the KGB with the rank of major.
I decided to try him out in the role of division leader. At the Red Banner
Institute, division leader was not just some sort of illustrious title. A lot
depends on the division leader. You need organizational abilities, a certain
degree of tact, and a businesslike manner. It seemed to me Putin had all
that. He was a steady student, without slips. There were no incidents.
There was no reason to doubt his honesty and integrity.
I remember he once came to my lecture wearing a three-piece suit, despite
the fact that it was 30 degrees Celsius on the street. I was sitting in a short-
sleeved shirt in the heat. Putin thought he had to appear in a business suit. I
even pointed him out as an example to the others: "Look at Comrade
Platov, now!" At the Institute, we didn't use students' real names. That's
 why

 Page 54
Putin wasn't Putin, but Platov. As a rule we usually kept the first letter of
some-one's name. When I went to intelligence school, I was called
Filimonov.
At the Red Banner, we didn't just teach the rules of intelligence and
counterintelligence. We needed to study our traineestheir professional
worth and personal qualities. We had to determine, in the final analysis,
whether a trainee was suitable for work in intelligence.
The training at our institute was a kind of testing ground. I taught the art of
intelligence, for example. What does intelligence mean? It's the ability to
come into contact with people, the ability to select the people you need,
the ability to raise the questions that are of interest to our country and our
leaders, the ability to be a psychologist, if you will. So we had to study
each trainee care-fully. We needed to be as sure of him as we were of our
own right hand. At the end of the course, we wrote an evaluation of each
graduate, which would determine his fate.
We asked all the teachers, from the counterintelligence department to the
physical education department, to write their opinion of the trainees on
paper. Their reports were sent to the head of the training department, who
synthesized all this material and added his own observations, writing an
exhaustive, detailed evaluation of each candidate.
It was hellish work. Each evaluation consisted of only four typewritten
pages, but everything had to be coveredpersonal as well as professional
qualities. We closed for a week or two, and sat and wrote and wrote. At the
end of each evaluation we wrote our conclusion about the suitability or
unsuitability of each graduate for work in intelligence.
One time we had a trainee who performed our assignments like clockwork.
His fine analytical mind helped him to find the best solutions quickly. In
fact, he was so quick that you sometimes had the impression that he knew
the answer even before you asked him a question. But the ability to solve
problems in and of itself is not the highest priority. At the end of his study
I wrote an evaluation that prevented him from working in intelligence.
Unfortunately, his personal qualitieshis careerism and his lack of sincerity
toward his comradesdisqualified him immediately.


 Page 55
For this particular trainee, the evaluation was like a lightning bolt out of
the blue. The evaluation was positive on the whole, but it definitively
blocked his way to a job in intelligence. He was not going to get a
residency as an agent. I had worked in residencies myself, so I knew what
could happen if a boy like this one wound up there. He would start
quarrels and create a tense and nasty atmosphere, which would prevent
people from working productively. So I had to write a negative evaluation.
As for Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin], I can't say he was a careerist. But I
do remember that I wrote about several negative characteristics in his
evaluation. It seemed to me that he was somewhat withdrawn and
uncommunicative. By the way, that could be considered both a negative
and a positive trait. But I recall that I also cited a certain academic
tendency among his negative aspects. I don't mean that he was dry. No, he
was sharp-witted and always ready with a quip.
A very high-ranking graduate commission would then determine how each
trainee would be used. After reading his evaluation, the commission would
summon each graduate, examine him, and determine which division of the
KGB he would be assigned to. As a result of this training, Vladimir
Vladimirovich was assigned to KGB representation in the German
Democratic Republic [GDR, or East Germany].
When I studied at the Red Banner, it was clear from the very
beginning that I was being prepared for Germany because they pushed
me to take German. It was just a question of wherethe GDR or the
FRG [Federal Republic of Germany], East or West.
In order to go to the FRG, you had to work in the appropriate
department of the central office of the KGB. You had to stick it out for
a year or two, or three. It depended on the person. That was one
option. Could I have done that? Sure, in theory.
The second option was to go immediately to the GDR. And I decided
it was better to travel right away.


 Page 56
Were you married at the time?
Yes.
Once, when I was working in the first department in Peter, a friend of
mine called me and invited me to the theater to see a performance by
Arkady Raikin, the comic. He had tickets, and he said there would be
girls there. We went, and there really were girls.
The next day we went back to the theater. I got tickets this time. And
then we went a third time. I began to date one of the girls. We got to
be friends. She was Lyuda, my future wife.
And how long did you date?
For a long time. About three years, probably. I was 29, and I was used
to planning every move. But my friends started saying, "Listen, that's
enough, you should get married."
They were probably envious.
Of course they were. But I knew that if I didn't get married in the next
two or three years, I never would. I had gotten used to the bachelor's
life, but Lyudmila changed all that.
Lyudmila Putina (Putin's wife):
I'm from Kaliningrad. I worked as a stewardess on domestic flights. There
were no international flights to Kaliningrad. After all, it was a closed city.
Our flight crew was small and young.
My girlfriend and I flew to Leningrad for three days. She was also a
stewardess on our crew, and she invited me to the Lensoviet Theater, to a
performance by Arkady Raikin. She had been invited by a boy, but she
was afraid to go by herself, so she invited me along. When the boy heard
that she was inviting me, he brought Volodya.
The three of usmyself, my girlfriend, and her friendmet on Nevsky


 Page 57
Prospect, near the Duma building, where there is a theater ticket office.
Volodya was standing on the steps of the ticket office. He was very
modestly dressed. I would even say he was poorly dressed. He looked very
unprepossessing. I wouldn't have paid any attention to him on the street.
We watched the first hour of the show. During the intermission we went to
the buffet. We had a good time, and I tried to make everyone laugh. But I
was no Raikinnobody was reacting to me much. Still, I wasn't discouraged.
After the show we agreed to meet again and go to the theater. My girl-
friend and I had come for only three days, and we wanted to see a lot of a
cultural things, of course. We understood that Volodya was the kind of
person who could get tickets to any theater.
We met up again the next day, although the friend who had introduced us
didn't come.
Sergei Roldugin:
I bought my first car, a Zhiguli, the original model. I had just finished the
conservatory and landed a job in Mravinsky's Collective. We toured Japan
and all the rest. I had more money than Vovka. I would bring him
souvenirs from my tripsT-shirts and the like.
Once, we agreed to meet on Nevsky. He said, "Two girls will come up to
you and say they're with me. I'll be there within 15 minutes, and then we'll
go to the theater." The girls arrived on time, just as agreed. One of them
was Lyuda. She was very nice. We got into the Zhiguli and began to wait
for him. At first, I felt terribly uncomfortable sitting with them. Some
friends of mine passed by and recognized me, and it was all rather
unfortunate. We sat there for about an hour. I spent the whole time
exhausting these girls with conversation, or so it seemed to me.
Finally, Volodya appeared. He was always late, by the way. We went to the
theater. I don't remember what we saw, of course. No idea. I only
remember those friends who passed by and recognized me.


 Page 58
Lyudmila Putina:
On the second day we went to the Leningrad Music Hall, and on the third
day to the Lensoviet Theater. Three days, three theaters. On the third day,
it was time to say goodbye. We were in the metro. Volodya's friend stood
off to one side. He knew that Volodya was the kind of person who didn't
readily give out information about himself, much less his home telephone
number. But he noticed that Volodya was handing me his telephone
number. After I left, he said to Volodya, "What, have you gone mad?"
Volodya never did things like that.
Did your husband tell you that?
Of course.
And did he tell you where he worked?
He did: in the criminal investigation department of the police. And then
later, I learned that he was in the KGB, in foreign intelligence. For me, at
that time, it didn't matter, whether it was the KGB or the police. Now I
know the difference.
I told her that I worked in the police. That was the identity that
security agents, especially those in intelligence, would use as a cover.
If you blabbed about where you worked, you wouldn't be sent abroad.
Almost everybody had an ID from the criminal investigation office. I
did, too. And that's what I told her. Who knew how our relationship
was going to turn out?
Lyudmila Putina:
During that first trip, I fell in love with Leningrad at first sight. It was
because I had such a good time. A city seems nice and pleasant to you
when you meet nice people there.

 Page 59
But did you fall in love with this unprepossessing, modestly dressed guy?
I fell in love later, and fell hard. But not right away. At first, I just called
him up.
And you, as a nice girl, didn't give him your telephone number?
I didn't have a telephone in Kaliningrad. At first I called him, then I began
to fly to Leningrad for dates. How do most people travel for dates? On a
tram, or a bus, or a taxi. But I flew to my dates.
The Kaliningrad crew did not have any flights to Leningrad. So I was
given three or four days off, and I flew on an ordinary passenger flight.
There was something about Volodya that attracted me. Within three or four
months, I had decided that he was the man for me.
Why? You yourself said he was plain and dull.
Perhaps it was his inner strength, the same quality that draws everybody to
him now.
Did you want to get married?
Just for the sake of getting married? No, never. But to marry Volodyayes.
But you only got married three and a half years later. What did you do all
that time?
I spent three and a half years courting him!
How did he finally make up his mind?
One night we were sitting at his house, and he said, "You know what kind
of person I am by now. In general I'm not

 Page 60
very easygoing." He was being self-critical. He explained that he was the
silent type; that he was rather abrupt in some things and could even insult
people, and so on. He was saying that he was a risky life partner. And he
added: "In three and a half years, you have probably made up your mind."
It sounded to me like we were breaking up. "Yes, I've made up my mind,"
I said. He let out a doubtful "Yes?" Then I was sure that that was it, we
were breaking up. But then he said, ''Well, then, if that's the way it is, I
love you and propose that we get married." So it all came as a complete
surprise to me.
I agreed. Three months later we were married. We had our wedding on a
floating restaurant, a little boat tied up to the riverbank.
We took this event very seriously. You can tell from our wedding portrait
that we were both super-serious. For me, marriage was not a step taken
lightly. And for him, too. There are people who take a responsible attitude
toward marriage.
And did he, as a person who was responsible and reliable, plan where you
were going to live?
There was nothing to plan. We lived with his parents, in a 27-meter-square
apartmenta boathouse, as we used to call them then. You know the kind,
with the high windowsills? It was very hard to exchange it for another.
Only one of the rooms had a balcony, and the windows in the kitchen and
the other room were way up near the ceiling. When you sat at the table,
you couldn't see the street outside, only the wall in front of your eyes. It
was a big minus when you were trying to trade.
Volodya's parents lived in the 15-meter-square room with

 Page 61
the balcony. Our room, the one with no balcony, was 12 square meters.
The apartment itself was in a district of newly constructed apartment
blocks called Avtovo. Volodya's father had received the apartment as a
disabled war veteran.
Did you get along well with his parents?
Yes. His parents treated me like the woman who had been chosen by their
son. And he was their sun, moon, and stars. They did everything they
could for him. No one could do more for him than they did. They invested
their whole lives in him. Vladimir Spiridonovich and Maria Ivanovna were
very good parents.
And how did he treat them?
Enviably. He treated them so kindly. He never offended them. Of course,
on occasion they would be dissatisfied with something and he wouldn't
agree with them, but in that sort of situation he would hold his tongue
rather than cause them pain.
How did you two get along in the early years?
The first year we were married, we lived in total harmony. There was a
continuous sense of joy, as though we were on holiday. Then I got
pregnant with our oldest daughter, Masha. She was born when I was in my
fourth year of school, and Volodya left for a year to study in Moscow.
You didn't see each other all that time?
I visited him once a month in Moscow. And he came to visit two or three
times. It was impossible for him to come more often.

 Page 62
Sergei Roldugin:
One day he came from Moscow for a few days and somehow he managed
to break his arm. Some punk was bugging him in the metro, and he socked
the guy. The result was a broken arm. Volodya was very upset. "They're
not going to understand this in Moscow. I'm afraid there are going to be
consequences," he said. And there really was some unpleasantness, but he
didn't tell me any of the details. Everything turned out okay in the end.
Lyudmila Putina:
His training led to a trip to Germany. He was supposed to go to Berlin, but
then a friend of Volodya's recommended him to the station chief in
Dresden. The friend was also a Leningrader and worked in Dresden. His
tour of duty was coming to an end, so he recommended Volodya for the
job. The job in Berlin was considered more prestigious and the work was
apparently more interesting, since it involved travel to West Berlin. In fact,
I never learned the facts, and Volodya would never tell me. We never had a
conversation on this topic.
Sergei Roldugin:
They suited one another in all respects. Of course, she began to display
some temper later on. She isn't afraid of speaking the truth. And she isn't
afraid to talk about herself. Once I bought a rocking chair and couldn't fit it
into the trunk of my car, no matter how I tried. She started giving me
advice: "You have to turn it this way, and not that . . ." But there was no
way it was going to fit into the car, and it was heavy, to boot. I said,
"Lyuda, be quiet." She almost went into hysterics. "Why are you men all
so stupid?" she yelled.
Lyuda is an excellent hostess. Whenever I came to visit, she always
whipped something up fast. She's a real woman, who could stay up all
night having a good time, and still clean up the apartment and cook the
next morning. . . .
Lyuda is five years younger than me. Before becoming a stewardess,
she studied at a technical college. She dropped out during her third
year. She was trying to decide where to

 Page 63
go, when she and I met. She wanted advice on where to go to school. I
said she should go to the university. She decided to apply to the
philology faculty, first to the preparatory department. Then she went
to the Spanish department and began to take languages. She learned
two languages, Spanish and French. They also taught Portuguese
there, but she didn't study that much. And when we went to Germany,
she learned to speak German fluently.
Sergei Roldugin:
Before they left for Germany, Masha was born. My former father-in-law
had a dacha near Vyborg, a wonderful place, and after we picked Lyuda up
from the maternity hospital we all went out there and spent some time
togetherVolodya, Lyuda, my wife, and I. Of course, we celebrated the birth
of Masha. We had dances in the evenings. "Hold the thief, hold the thief,
it's time to catch him!" Vovka could move well, although he didn't seem
particularly good at ballroom dancing.
Before we left for Germany, they had to put Lyudmila through a
security clearance. They began this process while I was studying in
Moscow. At that point I still didn't know where I would be posted; but
wherever it was, it would place stringent demands on my family
members. For example, one's wife had to be in good health and be
able to work in a hot and humid climate. Imagine you've gone through
five years of training, and then, when you're finally ready to go
abroad, into the field, to work, your wife can't go due to poor health.
That would be terrible!
They checked Lyudmila out thoroughly. They didn't tell her about it,
of course. They called her into the university personnel department
when it was all over, and reported that she had passed the special
clearance procedure. So we went to Germany.



My mother Mariya Ivanovna Shelomova

My father Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin

 Grandad was a cook for Lenin and Stalin.

After he was wounded, my father worked on a collective farm.
 My father in the navy in 1932.

 With my mother in July, 1958

With my parents before I left for Germany in 1985

 Grandma Olya lived her whole life in the country.

Sasha Grigoriev (right) runs the FSB in the St. Petersburg-Leningrad region.

 Three photos of me in the KGB

 My favorite portrait of Lyudmila.

 I proposed to Lyudmila and three months later we married.
I married late in life, in 1983, when I was already thirty.

 My first daughter, Masha, was born in 1985.

These are my lovely ladies.
 At the dacha with our poodle Toska.

 Masha, on the right, wants to become a
manager, and Katya an interior designer.

 Judo is not just a sport. It's a philosophy.


 Clinton is very charming. (September 1999 in Aukland, New Zealand)

Boris Nicholayevich Yeltsin's birthday, February 1, 2000.

A few seconds later Boris Nicholayevich turned to me and said, ''Take care of Russia."


 Page 65

PART 5
THE SPY
Though the standard of living is high and the beer is good, the Putins find
East Germany a backward place. The country seems stuck in a totalitarian
state that Russia left three decades before. Putin is shocked by the atmosphere
of fear and stagnation. Then the Berlin Wall falls and chaos breaks out. Mobs
ransack the Stasi headquarters. They surround the KGB offices. Panicked,
Putin calls for military backup, but receives this ominous answer, "Moscow is
silent." He suddenly feels as though everything is falling apart, as though the
Soviet Union has simply disappeared.

 Page 67
You came to the KGB in 1975 and resigned in 1991. Sixteen years.
How many of them did you spend abroad?
Not even a full five. I worked only in the GDR, in Dresden. We went
there in 1985 and left after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1990.
Did you want to go abroad?
I did.
But the KGB was working officially in the GDR and the other
socialist countries. As one of your former colleagues said, the GDR is
a province, from the perspective of foreign intelligence-gathering.
Probably. Actually, from that perspective, Leningrad is also a
province. But I was always quite successful in these provinces.
But this wasn't like The Sword and Shield, was it? What about the
romance of intelligence?
Don't forget that by that time, I had already worked in the agencies for
10 years. How romantic do you think that was?
Intelligence was always the fanciest organization in the

 Page 68
KGB. The agents lived abroad for years. You could spend three years
in a capitalist country or four to five in the socalled socialist camp.
Then you'd go for nine months of retraining in Moscow and go abroad
once again. I have a friend who worked in Germany for 20 years and
another who worked there for 25 years. When you come home for
nine months between trips, you don't fully integrate back into life.
When you come home from serving abroad, it's hard to get used to our
reality. You're more aware of what's going on. We young people
would talk with our older colleagues. I don't mean the really old ones
who remember the Stalin era, but people with work experience. And
they were a generation with entirely different views, values, and
sentiments.
One of my friends worked in Afghanistan as head of a security group.
When he returned home, we grilled him a lot. Do you remember what
it was like here then? Everything that was connected to Afghanistan
was a constant "Hurrah!" We all felt very patriotic. So we talked to
him, and I asked him how he felt about his work in Afghanistan. You
see, his signature was required for missile launchings. Without his
signature, the decision to bomb would not be made. His answer to my
question came as a shock to me: "You know, I judge the results of my
work by the number of documents that I did not sign." That really
stunned me. After conversations like that, you start to think and
rethink things. A person we respected was saying this. These people
were authorities in the best sense of the word. And suddenly their
opinion was at odds with the customary, established clichés. In
intelligence at that time, we were allowed to think differently. And we
could say things that few normal citizens could permit themselves to
say.


 Page 69
Lyudmila Putina:
We arrived in Dresden in 1986. I had graduated from university by that
time. Masha was a year old and, we were expecting a second child. Katya
was born in Dresden. I only knew the German I had learned in school, no
more.
I did not receive any special instructions before the trip. I just went
through a medical exam and that was it. Our people worked completely
legally in the GDR, after all. We lived in the building that housed the
German state security, the Stasi. Our neighbors knew where we worked,
and we knew where they worked. Although perestroika had already begun
in the USSR, they still believed in the bright future of communism.
What did you do in Germany?
The work was political intelligenceobtaining information about
political figures and the plans of the potential opponent.
Is it correct to say you were involved in "intelligence from the
territory"?
More or less, although that phrase generally means foreign
intelligence-gathering from the territory of the USSR [about other
countries], and we were working from the territory of East Germany.
We were interested in any information about the "main opponent," as
we called them, and the main opponent was considered NATO.
Did you travel into West Germany?
No, not once while I was working in the GDR.
So what exactly did you do there?
The usual intelligence activities: recruiting sources of information,
obtaining information, analyzing it, and sending it to Moscow. I
looked for information about political


 Page 70
parties, the tendencies inside these parties, their leaders. I examined
today's leaders and the possible leaders of tomorrow and the
promotion of people to certain posts in the parties and the
government. It was important to know who was doing what and how,
what was going on in the Foreign Ministry of a particular country,
how they were constructing their policy on certain issues and in
various areas of the world, and how our partners would react in
disarmament talks. Of course, in order to obtain such information, you
need sources. So recruitment of sources, procurement of information,
and assessment and analysis were big parts of the job. It was very
routine work.
Lyudmila Putina:
We did not discuss work at home. I think the nature of my husband's work
made a difference. There was always a principle at the KGB: Do not share
things with your wife. They told us that there had been incidents when
excessive frankness had led to unfortunate consequences. They always
proceeded from the premise that the less the wife knew, the better she'd
sleep. I socialized fairly often with the Germans, and if one of my
acquaintances was undesirable, Volodya would let me know.
Life in the GDR was probably better than in Peter?
Yes, we had come from a Russia where there were lines and
shortages, and in the GDR there was always plenty of everything. I
gained about 25 pounds, and weighed about 165.
And how much do you weigh now?
165.

 Page 71
What happened?
Let me tell you honestly . . .
The beer?
Of course! We used to go to a little town called Radeberg, where there
was one of the best breweries in East Germany. I would order a three-
liter keg. You pour the beer into the keg, you add a spigot, and you
can drink straight from the barrel. So I had 3.8 liters of beer every
week. And my job was only two steps from my house, so I didn't
work off the extra calories.
And no sports?
There were no facilities there. And we also worked a lot.
Lyudmila Putina:
We lived in a service apartment in a German building. It was large, with 12
entryways. Our group took up five apartments. Volodya's driver and his
wife lived in another building. And there were four other apartments with
military intelligence nearby. All the rest were Germans who worked at the
GDR state security.
Our group worked in a separate buildinga German mansion that was
surrounded by a wall. It had either three or four flours, I don't remember.
But it was only a five-minute walk from our apartment to that building.
From the window of his office, Volodya could see little Katya in day care.
In the morning he would take Masha to the day-care center, which was
right under the windows of our apartment, and then take Katya to the
nursery.
They always came home for lunch. All of the guys would have lunch at
home. Sometimes they would come to our house in the eveningsfriends
from work, sometimes Germans too. We were friends with several
families. It


 Page 72
was fun. We talked about nothing special, told jokes and anecdotes.
Volodya knows how to tell a joke well.
On the weekends we would take trips outside the city. We had a service
car, a Zhiguli. This was considered a pretty good car in the GDR, at least
compared to the local Trabants. Getting a car in those days in the GDR
was as difficult as it was in the Soviet Union. So, on the weekends, we
would take trips with the whole family. There were many beautiful places
outside Dresden. Saxony was only 20 to 30 minutes away. We would take
a walk, have some hot dogs and beer, and then head home.
You had some evident successes when you worked in Dresden.
My work went well. It was normal to be promoted while working at a
foreign posting. I was promoted twice.
What was your job title when you came to the GDR?
I was a senior case officer. My next job was assistant to the head of
the department. That was considered quite a good advance. And then I
was promoted to senior assistant. There was nothing higher. Above
me was the top managerial level, and we only had one boss. So as an
incentive, I was made a member of the Party committee of the KGB
representation in the GDR.
There are reports that you took part in an operation called Lightbeam.
I don't know, exactly. I wasn't involved in it. I don't even know if it
was executed or not. As far as I can remember, it involved working
with the political leadership of the GDR. I didn't have anything to do
with it.

 Page 73
But people say that you were the one who controlled the former
secretary of the Dresden regional committee of the SED, Hans
Modrow.*
I met Modrow a few times at official receptions. That was the extent
of our acquaintance. He socialized with people of a different rankthe
commander of the army, our senior communications officer. And, in
general, we didn't work with Party functionaries. Including our own,
by the way. It was prohibited.
And you weren't the one to obtain the documentation about the
Eurofighter bomber?
I wasn't involved in technical intelligence. I didn't do that line of
work. Why have they made up so much about me? It's complete
nonsense!
Well, they wanted to portray you as a super-spy. And you're denying
everything. But then why did you get promoted?
For concrete results in my workthat's what it was called. Success was
measured by the quantity of realized units of information. If you
procured information from the sources you had at your disposal, put it
together, and sent it to the relevant offices, you would obtain the
appropriate evaluation.
You are answering like an intelligence officer. In other words, you're
not really answering. Take Markus Wolf, the former head of East
German intelligence. He insulted you. He says
*In the fall of 1989, Hans Modrow was secretary of the Communist Party
(SED) in Dresden and responsible for "emergency situations" while large,
peaceful, anti-GDR demonstrations were taking place there nightly. He
refrained from suppressing the antigovernment demonstrations and was
made prime minister at the height of the agitation against the Communist
government (1989-1990). His government and party were soundly
 defeated in the momentum for German reunification.

 Page 74
that the bronze medal that you received, with the inscription ''For
services to the National People's Army of the GDR," is a medal that
they gave to practically every secretary, provided she didn't have any
gross violations in her record.
Markus Wolf is entirely correct. And there is nothing offensive in
what he said. Just the opposite. He just confirmed that I didn't have
any gross violations in my record. The only thing is that my medal, I
believe, doesn't say "for services" but says "for outstanding services to
the National People's Army of the GDR."
You're not expecting any sensational publications about yourself, for
example, in Germany?
No. To be honest, no.
It's kind of funny to read all that nonsense in the papers. I'm baffled to
read that the Western countries are looking for agents whom I
recruited. It's all baloney. Our friends, as we called the GDR security
agents, have copies of everything we produced. It is all preserved in
their archives. Therefore it is impossible to say that I was involved in
some sort of secret operations that were out of sight of the local GDR
government agencies or the security agencies. A large part of our
work was done through citizens of the GDR. They are all on the
roster. Everything is transparent and understandable. And German
counterintelligence knows about all of this.
I did not work against the interests of Germany. That's absolutely
obvious. Moreover, if it had been otherwise, I wouldn't have been
allowed to visit any Western country. I wasn't a high-ranking official
then. But I have traveled a lot of places since then, including
Germany. Some of the GDR state security officers even wrote letters
to me when I worked


 Page 75
in St. Petersburg as vice mayor. And at a reception I once said to the
German consul, "Please note that I receive letters, and that these are
my personal connections. I understand that you have a campaign now
against former state security agents. They are being captured and
persecuted for political reasons. But these are my friends, and I will
not renounce them." He replied, "We understand everything, Mr.
Putin. Everything is clear." They knew perfectly well who I was and
where I had come from. I didn't hide it.
Lyudmila Putina:
Of course life in the GDR was very different from life in Russia. The
streets were clean. They would wash the windows once a week. There was
an abundance of goodsnot like what they had in West Germany, of course,
but still better than in Russia. There was one detail that surprised me. It
was trivial should I even mention it? It was the way German women would
hang out their clothes. In the morning, before work, about 7:00 A.M., they
would go out in the backyard. And each housewife would stretch a rope
between these metal poles, and then she would hang her laundry out on the
lines in very, very neat rows, with clothespins. They were all alike.
The Germans were very orderly in their daily life, and their standard of
living was better than ours. I think the GDR state security people got
higher salaries than our guys, judging from how our German neighbors
lived. Of course we tried to economize and to save up enough money to
buy a car. Then, when we returned home, we bought a Volga. Some of
Volodya's salary was paid in German marks and some in dollars. But we
did not spend much money, except on food. We didn't have to spend any
money on anything. We lived in a government apartment with
government-issued dishes.
Really, we sat on our suitcases and dreamed of returning home. At the
beginning, we were really homesick. But we were pretty comfortable in
the GDR. Four years passed, and in four years a foreign country and a
foreign city


 Page 76
can become almost like your own. When the Berlin Wall fell and it was
clear this was the end, we had the horrible feeling that the country that had
almost become our home would no longer exist.
If German counterintelligence, as you say, knows everything about
your activity in the GDR, then that means that it knows about
everything and everyone you worked with in your intelligence group.
Your entire agents' network is ruined.
We destroyed everythingall our communications, our lists of contacts
and our agents' networks. I personally burned a huge amount of
material. We burned so much stuff that the furnace burst.
We burned papers night and day. All the most valuable items were
hauled away to Moscow. But it no longer meant anything in terms of
operations. All of the contacts were cut off. Work with the information
sources was stopped for security reasons. The materials were
destroyed or sent into the archives. Amen!
When was that?
In 1989, when they began to break into the directorate of the Ministry
of Security in the GDR. We were afraid they would come for us, too.
But you can understand the people who broke into the Ministry of
Security, can't you?
You can. Only the way in which they expressed their protest was
upsetting.
I stood in the crowd and watched it happen. People were breaking into
the Ministry of Security (MGB). A woman shouted: "Look for the
passageway under the Elba! There are


 Page 77
prisoners there being tortured in water up to their knees!" What
prisoners? Why under the Elba? True, there was a jail cell used for
interrogations, but obviously it wasn't under the Elba.
This was a backlash, of course. I understood those peoplethey were
tired of being watched by the MGB, especially because the
surveillance was so totally invasive. They saw the MGB as a monster.
But the MGB was also part of society. It was infected with the same
sicknesses. There were all kinds of people who worked there, but the
people I knew were decent people. I was friends with many of them,
and I think that the way they are now being castigated isn't right. It's
the same thing the MGB system did to the civil society of East
Germany, to its people.
Yes, there probably were some MGB agents who engaged in
persecution of people. I didn't see it. I don't want to say that it didn't
happen. But I personally did not see it.
In a sense, the GDR was a real eye-opener for me. I thought I was
going to an Eastern European country, to the center of Europe. It was
already the end of the 1980s. And suddenly, when I talked with people
from the MGB, I realized that both they themselves and the GDR
were going through something the Soviet Union had gone through
many years before.
It was a harshly totalitarian country, similar to the Soviet Union, only
30 years earlier. And the tragedy is that many people sincerely
believed in all those Communist ideals. I wondered at the time: if
some changes in the USSR begin, how would it affect the lives of
these people? The alarmists got it right. It was hard to imagine that
such abrupt changes could take hold in the GDR. No one could have
ever imagined it!


 Page 78
And we didn't know how it would end. Of course we had begun to
suspect that the regime would not last long. Perestroika had already
begun in our countrymany closed subjects were now being discussed
openly. But in the GDR, that sort of talk was totally taboothey were
trying to totally preserve their society. Families had been torn apart.
Some relatives lived on one side of the Wall, some on the other.
Everyone was followed. Of course that wasn't normal. It wasn't
natural.
But they didn't touch you when they broke into the MGB?
Well, crowds gathered around our building, too. Alright, the Germans
tore apart their own MGB. That was their own internal affair. But we
weren't their internal affair. Those crowds were a serious threat. We
had documents in our building. And nobody lifted a finger to protect
us.
We were prepared to defend ourselves against the crowd, and we
would have been within our rights to do so, under an agreement
between our ministries and governments. We were forced to
demonstrate our readiness to defend our building. And that
determination certainly made an impression on them, at least for
awhile.
Did you have bodyguards?
Yes, several.
You didn't try to go out and talk with people?
After a while, when the crowd grew angry, I went out and asked
people what they wanted. I explained to them that this was a Soviet
military organization. And someone shouted from the crowd: "Then
why do you have cars with German license plates in the parking lot?
What are you doing here, anyway?" It was as if they were saying, "We
know what

 Page 79
you're up to." I explained that we had an agreement, which allowed us
to use German license plates. "And who are you?" they shouted. "You
speak German too well." I replied that I was a translator.
These people were in an aggressive mood. I called our group of forces
and explained the situation. And I was told: "We cannot do anything
without orders from Moscow. And Moscow is silent." After a few
hours our military people did finally get there. And the crowd
dispersed. But that business of "Moscow is silent"I got the feeling
then that the country no longer existed. That it had disappeared. It was
clear that the Union was ailing. And it had a terminal disease without
a curea paralysis of power.
Lyudmila Putina:
I saw what happened to my neighbors when all those revolutionary events
started in the GDR. My neighbor, who was my friend, cried for a week.
She cried for her lost ideals, for the collapse of everything that she had
believed in her whole life. For them, it was the collapse of everythingtheir
lives, their careers. They were all left without jobs. There was a ban on
their profession. Katya had a teacher in the day-care center who was an
educator by profession. After the fall of the Wall, she no longer had the
right to work in day care and educate children. They had all been officers
of the MGB. She went through a psychological crisis, but then somehow
she pulled herself together and went to work in a home for senior citizens.
Another German friend from the GDR found a job with a Western firm.
She had worked there for a long time and was quite successful, when
suddenly her boss, in the midst of a heated discussion, said that all people
from the GDR were dense, uneducated, and incompetentthat they were
second-class citizens. She listened to all this and said, "But I'm from the
GDR. Do you think I'm incompetent as well?" Her boss fell silent. He had
no retort because there was nothing wrong with her work.


 Page 80
Did you suffer when the Berlin Wall fell?
Actually, I thought the whole thing was inevitable. To be honest, I
only really regretted that the Soviet Union had lost its position in
Europe, although intellectually I understood that a position built on
walls and dividers cannot last. But I wanted something different to
rise in its place. And nothing different was proposed. That's what hurt.
They just dropped everything and went away.
Later, back in Peter, I had a very interesting meeting with Kissinger,
and he confirmed what I already thought. There was a commission
called the Kissinger-Sobchak Commission, founded to develop St.
Petersburg and to attract foreign investment. Kissinger came to our
city several times. Once I met him at the airport. We got into a car and
went to the residence. On the way, he asked me where I was from and
what I was doing. He was an inquisitive old fellow. He looks like he is
nodding off to sleep, but in fact he sees and hears everything. We
spoke through an interpreter. He asked me, "Have you worked here
long?" I replied that it had been about a year. "Where did you work
before that?" asked Kissinger.
"At the Leningrad City Council," I replied.
"And before the Leningrad City Council?"
"At the university."
"And before the university?"
"I was in the army before that."
"In what troops?"
"Well," I thought to myself. "Now I'm going to upset you, Mr.
Kissinger."
"I worked in intelligence," I said.
"Did you work abroad?" he asked calmly.
"Yes," I said. "In Germany."
"East or West?"

 Page 81
"East."
"All decent people got their start in intelligence. I did, too," said
Kissinger.
Then he said something that was completely unexpected and very
interesting. "You know, I am very much criticized for the position I
took regarding the USSR back then. I believed that the Soviet Union
should not abandon Eastern Europe so quickly. We were changing the
balance in the world very rapidly, and I thought it could lead to
undesirable consequences. And now I'm being blamed for that
position. People say, 'See, the Soviets left, and everything's normal.
You thought it was impossible.' But I really did think it was
impossible." Then he thought a while and added, "Frankly, to this day
I don't understand why Gorbachev did that."
I had never imagined I might hear something like that from the lips of
Henry Kissinger. I told him what I thought, and I will repeat it to you
right now: Kissinger was right. We would have avoided a lot of
problems if the Soviets had not made such a hasty exit from Eastern
Europe.

 Page 83

PART 6
THE DEMOCRAT
Disillusioned with the KGB, Putin decides to embark on an academic career.
He returns to Leningrad University intending to write his doctoral
dissertation, but is persuaded to work for Anatoly Sobchak, the chair of the
City Council, instead. He throws himself into politics. As Sobchak's deputy, he
gets involved in the economic and political reconstruction of St. Petersburg
and helps Sobchak in his bid to become mayor. But then things get rough.
Lyudmila has a terrible car accident; their dacha is destroyed by fire; and
Sobchak looses the mayoral elections. Putin resigns from the Council to plot
his next move.

 Page 85
Did you ever think that the KGB had become obsolete?
I was offered a job in the central office in Moscow, but I turned it
down. Why? I knew that there was no future to the system. The
country didn't have a future. And it would have been very difficult to
sit inside the system and wait for it all to collapse around me.
Sergei Roldugin:
I remember how confused and upset Volodya felt about the collapse of the
whole intelligence network in Germany. He would say, "You just can't do
that! How can you do that? I know that I can be wrong, but how can the
most highly qualified professionals be mistaken?" He was very
disenchanted. I said to him, "You know, Volodya, don't get me started."
Then he said, "I'm going to leave the KGB!" And I said to him, "There's no
such thing as a former intelligence agent.''
Volodya spoke from the heart, and I believed him. But how can you escape
the knowledge and information in your mind? You can stop working at this
organization, but its worldview and way of thinking remain stuck in your
head.
The work we did was no longer necessary. What was the point of
writing, recruiting, and procuring information? Nobody at Moscow
Center was reading our reports. Didn't

 Page 86
we warn them about what was coming? Didn't we provide them with
recommendations on how to act? There was no reaction. Who wants
to work for nothing? To spend years of your lifewhat for?just to get
paid?
Let's say, for example, that my friends in scientific and technical
intelligence paid several million dollars for some information about an
important scientific discovery. It would have cost our country billions
of dollars to independently develop the same project. My friends
would procure this information and send it to the Center. People there
would look at it and say, "Wonderful. Great information. Thanks.
Kisses. We'll recommend you guys for medals." But then they
wouldn't use the intelligence. They wouldn't even try, because the
technical level of our industry simply didn't allow for it.
In short, when we returned from Germany in January 1990, I
continued to work in the agencies, but I began to think quietly about a
backup plan. I had two children, and I couldn't afford to throw
everything away. What could I do?
Sergei Roldugin:
When Volodya came back from Germany, he told me that he had been
offered a promotion in Moscow or Peter. We discussed which position
would be better, and I said, "In Moscow, they're all bosses. There are no
normal people there. One guy has an uncle in the ministry, another has a
brother, a third has a brother-in-law. And you don't have anybody. How
will you make it there?" Volodya thought for a while and then said, "But
Moscow . . . there are prospects there." But I could see that he was clearly
leaning toward staying in St. Petersburg.
I was happy to go "undercover" at Leningrad State University (LGU).
I wanted to write my doctoral dissertation, check


 Page 87
out the university, and perhaps get a job there. So in 1990, I became
assistant to the president of the university, responsible for
international liaison. I was in the "active reserves."
Lyudmila Putina:
We followed perestroika and were aware of everything that went on from
1986 to 1988, but only from television. We heard people's stories about the
happy mood of those years.
But when we returned home, I didn't notice any changesthere were the
same terrible lines, the ration cards, the coupons, the empty shelves. For a
while after we returned home I was even afraid to go to the store. I wasn't
able, like some people, to sniff out all the bargains and to stand in all the
lines. I would just dart into the nearest store, buy whatever was most
necessary, and go home. It was horrible.
Besides, we hadn't accumulated savings while working in Germany. The
car ate up all our money. Our German neighbors did give us their old
washing machine, a 20-year-old model. We brought it back home, and
used it for five more years.
The situation changed for my husband at work. Despite the fact that, as far
as I could tell, his work in Germany had been successful, he was clearly
thinking about what to do next. I think at a certain point he felt that he had
lost touch with his life's real purpose. And of course it wasn't easy, parting
with the past and making the decision to go into politics.
At that time, the president of LGU was Stanislav Petrovich Merkuriev.
He was a good man and a brilliant academic.
I began to write my dissertation, and chose Valery Abram-ovich
Musin, one of the top specialists in international law, as my academic
adviser. I chose a topic in the field of international private law and
began to draft an outline for my work.
At the university, I reestablished contact with my old friends from the
law faculty. Several of them had stayed on


 Page 88
there, defended their dissertations, and become instructors and
professors. One of them asked me to help Anatoly Sobchak, the chair
of the Leningrad City Council. Sobchak needed someone good on his
team. Apparently he was surrounded by crooks. Would I go and work
for him? "You know, I have to think about it," I said. "I'm a KGB
personnel officer, after all. And he doesn't know that. I could
compromise him." ''Just talk to him," my friend said.
I should note that by that time Sobchak was already a famous and
popular person. I had followed him with great interestfollowed what
he did and said. True, I didn't like everything I saw, but he had gained
my respect. It was even nicer that he'd been a teacher in the university
where I had studied. Back when I was a student, I didn't have any
personal connections to him. Some people have written that I was
practically his favorite student. That's not true. He was just one of our
lecturers for one or two semesters.
I met Anatoly Aleksandrovich Sobchak at his office in the Leningrad
City Council. I remember the scene very well. I went in, introduced
myself, and told him everything. He was an impulsive man, and said
to me right off: "I'll speak to Stanislav Petrovich Merkuriev. Come to
work starting Monday. That's it. We'll make the agreement right now,
and you'll be transferred." I couldn't help but say, "Anatoly
Aleksandrovich, I would be happy to do this. I am interested. But
there is one circumstance that might be an obstacle to this transfer."
"What?" he asked. I replied, "I must tell you that I am not just an
assistant to the president, I'm also a staff officer of the KGB." He was
silent for a moment. I must have really surprised him. He thought and
thought, and then suddenly he said, "Well, screw it!"
Of course I wasn't expecting that reaction. This was our


 Page 89
very first personal encounter. He was a professor, a doctor of law,
chair of the Leningrad City Council. I didn't expect such frank talk.
Then he said, "I need an assistant. Frankly, I'm afraid of going out into
the reception area. I don't know who those people are."
The people in Sobchak's outer officehis closest cohortswere harsh and
rude in the best traditions of the Komsomol, the Soviet school. This
disturbed the city council deputies and led to a conflict between
Sobchak and the city council. Since I understood this, I told Anatoly
Aleksandrovich that I would be happy to come and work for him, but
that I would first have to tell my bosses at the KGB and resign from
my post at the university.
This was a fairly delicate moment for me. It was difficult to tell my
superiors that I intended to change jobs.
I went to my boss and said, "Anatoly Aleksandrovich is proposing
that I leave the university and go to work for him. If it's impossible,
I'm ready to resign." They replied: "No. Why? Go and work there.
There's no question about it."
My superiors, who were fairly subtle people and understood the
situation, did not try to impose any conditions on me. Therefore,
although I was formally listed in the security agencies, I hardly ever
set foot in the directorate building.
What's interesting is that the bosses never once tried to use me for any
operations. I think they understood that it would have been pointless.
Moreover, at that moment, everything, including the law-enforcement
agencies, was falling apart.
Vladimir Churov (deputy chair of the Committee for Foreign Liaison of
the St. Petersburg mayor's office):
Before 1991, the offices in Smolny were clearly divided. The big bosses


 Page 90
had two portraits hanging in their officesof Lenin and Kirovand those who
were a rank below them had only Lenin's portrait. After they took the
portraits down, empty hooks were left on the walls and everyone could
pick what he wanted to hang in his office. Most guys selected a portrait of
Yeltsin. Putin ordered himself a portrait of Peter the Great. Two portraits
were brought to him for selection. One was a romantic painting of a
young, curly-headed Peter wearing epaulettes; and the otherthe one Putin
chosewas an engraving. It was one of the last portraits of Peter the Great
when his reforms were at their most active; right after the failed Prussian
campaign and the Northern war, when Peter laid the foundations of the
Russian Empire.
I think that Vladimir Vladimirovich chose that portrait of Peter on purpose.
It was a rare and little-known picture. Peter looked rather mournful and
preoccupied.
On one occasion my colleagues from the agencies tried to exploit my
proximity to Sobchak. Sobchak used to go on business trips and was
frequently out of town. He would leave me to run the office. One day
he was in a big rush before a trip, and his signature was needed on a
document. The document wasn't quite finished, but Sobchak couldn't
wait for it. So he took three clean sheets of paper, put his signature at
the bottom, and gave them to me, saying "Finish it up," and left.
That same evening my colleagues from the KGB came to see me. We
spoke about this and that, and then they mentioned how great it would
be to have Sobchak's signature on a certain document. Couldn't we
discuss it? But I was a seasoned personI had survived so many years
without one slip-upand I sized up the situation right away. I took out
the folder and showed them the blank sheets of paper with Sobchak's
signature. And they and I understood that this was testimony to the
great degree of trust that Sobchak had in me.


 Page 91
"Can't you see that this man trusts me?" I said. "What do you want
from me?" They immediately backed off. ''No more questions," they
said. "Sorry." And everything was nipped in the bud.
Still, it was an abnormal situation because, after all, I continued to get
a salary from them, which, by the way, was more than I was getting at
the city council. But soon circumstances arose that forced me to think
about writing a letter of resignation.
Relations with the deputies in the city council were not always
smooth, mostly because they lobbied someone's interests. Once a
deputy came up to me and said, "You know, we have to help so-and-
so. Could you do such and such?" I had already put him off several
times. One day he said to me, "There are bad people hereall sorts of
enemiesand they've sniffed out that you're a KGB agent. You have to
foil them. I'm prepared to help you, but you have to do me a favor."
I realized that they wouldn't leave me alone. They would blackmail
me, pure and simple. So I made a difficult decision and wrote my
letter of resignation. I was just sick and tired of that brazen blackmail.
It was a very difficult decision for me. Although I had done virtually
no work for the agencies in almost a year, my whole life was still tied
up in them. Besides, it was 1990. The USSR hadn't collapsed yet. The
August coup hadn't taken place. No one was sure about where the
country was going. Sobchak was a prominent politician, but it was
risky to tie my future to his. Everything might unravel at a moment's
notice. And I also had a hard time imagining what I'd do if I lost my
job at the mayor's office. I thought that if worse came to worst, I
would go back to the university and finish my dissertation and earn
some money somewhere part-time.


 Page 92
I had a stable spot in the agencies, and people treated me well. My life
in the system had been full of successes. And still I wanted to leave.
Why? I couldn't quite put my finger on it. It was the hardest decision
of my life. I thought for a long time, collected myself, sat down, and
in one quick draft, wrote my resignation letter.
After I turned in my resignation, I decided to announce publicly that I
had worked in the security agencies. I turned to my friend Igor
Abramovich Shadkhan, the film director, for help. He was a talented
man. His most famous film was Test for Adults, and he worked in the
television studio in Leningrad at that time. I came to him and said,
"Igor, I want to speak openly about my professional past so that it
stops being a secret and so that no one can blackmail me with it."
He taped an interview in which he asked me in detail about my work
at the KGB, what I had done, when I had served in intelligence, and
so on. The tape was shown on Leningrad television, and the next time
someone came along hinting about my past, I immediately said,
"That's enough. It's not interesting. Everyone already knows about
that."
But my letter of resignation had gotten stalled somewhere. Somebody,
somewhere, apparently just couldn't make a decision. So when the
coup happened, I was still an active KGB officer.
Where were you on the night of August 18-19, 1991?*
I was on vacation. When it all started, I was really worried because I
was way out in the sticks. I got back to Leningrad
* August 18-19, 1991, was the date of Russian president Boris Yeltsin's
resistance to the attempted coup by Soviet hard-liners, which led to the
breakup of the USSR in December 1991.


 Page 93
on the 20th. Sobchak and I practically moved into the city council.
Well, not just us twoa whole bunch of people were camped out there,
and we were there with them.
It was dangerous to drive out of the cty council compound, but we
wanted to take some active measures. We drove to the Kirov Factory
and to other plants to speak to the workers. But we were nervous. We
even passed out pistols, although I left my service revolver in the safe.
People everywhere supported us. It was clear that if someone tried to
disrupt the situation, there would be a huge number of casualties. But
then that was it, the coup was over, and they chased away the coup-
plotters.
What did you yourself think of them?
It was clear that they were destroying the country. In principle, their
goalpreserving the Soviet Union from collapsewas noble, and they
probably saw it that way. But the means and methods they chose only
pushed the country further toward collapse. Once I saw the faces of
the coup-plotters on TV, I knew right away that it was all over.
But let's say the coup had ended the way the plotters had planned.
You're an officer of the KGB. You and Sobchak probably would have
been tried.
But I was no longer a KGB officer. As soon as the coup began, I
immediately decided whose side I was on. I knew for sure that I
would never follow the coup-plotters' orders. I would never be on
their side. I knew perfectly well that my behavior could be considered
a crime of office. That's why, on August 20, I wrote a second
statement resigning from the KGB.


 Page 94
But what if it had been blocked like your first letter?
I immediately warned Sobchak of that possibility. "Anatoly
Aleksandrovich," I said. "I already wrote one letter, and it died
somewhere. Now I have to write again." Sobchak immediately called
Vladimir Kryuchkov [then KGB chief], and then he called the head of
my KGB division. The next day, they informed me that my
resignation memo had been signed. Kryuchkov was a true believer in
Communism, who sided with the coup-plotters. But he was also a
very decent man. To this day I have the greatest respect for him.
Did you suffer?
Terribly. In fact, it tore my life apart. Up until that time I didn't really
understand the transformation that was going on in Russia. When I
had come home from the GDR, it was clear to me that something was
happening. But during the days of the coup, all the ideals, all the goals
that I had had when I went to work for the KGB, collapsed.
Of course it was incredibly difficult to go through this. After all, most
of my life had been devoted to work in the agencies. But I had made
my choice.
Have you read the things that were published in Moskovskiye Novosti
and Ogonyok in those days? For instance, General Kalugin's
exposures?*
*Oleg Kalugin served the KGB for 30 years, but eventually broke with the
world of KGB secrecy, and, during the perestroika years under Mikhail
Gorbachev, campaigned for public accountability among the security
services. Kalugin was stripped of his many KGB decorations by KGB
hard-liners in 1990. They were restored the following year.


 Page 95
Kalugin is a traitor. I saw Kalugin during my time in Leningrad when
he was deputy head of the Directorate. He was an absolute loafer.
A loafer, perhaps, but he remembers you.
He doesn't remember anything.
He does remember, and he says that from the point of view of the
intelligence service, you worked in a province and had nothing to
show for your performance.
Oh, he doesn't remember a thing. He couldn't remember me. I had no
contact with him, nor did I meet him. It is I who remembers him,
because he was a big boss and everybody knew him. As to whether he
knew me, there were hundreds of us.
Vladimir Churov:
A few months after the coup, the House of Political Enlightenment, which
had belonged to the Communists, was given to the city. Fairly soon
afterward an international business center was opened there. But the new
leaders treated the Communists generously and left them part of the
building. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation occupied almost
a whole wing of the building, along with other Communist organizations.
There was a flagpole on the roof of the building. The Communists decided
to use it to hang a red flag. And each time the new city leaders drove out of
Smolny, they would see that red flag. It was perfectly visible from the
windows in Sobchak's and Putin's offices.
Putin gave the order to have the flag removed. But the next day it appeared
again. Putin gave the order againand again the flag was taken down. Back
and forth it went. The Communists began to run out of flags and started
using all sorts of things. One of their last versions wasn't even red but

 Page 96
more of a dark brown. That put Putin over the edge. He found a crane, and
under his personal supervision, had the flagpole cut down with a
blowtorch.
When did you leave the Party?
I didn't. The CPSU ceased to exist. I took my Party card and put it
away in a drawer.
How did St. Petersburg get through 1993?
It was just like Moscow, only people didn't shoot each other. The
mayor's office was in the Smolny building by then, and the deputies
were in the Leningrad City Council building.
So there was basically the same kind of conflict in Peter as Yeltsin had
with the Supreme Soviet [parliament]?
Yes. But it is important to note that there wasn't the same division
between the law-enforcement agencies that there had been in 1991.
The FSB* leadershipViktor Cherkesov was the headannounced their
support for the mayor from the start. The FSB introduced a number of
measures advocating the arrest of extremists who were plotting
provocations, planning to blow things up, or trying to destabilize the
situation. And that was the end of it.
Marina Yentaltseva (Putin's secretary from 1991 to 1996):
The first time I saw Vladimir Vladimirovich was from behind the glass
door of an office. I was sitting across from the door and putting on my
lipstick. Suddenly I saw the new director of the Committee for Foreign
Liaison walking down the hall, and I thought, "Uh-oh, now he definitely
won't hire me for the job." But everything was fine. He pretended that he
hadn't noticed a thing, and I never put my lipstick on at work again.
*The FSB (Federalnaya sluzbha bezopasnosti) is Russia's Federal
Security Service. It replaced the KGB. Putin was named director of the
FSB in 1998.


 Page 97
I wouldn't say that he was a strict boss. Only people's stupidity would
make him lose his temper. But he never raised his voice. He could be strict
and demanding and yet never raise his voice. If he gave an assignment, he
didn't really care how it was done or who did it or what problems they had.
It just had to get done, and that was that.
Vladimir Churov:
In 1991, Sobchak decided to create the Committee for Foreign Liaison at
the Leningrad City Council. It was headed by Vladimir Putin.
At that time, the city's foreign trade was in the same shape as the whole
country's. It was dominated by state monopolies and monstrous,
governmentauthorized firms such as Lenfintorg or Lenvneshtorg. Customs,
banking, investment, the stock market, and other such structures simply
didn't exist.
The Committee had to quickly create the preconditions for cooperation
with Western market economies. They began by opening the first branches
of Western banks. With Putin's active involvement, they opened branches
of Dresdner Bank and Banque Nationale de Paris.
The city administration concentrated on attracting foreign investors. The
Committee created investment zones, such as the Parnas zone and the
Pulkovo Heights zone, that still exist to this day. They also developed an
original scheme: They invited a large investor, Coca-Cola, to take over a
plot of land in Pulkovo Heights and install high-capacity power and
communications cables, hoping that other companies would follow suit. It
worked. After Coca-Cola developed their piece of land, Gillette came, then
Wrigley, and then some pharmaceutical companies. An economic zone
thus took shape within the city, where total investment now exceeds half a
billion dollars.
Furthermore, with the Committee's encouragement, the city's infrastructure
began to be modernized to create the conditions necessary for successful
business. The first major deal that Putin supported was the completion of a
fiber-optic cable to Copenhagen. This project had been initiated back in
the Soviet era but never completed. Now the efforts were successful,
 providing St. Petersburg with world-class international telephone
connections.

 Page 98
Finally, there was the problem of personnel. There were few specialists
who spoke foreign languages. With Sobchak's support, Putin created a
faculty of international relations at LGU. The first class was announced in
1994. Graduates of the program are now working in our Committee and in
other organizations.
Much has been written in the St. Petersburg press about the food
delivery scandal. What was that?
In 1992, there was a food crisis in the country, and Leningrad
experienced big problems. Our businessmen presented us with a
scheme: If they were allowed to sell goods mainly raw
materialsabroad, they would deliver food to Russia. We had no other
options. So the Committee for Foreign Liaison, which I headed,
agreed to their offer.
We obtained permission from the head of the government and signed
the relevant contracts. The firms filled out all the necessary
paperwork, obtained export licenses, and began exporting raw
materials. The customs agency would not have let anything out of the
country without the correct paperwork and accompanying documents.
At the time, a lot of people were saying that they were exporting
certain rare earth metals. Not a single gram of any metal was
exported. Anything that needed special permission was not passed
through customs.
The scheme began to work. However, some of the firms did not
uphold the main condition of the contractthey didn't deliver food from
abroad, or at least they didn't import full loads. They reneged on their
commitments to the city.
A deputies' commission was created, headed by Marina Salye, who
conducted a special investigation.
No, there wasn't any real investigation. How could there be? There
was no criminal offense.

 Page 99
Then where does this whole corruption story come from?
I think that some of the deputies exploited this story in order to
pressure Sobchak into firing me.
Why?
For being a former KGB agent. Although they probably had other
motives too. Some of the deputies wanted to make money off those
deals, and they wound up with nothing but a meddlesome KGB agent.
They wanted to put their own man in the job.
I think the city didn't do everything it could have done. They should
have worked more closely with law enforcement agencies. But it
would have been pointless to take the exploiters to courtthey would
have dissolved immediately and stopped exporting goods. There was
essentially nothing to charge them with. Do you remember those
days? Front offices appeared all over the place. There were pyramid
schemes. Remember the MMM company? We just hadn't expected
things to get so far out of hand.
You have to understand: We weren't involved in trade. The Committee
for Foreign Liaison did not trade in anything itself. It did not make
purchases or sales. It was not a foreign trade organization.
But the granting of licenses?
We did not have the right to grant licenses. That's just it: A division of
the Ministry for Foreign Economic Relations issued the licenses. They
were a federal structure and had nothing to do with the municipal
administration.

 Page 100
Sergei Roldugin:
Volodya changed a lot when he went to work at the mayor's office. We
began to see less and less of each other. He was very busy. He would leave
the house early and come back at night. And of course he was tired. Even
when we grilled shish kebabs out at the dacha, he paced along the fence,
lost in thought, in another place. He became wholeheartedly involved in
St. Petersburg's affairs and then his emotions were drained. He had become
a pragmatist.
Marina Yentaltseva:
The Putins had a dog, a Caucasian sheepdog called Malysh. The dog lived
at the dacha and used to dig under the fence all the time and try to get out-
side. One day she did finally dig her way out, and she got hit by a car.
Lyudmila Aleksandrovna scooped her up and took her to a veterinary
clinic. She called from the vet's office and asked me to tell her husband
that they weren't able to save the dog.
I went into Vladimir Vladimirovich's office and said, "You know . . . we
have a situation . . . Malysh was killed." I looked at him, and there was
zero emotion on his face. I was so surprised at the lack of any kind of
reaction that I couldn't contain myself and said, "Did someone already tell
you about it?" And he said calmly, "No, you're the first to tell me." And I
knew I had made a blunder.
In fact, he is a very emotional man. But when he has to, he can hide his
feelings. Although he also knows how to relax.
One night my friends and I went to an erotic show in Hamburg.
Actually, it was hardly erotic. It was crude. And we were there with
our wives! They were traveling abroad for the first time, and they had
talked me into it. "Maybe it's better not to go?" I said. "No, no, we
have to. We're grown-ups." "Well, alright," I said. ''Remember that
you're the ones who wanted to."
We went in, sat down at a table, and the show began. Some black
performers came out on the stagea huge black


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man, about two meters tall, and a black woman, who was just a little
girl. Slowly they began to strip to some good music. Suddenly,
without taking her eyes off the pair, my friend's wife got up from the
table, stood, and thenbang! fainted. It was a good thing her husband
caught her, or she would have hit her head.
We revived her and took her into the bathroom, where we rinsed her
face. We went up to the second floor and were walking around when
the performers, who had just finished their number and come off the
stage, passed bystark naked. My friend's wife saw them andbang!she
fainted again.
We sat down at the table. "How are you feeling?" I asked my friend's
wife. Lowering her eyes, she replied, "I think it's something I ate.
Everything's fine. It will pass." I said, "No, let's go. We've seen
everything. We've gotten in touch with the sublime. Now let's scram."
Whenever there was a problem, I was there as a scout who knew the
German language. It wasn't my first trip to Hamburg. You won't
believe me, but I was assigned to study their red-light district as part
of my job. At that time we were trying to bring order to the gambling
business in St. Petersburg.
I don't know whether I was right, but I thought that the government
should have a monopoly over the gambling business. My position
contradicted the new Law on Anti-Monopoly Activity, but I still tried
to do everything in my power so that the government could
established strict control over the gaming industry.
We created a municipal enterprise that did not own any casinos but
controlled 51 percent of the stock of the gaming businesses in the city.
Various representatives of the basic oversight organizationsthe FSB,
the tax police, and the tax inspectoratewere assigned to supervise this
enterprise. The


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idea was that the state, as a stockholder, would receive dividends from
its 51 percent of the stock.
In fact, this was a mistake, because you can own tons of stock and still
not really control something. All the money coming from the tables
was cash and could be diverted.
The casino owners showed us only losses on the books. While we
were counting up the profits and deciding where to allocate the
fundsto develop the city's businesses or support the social sectorthey
were laughing at us and showing us their losses. Ours was a classic
mistake made by people encountering the free market for the first
time.
Later, particularly during Anatoly Sobchak's 1996 election campaign,
our political opponents tried to find something criminal in our actions
and accuse us of corruption. They said the mayor's office was in the
gambling business. It was almost comical to read this. Everything that
we did was so absolutely transparent.
You can only argue about whether our actions were correct from an
economic point of view. Obviously, the scheme was ineffective and
we didn't achieve what we had planned. We hadn't thought things
through sufficiently. But if I had remained in Peter, I would have
squeezed those casinos to the end and forced them to work for the
betterment of society and to share their profits with the city. That
money would have gone to pensioners, teachers, and doctors.
Vladimir Churov:
We had an unpleasant incident when Vice President Al Gore visited our
city. When the vice president was being met at the airport, an official of
the U.S. Consulate General in St. Petersburg was rude to one of our city
leaders. I don't remember exactly what happened, but I think the U.S.
official pushed the district commander. After that incident, Vladimir Putin
 issued an official

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statement that we would refuse to deal with this U.S. official in the city
administration. The U.S. ambassador to Russia came to resolve the
conflict. He eventually recalled not only that official but the consul general
as well. As a result, Putin had the greatest respect for the entire U.S.
diplomatic corps.
Yet another international political clash took place, in Hamburg in March
1994. The president of Estonia, Lennart Meri, who incidentally was well
acquainted with Putin and Sobchak, indulged in some crude attacks against
Russia in a public speech at a seminar of the European Union. Putin and
some other Russian diplomats were in the hall. After Meri made yet
another derogatory remark, referring to Russians as "occupiers," Putin got
up and walked out of the room. This was a brave act; the meeting took
place in the Knights' Hall, with its 30-foot-high ceilings and smooth
marble floor. As Putin exited, his footfalls echoed across the floor. To top
it all off, the huge steel door slammed behind him with a resounding crash.
As Putin later told it, he had tried to hold the door open, but it was too
heavy. Our Foreign Ministry commended his action after the fact.
Marina Yentaltseva:
Vladimir Vladimirovich always seemed so calm when dealing with foreign
delegations and people of very high rank. Usually when you talk to big
bosses, you feel shy or uncomfortable. But Vladimir Vladimirovich was
always at ease. I envied him and wondered how I could learn to be that
way. So I was surprised when his wife told me that he was fairly shy by
nature and that he had to work hard to seem at ease with people.
It was easy talking to him. Although at first glance he seems very serious,
in fact it is easy to joke with him. For example, he would say,"Call
Moscow and set up an appointment for a meeting at a specific time so that
I don't have to sit in the waiting room and waste a hell of a lot of hours."
And I would reply, "Yes, just like the people waiting in your front office."
He would give me a mock-scolding look. "Marina!"
I had a good relationship with his wife, Lyudmila Aleksandrovna. She and
I would talk just like good acquaintances. I remember one time when I was
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guest in their home and we were sitting in the kitchen drinking tea.
Vladimir Vladimirovich telephoned. She told him, "Marina and I are
drinking tea." And he probably said, "Which Marina?" because his wife
answered, "What do you mean, which Marina? Your Marina!"
We grew especially close after Lyudmila Aleksandrovna had the car
accident.
In 1994, I was involved in negotiations with Ted Turner and Jane
Fonda about holding the Goodwill Games in St. Petersburg. They had
come in person, and I was accompanying them to all their meetings.
They had a very tight schedule.
Suddenly I got a call from my secretary, telling me that Lyudmila had
been in an accident. "Is it serious?" I asked. "No, apparently not. But
the ambulance took her to the hospital just in case." "Let me try to get
out of this meeting and go to the hospital," I said.
When I arrived at the emergency room, I spoke with the chief
physician, who assured me, "Don't worry, she's not in any danger.
We're just going to put a splint on, and everything will be fine." "Are
you sure?" "Absolutely," he said. So I left.
Lyudmila Putina:
I was driving our Zhiguli and was going through a green light. Katya was
asleep in the back seat. And suddenly another automobile came crashing
into the side of our car. It was going about 80 kilometers an hour. I didn't
even see it. I had the green light and didn't even look to the right. The
other car had run a red light, swerving around another car that had stopped
for the light.
We were fortunate that the driver crashed into the right front side of the
car. If he had hit the front or back door, one of us would probably have
been killed.
I lost consciousness for about half an hour, and when I woke up, I wanted
to keep driving but I realized I couldn't. I hurt a little, and I was exhausted.


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When the ambulance picked me up and gave me a sedative, I remember
thinking, "Lord, now I'll catch up on my sleep!" I had not gotten enough
sleep for several weeks.
My first thought, of course, was about my daughter. "What's happened to
my child? My child was sitting in the back seat," I said immediately. And I
gave one of the bystanders the telephone number of Volodya's assistant,
Igor Ivanovich Sechin, so that he could come and pick Katya up, since the
accident had taken place about three minutes away from Smolny. There
was one bystander who was very concerned and helped me the most. She
called the ambulance, she called Sechin, she took care of Katya, and she
stayed nearby through the whole thing. Then she left her telephone number
and it got lost somewhere in the car. That was too bad. I have wanted to
thank her ever since.
The ambulance was summoned right away, but it took 45 minutes to get
there. The doctors examined me and thought that my spine was broken. I
was too timid to tell them to take me to the Military Medical Academy, to
Yuri Leonidovich Shevchenko, so I was taken to another hospital, a place
where people with traumas are always taken. The hospital was horrible. It
was full of people who were dying. There were gurneys in the hallway
with dead bodies on them. I'll remember it for the rest of my life. It was
called the October 25th Hospital. If I had stayed there, I probably would
have died, since they had no intention of operating on my spine. I don't
think they even knew how.
Furthermore, they didn't even notice the fracture at the base of my skull. I
would have suffered post-traumatic meningitis with a fatal outcome.
Marina Yentaltseva:
A woman called our office and said "Lyudmila Aleksandrovna asked me to
call you. She's been in an accident. She asked me to telephone." What
should I do in a situation like this? Vladimir Vladimirovich wasn't in his
office. He was in the meeting with the foreigners. One of his deputies took
a car, went to pick up Katya, and brought her right to the office in Smolny.
I kept asking, "Katya, what happened?" And she said "I don't know. I was
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lying on the back seat. When the car crashed, she was probably thrown and
knocked out.
At first I thought that Lyudmila Aleksandrovna was okay because she was
in the doctors' care. And I needed to take the little girl to a doctor because
she was bruised and seemed subdued. We went to a doctor right at Smolny,
and he advised me to take her to a pediatrician.
We went to a children's neurologist at the pediatric institute to see if Katya
had suffered a concussion. The doctor couldn't really tell us, but said that
the child needed some peace and quiet. The doctor asked her what had
happened, but Katya wasn't in any condition to explain anything. She was
probably in shock.
The driver who had brought Katya to Smolny said that Lyudmila
Aleksandrovna had been conscious when the ambulance came for her. I
thought to myself, "Well, that's alright, then, it can't be too bad." Later I
called the hospital to find out what the diagnosis was. Nobody told me
anything about a skull fracture or a cracked vertebra.
Still, we were wondering. Vladimir Vladimirovich asked me to phone Yuri
Leonidovich Shevchenko at the Military Medical Academy. He wasn't
there. I phoned a second time, a third, a fourth, a fifth time, and he still
wasn't there. Finally, late in the evening, I got a hold of him. And he
immediately sent his surgeons over to remove Lyudmila Aleksandrovna
from the hospital and bring her to his clinic.
So Dr. Shevchenko, the current Minister of Health, is someone you
know well?
No, we didn't have a close relationship, even after my wife's accident.
It's just that he's a real doctor. About four years ago, in 1996, during
the first Chechen war, he removed a bullet from a soldier's heart. The
bullet had plunged into the soldier's heart muscle, and the guy
managed to stay alive. He flies to Peter on the weekends and does
operations. He's a real doctor.


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Lyudmila Putina:
Valery Yevgenevich Parfyonov brought me to the clinic. He saved my life
by taking me out of the operating room. My ear was torn and they had
decided to sew it up. They had left me naked on the table in a freezing
operating room, in a terrible state of half-consciousness, and had gone
away. When Valery Yevgenevich came, they told him, "She doesn't need
anything. We just did an operation. Everything's fine."
He came into the operating room. I opened my eyes, and found an officer
standing in front of me, holding my hand. He had a very warm palm. It
warmed me up, and I knew that I had been saved.
They did an X ray at the Military Medical Academy and told me that I
needed an emergency operation on my spine.
Marina Yentaltseva:
Lyudmila Aleksandrovna was staying with the children at the government
dacha outside of town. Masha was still in school. When the accident
happened, Lyudmila and Katya were on their way to pick her up. Katya
was sick that morning and had not wanted to go anywhere, but she had
asked to come along to pick up Masha.
Now I had to face picking up Masha and figuring out what to do with the
children. I said to Vladimir Vladimirovich, "Let me take the girls out to
my mother's house." He said, "No, that's awkward; but if you would agree
to spend the night with the girls out at the dacha, I'd be very grateful."
"Okay," I said.
On the way to the dacha we passed the second hospital where Lyudmila
Aleksandrovna had been taken, and I saw Vladimir Vladimirovich's car.
He was getting ready to leave. I asked the driver to pull over, and I got out
of the car. "The girls are in the car," I told him. He went over to them, and
I went into the hospitalthey wouldn't allow the children in.
Lyudmila Aleksandrovna had just been operated on. She was conscious,
and she asked me whether I had taken some warm clothing for the girls. It
had gotten very cold that day, and there might not be warm things at the
 dacha.

 Page 108
When we were getting ready to leave, Vladimir Vladimirovich said that he
would try to come back later but most likely wouldn't make it because his
meetings would probably go late into the night.
The driver dropped us off at the dacha and left. But he forgot to tell us how
to turn the heat on in the house, and it was terribly cold. The girls behaved
beautifully. When we got to the house, they became helpful: "Aunt
Marina, you have to take the blanket down from there, and the sheets are
over here," they explained. They weren't in shock, and they didn't go
weeping off into the corner. They tried to help.
The girls, of course, understood that it was all very serious. When we were
on our way to the dacha and passed the hospital, and they saw their papa's
car, they immediately asked "Is this where Mama is?" How did they know
she had been taken to a new hospital? We hadn't told them about taking her
to the Academy, so as not to worry them.
I put the girls in the same bed so they would be warm enough. At about
three in the morning, I was startled by a knock on the door. I was
frightened because there was no one else at the dacha. But it turned out
that it was Vladimir Vladimirovich, who had at last gotten free from Ted
Turner. He immediately found the switch and turned on the heater.
I had never seen him like this. I can't say that he was thrown for a loop and
totally at a loss and didn't know what to grab on to. That wasn't the case. I
just sensed that he was trying to come up with a plan in his head. Still, I
never saw Vladimir Vladimirovich like this.
He came home at three in the morning, and left again at seven. I stayed
with the girls until evening, when Ykaterina Tikhonovna, Lyudmila
Aleksandrovna's mother, came from Kaliningrad.
How did she know?
I had sent her a telegram. Lyudmila Aleksandrovna might have been angry
when she found out, but I did it anyway. I asked her to comeof course,
with Vladimir Vladimirovich's


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consent. She stayed with the children until Lyudmila Aleksandrovna was
released from the hospital.
Did she take a long time to recover?
She spent about a month and a half or even two months in the hospital.
They also discovered a fracture at the base of her skull. That worried them
much more than the crack in her spine.
Lyudmila Putina:
After the spinal operation, I lay in the intensive care unit and I kept telling
the doctors that my jawbones were shifting around. And they kept joking,
"Don't worry, we'll put in new ones." But then the surgeon who had
operated on me decided to check it out, and just in case, to take an X ray.
That's when they found the fracture at the base of my skull. They did
another operation and began to treat me. I realize now that the doctors had
great doubts about whether I was going to survive. I was lucky to make it
out in one piece.
I only regret that they made incisions on both sides of my neck, front and
back. Before the accident, it was a lot prettier.
Were you frightened at the diagnosis?
No, not particularly, because I was in intensive care, and delirious. I was
just very sorry about my neck. I began to cry. When Valery Yevgenyevich,
the surgeon, found out why I was crying, he said, "What a little fool! Her
spine and skull are fractured, and she's crying because of some scars on
her neck!"
I did cry. I was afraid those scars would be visible. In fact they turned out
to be hardly noticeable.
Marina Yentaltseva:
She was in the hospital ward, in a room with four people, when she
discovered the skull fracture herself. Vladimir Vladimirovich and the girls
and I visited her all the time.


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Lyudmila Putina:
When I got out of the hospital, I just crawled around my apartment for the
first two weeks. Then, gradually, I began to be able to do things. In the
end, it took me about two to three years to get back to my normal life.
Sergei Roldugin:
Once Volodya came to my dacha with his driver. We sat and talked for a
while and then went to bed. And I noticed he put an air gun down next to
him. Evidently something was amiss. I said, ''Vovka, what are you doing?
Do you think an air gun is going to save you?" "It won't save me," he said.
"But it makes me feel calmer."
This happened in the last days of his job at the mayor's office, when
Sobchak's electoral campaign was just getting off the ground.
From the outset, it was clear that the mayoral elections in 1996 would
be very complicated for us. I warned Anatoly Aleksandrovich
Sobchak that these elections were going to be hard.
In 1992, I had played a definitive role in Sobchak's election as the first
popularly elected mayor of the city. As chair of the Leningrad City
Council under the old system, Sobchak could have been removed by
the council members at any moment. He needed a more stable
position.
Sobchack finally agreed that we had to introduce the post of mayor.
But because he had fairly conflictual relations with the majority of the
deputies on the council, he wasn't sure that the proposition would
pass. Meanwhile, his public popularity was very high. The deputies
knew that Sobchak would be elected mayor if they voted to introduce
the post. And they didn't want that. They liked the fact that they could
always keep him on a hook.
Still, I was able to convince some of the deputies that it would be best
for the city if we had the mayoral post. I also


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managed to mobilize the heads of the city districts. They didn't have
the right to vote, but they could influence their deputies.
In the end, the decision to introduce the post of mayor was passed by
the Leningrad City Council, by a margin of a single vote.*
Four years later it was clear that in order to win an election, he would
need professional campaign managers and techniciansnot just a guy
who could finesse the deputies. This was a whole new ball game.
You gave Sobchak some advice on how he should run the campaign?
I told him right off, "You know, you're on a completely different
playing field now. You need specialists." He agreed, but then he
decided that he would conduct his own electoral campaign.
Out of overconfidence?
It's hard to say. You know, running a campaign, bringing in
specialistsall of this costs money. And we didn't have any. Sobchak
had been under investigation for a year and a half on allegations that
he had bought an apartment with city funds. But in fact he didn't have
any money either for an apartment or for an election campaign. We
were not extracting funds from the city budget. It never even entered
our heads to find the money we needed that way.
Yakovlev got the funds he neededat Moscow's expense. He was
supported by the very same people who orchestrated the campaign
against Sobchak.
*The title for Sobchak was mayor, a new title introduced for the
democraticallyelected chair of the city council in the democratic reform
period of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The name of the top leadership
post in St. Petersburg was restored to governor in 1996 when Governor
Yakolev was elected.


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Korzhakov played an active role against him . . .
According to the information we had, Soskovets did, as well. The law-
enforcement agencies were brought in later. They played very dirty.
About a year and a half before the elections, a commission came to St.
Petersburg from Moscow. The commission had been appointed by the
heads of three agencies: the FSB, the Interior Ministry, and the
prosecutor's office. They opened up several criminal cases and made
Sobchak a witness in two of them. During the election campaign,
someone sent an inquiry to the Prosecutor General's office, asking
whether Sobchak was involved in any criminal investigations. The
very same day the answer came back: Yes, there were two criminal
cases under investigation. Naturally, they didn't explain that he was a
witness, not a suspect, in these cases. The reply from the Prosecutor
General's office was duplicated, and flyers were dropped over the city
from a helicopter. The law enforcement agencies were interfering
directly in a political contest.
Sobchak decided to run his own campaign office. Lyud-mila
Borisovna, his wife, got involved, and he pronounced her campaign
manager. We tried to talk both of them out of this, because we weren't
convinced that everyone in the campaign office would be willing to
take orders from her.
We lost a lot of time debating about who should run the campaign.
Aleksei Kudrin, who was also a deputy of Sobchak's, got involved.
But Sobchak asked me to continue to work in city affairs. Somebody
had to manage the economic activity of a city with a population of
five million citizens during that period. At the last minute, between
the first and second rounds, Kudrin and I tried to jump into the fray,


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but by then it was hopeless. We really blew it on the election.
For some time after our defeat in the mayoral elections, I stayed in my
office in Smolny. The second round of the presidential elections was
underway, and I was working for the St. Petersburg headquarters of
Yeltsin's campaign. Vladimir Yakovlev, former governor of Leningrad
oblast, now elected mayor of St. Petersburg, didn't kick me out of my
office right away; but as soon as the presidential elections were over, I
was asked rather harshly to free up the space. By that time I had
already turned down Yakovlev's offer to keep my post as deputy
mayor. He had made the offer through his people. I thought it would
be impossible to work with Yakovlev, and I conveyed that to him.
Besides, during the campaign, I was the one who had initiated a
statement signed by all the officials in the mayor's office that we
would all leave Smolny if Sobchak lost. It was important to express
our solidarity, so that all the people who worked with Anatoly
Aleksandrovich and his administration would realize that his defeat
would be a defeat for them, too. It was a good stimulus to get them all
involved in the struggle.
We called a press conference and made a public statement, which I
read. So it was impossible for me to remain behind in the mayor's
office after Sobchak lost.
Furthermore, I had attacked Yakovlev during the election campaign. I
don't remember the context now, but in a television interview I had
called him a Judas. The word seemed to fit, and I used it.
Although my relations with Yakovlev didn't improve after that, oddly
enough they also didn't deteriorate. Still, I couldn't stay behind with
him. The same went for many of my colleagues. Misha Manevich
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want to get your advice. Yakovlev is offering me the job of vice
mayor." I said, "Misha, of course you should take it." And he said to
me, "How can I? We all agreed that we'd leave." I said to him, ''Misha,
what are you talking about? It was a campaign; we had to do that. But
how can you leave all this? Who will work here? The city needs
professionals." I talked him into staying.
Misha was an amazing guy. I am so sorry that he was murdered. It
was such an injustice. Whose toes did he step on? It's just shocking.
He was so mild, well mannered, and flexible in the best sense of the
word. He had principles. He didn't accommodate everybody, but he
never got on his high horse. He always looked for a way out, for an
acceptable solution. I still don't understood how he could have been
murdered. I just don't understand it.
Besides Misha, I talked several other colleagues into staying. Dima
Kozak, who was head of the legal department, had already handed in
his letter of resignation, and I talked him into coming back. But all
told, a lot of people left Smolny.
Marina Yentaltseva:
I wrote my letter of resignation on the last day Vladimir Vladimirovich
worked at Smolny. I left without having anywhere to go. There was no
back up plan for me.
It had been hard working with Putin, but very interesting. It's always
interesting, working with smart people. And I couldn't imagine ever
working with anyone else. Vladimir Vladimirovich guessed my sentiments
even before I handed in my resignation. He began to try to talk me out of
it. "Marina, why have you decided to leave? Don't go," he said. He said
that he didn't know where he was going to be working, and that he wasn't
sure that he would be able to offer me a job in the future. I replied,
"Regardless of whether you can offer me anything in the future or not, I
still am not going to work here."


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When I took my letter of resignation in for his signature, my eyes were
wet. He noticed it, and tried to reassure me. "Marinochka, don't get so
upset." I tried to get hold of myself. "Alright, that's it, I won't anymore."
And he said, "Don't get so upset, please."
Of course I really suffered heavily through all this. I was sad to come to
the end of such an interesting and quite meaningful period in my life. Still,
I was absolutely certain that everything would work out fine for Vladimir
Vladimirovich. I knew that such a smart person would not remain on the
shelf for long.
In July, my family and I moved to the dacha that I had built several
years earlier. I waited expectantly. Everyone was saying that I was "so
needed by everybody" and that someone would definitely call me.
Anatoly Sobchak had said he would definitely make me an
ambassador. He had talked to Primakov. He told me, "I spoke to the
minister. You'll be an ambassador." Of course I doubted that anyone
would send me anywhere as an envoy, but it was awkward telling
Sobchak the truth. I couldn't say "Anatoly Aleksandrovich, that's a
total fantasy! You and I have no more hope of seeing an
ambassadorship than we have of seeing our own ears!" And I was
right.
Anatoly Aleksandrovich Sobchak was an emotional man. He liked to
be the center of attention and to be talked about. It seemed to me that
it didn't matter to him whether people were damning or praising him.
At the start of his job at the Leningrad City Council, Sobchak
indulged in several sharp attacks on the army. He called the generals
"blockheads," even though he didn't mean it, which I know for a fact.
Sobchak had a positive attitude toward the army. But once when he
was reaching for a snappy phrase in a public speech before a
sympathetic audience, he used the word, and it was a mistake.


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The generals really loathed him. Once there was a military meeting
that he, as a member of the military council of the Leningrad Military
District, was supposed to attend. It was on his calendar. But Alla
Borisovna Pugacheva, the popular singer, was supposed to arrive in
Leningrad at the same time. He said to me, "Listen, call the generals
and tell them that I can't make it." He just wanted to meet Pugacheva.
The generals had already moved their meeting once to accommodate
his schedule. "You have to go," I told him. "Well, tell them I'm sick!"
he said. And he went off to the airport to meet Pugacheva.
I called the commander, "You know, Anatoly Aleksandrovich is
unable to come. He is sick." "Really? Alright, well, thanks for telling
me." Two weeks later, I met the commander, and he said to me,
insulted, "So he was sick, huh?" It turned out he had seen Sobchak
meeting Pugacheva at the airport on television and that he had gone to
her concert. And then he made an unkind remark about Lyudmila
Borisovna, although she had nothing to do with it. ''So he has time to
meet with those . . . even when he's sick. And he has no time to be
involved with government business?"
When Sobchak flew off to Paris, where were you?
In St. Petersburg, although I was already working in Moscow by then.
Tell us about it.
What's to tell?
Well, there was some convoluted story involving his departure. . . .
It wasn't convoluted. I was in Peter, so I went to visit him in the
hospital.


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You just went to say goodbye?
No, I didn't say goodbye. I just visited him in the hospital, and that
was it. He was in the cardiac unit, and then Yura Shevchenko, the
head of the Military Medical Academy, transferred him.
And then on November 7, his friendsI think they were from
Finlandsent him a medevac plane, and he was flown to a hospital in
France.
Just like that? Nobody organized anything in advance? Some people
just sent an airplane?
Yes, his friends sent an airplane. Since it was November 7a national
holidayhis absence from St. Petersburg was not noticed until
November 10.
From the outside, it all looked like a special operation organized by a
professional.
What are you talking about? There was nothing special about it. The
newspapers wrote that he was whisked out, without even going
through customs. That's not true, he passed through customs and
passport control at the border. Everything was as it was supposed to
be. They put stamps in his passport. They put him on the airplane.
That was that.
Applause, applause. But they could have arrested him?
They probably could have. But I don't know what for.
To this day you don't understand?
No, why are you saying that? In fact, I do understand that they had no
grounds to arrest him. He had been implicated in this murky story of
the apartment. A case was opened up, but


 Page 118
it fell apart in the end. They put the screws to Sobchak for four years
and then hounded the poor guy all over Europe.
Did you yourself get to the bottom of this story?
No. Frankly, I didn't even know the details. Later, I looked into it for
myself.
And did you find it interesting to dig into the details of this case
because you wanted to know the kind of person you were working
with? Or did you never have doubts at all?
You know, I was absolutely convinced that he was a decent person100
percent decentbecause I had dealt with him for many years. I know
how he thinks, what he values, what he doesn't value, what he is
capable of, and what he is incapable of.
Remember the episode in the film The Sword and the Shield, when the
Germans are trying to recruit the Soviet officer? They say, "You think
we'll let you die a hero? Here's a photo showing you in a German
uniform. That's it, you're a traitor." The Soviet officer grabs a chair
and tries to hit the recruiter. Then the recruiter shoots him and says, "It
was the wrong idea from the start. There was no sense in blackmailing
him. Obviously, that officer's reputation in his homeland is flawless."
The same is true of Sobchak. He is a decent man with a flawless
reputation. Furthermore, he is very bright, open, and talented. Even
though we are very different, I really like Anatoly Aleksandrovich. I
really like people like him. He's real.
Few people know that Anatoly Aleksandrovich and I had very close,
friendly, confidential conversations. We used to talk a lot, especially
on our trips abroad, when we were left


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virtually alone for several days. He was a friend and mentor to me.*
Lyudmila Putina:
That summer of 1996, right after the elections, we moved out of the city to
the house that we had been building for six years, about 100 kilometers
out-side of Petersburg. We lived there about six weeks. We sewed curtains,
cleaned, settled in, and arranged the furniture. As soon as we had finished
all this, the house burned down. It is a sad story. It burned to the ground.
Marina Yentaltseva:
We drove out to the Putins' dacha. They had just finished building it. We
got there quite late, toward evening. My husband and I had wanted to go
back the same day, but Vladimir Vladimirovich and Lyudmila
Aleksandrovna started in: "What are you saying? Let's heat up the banya
and have a steam bath!" And their daughters chimed in, "Let Svetulya
stay!" Svetulya is our daughter.
Our house was made of brick, but finished with wood inside. On that
day I was out at the dacha with my wife and kids. We had just moved
in. Marina Yentaltseva, my secretary, had just arrived with her
husband and daughter. We men went into the sauna, which is right
inside the house on the first floor. We steamed ourselves for a while,
then had a dip in the river and came back to the sauna rest room.
Suddenly, I heard a crack. I saw some smoke, and then a flame came
shooting out. In my loudest and most commanding voice, I yelled for
everybody to get out of the house. The sauna was on fire.
Katya was in the kitchen, eating something. She turned out to be the
most disciplined. When I shouted "Everybody get out of the house!"
she dropped her spoon on the table and
*This conversation took place two days before the tragic death of Anatoly
Sobchak. On February 19, 2000, Sobchak died of a heart attack in the city
of Svetlogorsk.


 Page 120
leapt out of the house without asking any questions. Then she stood
outside the house and watched. I ran upstairs.
My older daughter, Masha, was another story. She was floundering
around on the second floor.... I took Masha by
the hand and brought her out to the balcony. Then I tore the sheets off
the bed, knotted them together, tied them to the balcony railing, and
said to Masha: "Climb down!" She got scared: "I'm not going, I'm
afraid!" I threatened her: ''I'm going to pick you up right away and
throw you off here like a puppy! What's with you? Don't you
understand that the house is about to burn down?!" I took her by the
scruff of the neck and tossed her over the railing, and they caught her
at the bottom.
Then I suddenly remembered there was a briefcase in our room with
cash in itall our savings. What would we do without that money? I
went back and started looking, feeling around with my hand. I
thought, well, I've got a few more seconds of this and then I won't be
able to . . . I stopped looking for the stash. I ran out to the balcony.
Flames were shooting upward. I clambered over the railing, grabbing
the sheets, and began to lower myself down. And here's an interesting
detail: I was stark naked from the banya. I had only just managed to
wrap a sheet around myself. So you can imagine the scene: the house
is burning, there's a naked man wrapped in a sheet, crawling down
from the balcony, and the wind is blowing the sheet out like a sail. A
crowd had gathered on the hill, and they were watching with
enormous interest.
The two cars were parked next to the house, and they were heating up
pretty rapidly. But the keys to them were inside the house, and the
doors were locked.


 Page 121
Marina Yentaltseva:
We were left without keys. Everything was inside the house. Lyudmila
Aleksandrovna said, "Let's push this one." We had a Model 9 Zhiguli. I
shouted in hysterics, "To hell with the car! The house is on fire!" She
looked at me with great surprise and said,"That's okay, we can still use it.''
She took a stone and threw it at the car window. Then she moved the
gearshift out of "park," and we somehow managed to push the first car and
then the other one.
Then I stood silently staring as the house burned. It was a total shock for
me. Lyudmila Aleksandrovna was the first one to say, "Thank God,
everyone is alive and well!"
The house burned like a candle. The firemen arrived, but they ran out
of water right away. There was a lake right there. "What do you mean,
you're out of water? There's a whole lake right here!" I said. "There's a
lake," they agreed, "but no hose." The firemen came and went three
times. Our dacha burned to the ground.
The girls suffered the most from this incident. They had brought all
their treasures from home to the dachaall their toys and Barbie dolls,
which they had been accumulating their whole lives. Masha told me
later that she couldn't sleep for several months after that. They had
lost everything that was familiar to them.
When the firemen later analyzed the fire, they concluded that the
sauna builders were to blame for everythingthey hadn't put the stove
in the banya properly. And if they were to blame, then they had to
compensate us for the damage.
The first way they could compensate us would be to pay us money.
But it wasn't clear how much the dacha was worth. The house burned
down in 1996. We had been building it for five years. I remembered
clearly that back in 1991, I had bought bricks for three rubles a piece.
Later I realized that I


 Page 122
didn't have enough and had to buy some more, but by then they cost
seven rubles a piece. The prices since that time had risen further, and
we had no idea how to index them.
So I liked the second option for compensation betterto force them to
restore everything as it had been. And that's what they did. They
erected the exact same frame, then hired a Polish firm to put on the
finishing touches. They completed the job after a year and a half of
work. Everything was as it had been before the fire, and even better.
We only asked that the sauna be taken out completely.
Lyudmila Putina:
I was philosophical about the loss of the house. After that experience, I
real-ized that houses, money, and things shouldn't add stress to your life.
They aren't worth it. You know why? Because at any minute, they could all
just burn up.
It's a national custom that all important matters are decided in the
banya: What will you do now, without one?
Banyas are really just for bathing. Even that last time, we weren't
trying to resolve any questions. We were just holding a wake for my
former job.

 Page 123

PART 7
THE BUREAUCRAT
After a couple of false starts, Putin finally goes to Moscow in 1996.
Government work suits him perfectly and he rises from post to post at dazzling
speed. Then he is commanded to take over the FSBthe former KGB. This
comes as a blow. Putin and Lyud-mila do not want to return to the closed,
stifling, stressful life of the secret services. Putin refuses the rank of general,
becoming the first-ever civilian director of a security organ. Thankfully, the
post doesn't last very long. Out of the blue, Yeltsin names Putin prime minister.
Meanwhile, tension in the Caucuses is rising as Chechen rebels demand
independence. Fearing a potential domino effect, Putin takes a hard line. He
is willing to sacrifice his own political career to crush the Chechens and
thereby avoid what he sees as a devastating, large-scale war.

 Page 125
What did you do for work after leaving Yakovlev's office, when no
ambassadorial post materialized?
After we lost the elections in Peter, a few months passed and I was
still without a job. It really wasn't very good. I had a family, you
know. The situation had to be resolved, one way or another. But the
signals from Moscow were mixed; first they were asking me to come
to work, and then they weren't.
But who did make you an offer?
Borodin, as odd as it may seem.
Chief of Staff Pavel Borodin brought me into the presidential
administration. I don't know why. We had met several times. That was
essentially the extent of our relationship. Borodin talked to the chief
of the presidential administration, Nikolai Yegorov, about me.
Yegorov summoned me to Moscow and offered me a job as his
deputy. He showed me a draft presidential decree and said that he
would take it to Yeltsin's office for a signature next week and I could
start work. I agreed, saying "Good. What am I supposed to do?" He
said, "Fly home to Peter. When he signs it, we'll call you."

 Page 126
I left, and two or three days later Yegorov was removed from his post
and Anatoly Chubais was made chief of administration. Then Chubais
eliminated the job that had just been offered to me. So I ended up not
moving to Moscow.
Some time passed, and there was another change of administration,
now under Chernomyrdin. Aleksei Alekseyevich Bolshakov was his
first deputy. He was a fellow-Petersburger. Bolshakov ran into
Borodin at a reception, and said to him, "What are you doing? You
promised the guy a job and then you dropped him, and now he's
sitting there without a job." Borodin was insulted. "I didn't drop him.
It was our little pal Chubais who ruined it." ''Then take him on at your
office," Bolshakov said. But Borodin thought I wouldn't go to the
General Department because I had grown accustomed to other kinds
of work. Bolshakov insisted: "Well, then think up something else." On
that note, they parted, and Borodin promised to think of something.
And so he did, but I only found out about it later.
Aleksei Kudrin called me. At that time he was chief of the president's
Main Control Directorate.* He told me to come over and they'd see
what they could do. Although the one post had been eliminated, there
were other possibilities. I flew to Moscow and met with Kudrin, and
he talked to Chubais. Chubais, before leaving to go on vacation,
offered me a job heading the Directorate for Public Liaison. That
really wasn't my cup of tea, but what could I do? If I had to work with
the public, then I would work with the public. The job would still be
in the president's administration. So I agreed to take it.
Kudrin and I got into his car and took off for the airport. On the way
he said, "Listen, let's call up Bolshakov and con-
*The U.S. equivalent of Russia's Main Control Directorate is the Inspector
General's Office.


 Page 127
gratulate him. He's one of us, from Peter, and he's been promoted to
first deputy." "Well, alright," I said. We dialed Bolshakov's phone
number right from the car and were transferred through to him. As
head of the Main Control Directorate, Kudrin could get through to
anyone. Aleksei congratulated Bolshakov, and added, "Here's Volodya
Putin, and he'd like to congratulate you as well." Bolshakov said, "Put
him on the phone.'' I took the phone, and Bolshakov said, "Where are
you?" using the familiar form of address. "What do you mean, I'm
right here in the car. I'm going with Aleksei to the airport." "And
where were you?" he said. "At the Kremlin. They were deciding
which job I should have. I'm going to be the head of the Directorate
for Public Liaison." "Call me back in 30 minutes," said Bolshakov.
But the car was getting closer to the airport.
I was all ready to board my plane, when at the last minute Bolshakov
called us back. "Listen, can you stay in Moscow?" he asked. "I'll go
see Borodin tomorrow." I didn't understand what he was talking about,
but I stayed. It never occurred to me that Bolshakov remembered me.
I didn't know why he was doing this, but I didn't feel comfortable
asking him.
I could think of only one explanation. You see, Aleksei Alekseyevich
Bolshakov was a prominent person. At one time, he was the first
deputy of the executive committee of the Leningrad City Council, the
person who really ran the city. There were good reports about
Bolshakovthat he was a can-do, energetic, hard working man. Though
he had never really been an orthodox Communist, the tide of
democracy had swept him away. Sobchak decided that he had to go.
Bolshakov wound up almost on the street. He got some work, but no
one imagined that he would land himself a good post again, much less
in Moscow. From time to time, Bol-


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shakov would appear in Smolny on business. I never forced him to
wait in the reception area. I would always stop what I was doing, kick
everybody out, come out into the reception area myself, and say,
"Aleksei Alekseyevich, right this way." We were never close, but
maybe he remembered me.
The next morning, I went to Borodin, and he offered me a job as his
deputy.
That is how, in August 1996, I ended up in the government building
on Old Square in Moscow, as deputy to the head of the president's
General Affairs Department. I was in charge of the legal division and
Russian property abroad.
Lyudmila Putina:
It wasn't a question of whether or not to go to Moscow. It was understood
that we had to go. And I wouldn't even say that Volodya and I discussed
his new appointment very much. Volodya said that although they had
offered him a new job that wasn't quite suitable for him, there were no
other options. Then he got the other offer.
I didn't want to leave St. Petersburg. We had just started living in our own
apartment, and now everything was going to be government-issue again.
But how could I complain? We got a dacha in Arkhangelsk. True, the
house was old, but it had two floors and six roomstwo below, and four on
the second floorfancy! And I fell in love with Moscow right away. The city
just suited me. Maybe it was the atmosphere, or the bustling streets, or the
fact that it's well kept. I was wild about Petersburg, but when I came to
Moscow I got over it. My husband took longer to get used to Moscow, but
he also grew accustomed to it. Here, you really get the feeling that life is in
full swing.
I wouldn't say that I didn't like Moscow. It's just that I liked Peter
more. But Moscow is a truly European city. It has its problems, of
course, but life is bustling. I have to admit that Peter is provincial, at
least politically.

 Page 129
You have had an incredible career in Moscow. You got a promotion
practically every year. In 1997, head of the Main Control Directorate;
in 1998, first deputy head of the presidential administration,
responsible for the regions; in 1998, director of the FSB, and later,
secretary of the security council. In August 1999, prime minister, and
since December 31, acting president. Have all of these positions held
equal interest for you?
Not at all. In fact, there was a moment when I thought about leaving
the presidential administration.
When was that?
When I worked in the Control Directorate. It was not very creative
work. It was important, it was necessary, and I understood all that. But
it simply wasn't interesting for me. I don't know what I would have
done if I had left. I probably would have opened up a law firm. It's
hard to say whether I could have lived on that, but it would have been
interesting. Many of my friends are in private practice, and it's
working out for them.
So why didn't you leave?
While I was still thinking about it, I was appointed first deputy to the
chief of the presidential administration, responsible for the regions
and contacts with the governors. To this day I think that was the most
interesting job. I developed relationships with many of the governors
at that time. It was clear to me that work with the regional leaders was
one of the most important lines of work in the country. Everyone was
saying that the vertikal, the vertical chain of government, had been
destroyed and that it had to be restored.


 Page 130
But do the governors themselves need that? Are they ready to line up
under the vertikal?
They are. After all, the governors are part of the country, and they also
suffer from management weaknesses. Not everyone is going to like
everything. You can't please everybody, but you can find some
common approaches. I was also interested in learning more about the
country. I had only ever worked in St. Petersburg, apart from the time
I spent abroad. . . . Of
course, my seven years of experience in Peter was good experience,
both administrative and managerial. But Peter isn't the whole country.
I wanted to travel and see things.
So, why did you drop that interesting job and go to work as director of
the FSB? Do you have some affinity for the agencies?
No. I wasn't asked whether or not I wanted to go, and they had given
me no inkling that I was even being considered for such an
appointment. The president simply signed a decree. . . .
But the chief of administration was Valentin Yumashev?
Yes. I was sitting in my office, when the phone rang. "Can you get out
to the airport and meet Kirienko?" Kirienko was prime minister, and
he was coming back from a visit with the president, who was on
vacation in Karelia. I said, "Alright." What was this all about, I
wondered. I was already suspecting something bad. I got to the airport
and Kirienko came out. He said, "Hi, Volodya! Congratulations!" I
said, "What for?" He said, "The decree is signed. You have been
appointed director of the FSB.'' Well, thanks a lot, guys. . . . I can't say
I was over-joyed. I didn't want to step into the same river twice.


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You know, working in a military-style organization is, after all, a very
difficult kind of service. I remember coming into the KGB building
where I worked and feeling as if they were plugging me into an
electrical outlet. I don't know, maybe I was the only one who felt that
way, but I think the majority of people who worked there did too. It
put you in a constant state of tension. All the papers are secret. This
isn't allowed, that isn't allowed.
And you couldn't even go out to a restaurant! They thought only
prostitutes and black-marketeers went to restaurants. What would a
decent officer of the security agencies be doing in such company?
And then, if you were an intelligence officer, you were always the
object of a potential vetting. They are always checking up on you. It
might not happen very often, but it wasn't very pleasant. And the
meetings every week! And the plan of work for the day! You shouldn't
laugh. There was a notebook stamped "Classified," and on Friday you
had to come in, open it up, and write your work plan for the week day
by day. And then each day, you signed off on every hour.
In the Kremlin, I have a different position. Nobody controls me here. I
control everybody else. But at the FSB I reported to the division head
and the department head. He would open the work plan: What had
been done during the week? And I would begin to report, and explain
why something wasn't finished. I would explain that something was a
large-scale project and that it couldn't be finished immediately. Then
why did you put it in the plan? Only write down what you can do!
I'm telling you all this to explain what it was like. There was a lot of
pressure.

 Page 132
I went into the office of the FSB director, and I was met by my
predecessor, Nikolai Kovalev. He opened the safe and said, "Here's
my secret notebook. And here's my ammunition." And I looked at all
this mournfully.
Lyudmila Putina:
I believe the only appointment that we discussed at home was Volodya's
post of prime minister. I remember we talked about the FSB once, about
three months before he was offered the post, and he said that he would
never agree to take it. We were taking a walk at the dacha in Arkhangelsk
and talking about his work, and he said that he did not want to go to the
FSB. I understood why. It would mean a return to the closed life. When
Volodya worked in the KGB, it was really a very closed life. Don't go
there, don't say that. Talk to that person, don't talk to this person. And then
it had been such a hard decision to leave the KGB, that when he left, he
thought he was leaving forever.
I was vacationing on the Baltic Sea when he called and said, "You be
careful there, because I've been returned to the place where I began." I
thought that he had given back the job as Borodin's deputythat he had been
demoted. I couldn't decode what he was saying. I thought that something
had happened in the country while I was away, that the situation had
changed somehow. Then he repeated it: "I've been returned to the place
where I began." And when he said it the third time, I got it. When I got
back from vacation, I asked him how it had happened. "They appointed
me, and that's it." I asked no more questions.
When Volodya returned to the FSB, they offered him the rank of general.
He was still in the civil service. But you can't have a colonel commanding
generals. You need someone with authority.
Did this new position affect our lives? No, but I had some friends in
Germanya husband and wifeand I was forced to break off all contact with
them. I thought it would just be for a while, but to this day, we have not
renewed our friendship.


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How did they greet you at the FSB? There you were, a former KGB
colonel . . .
I was greeted cautiously. Then things got better. As for being a colonel
. . . Let's take a closer look. . . . First of all, I
was a colonel in the reserves. I had completed my service as a
lieutenant colonel, ten years earlier. During those ten years, I had had
a different life. And when I came to work at the FSB, it was not as a
colonel but as a civilian who held the position of first deputy to the
chief of the presidential administration.
That is, you in fact became the first civilian leader of the security
agencies?
Of course, but nobody paid attention to that, either because they were
stupid or ignorant, or because they didn't want to.
Did the top leadership change under you?
It changed, but not a lot. I didn't make any drastic moves, really. I just
took a look at the situation and the people and began to make the
changes that I felt were necessary.
Why did Yevgeny Primakov say that you had put Leningraders
everywhere?
Others said that I had fired all the Leningraders and put in unknowns.
But I took the whole FSB leadership to Primakov for a meeting. And
it turned out that everybody was in place. Nobody had been fired.
Primakov then apologized, and said that he had been misled.
Is it true that as director of the FSB, you used to run into Vladimir
Kryuchkov?*
It's true.
*Vladimir Kryuchkov was the former head of the KGB, and was one of the
 August 1991 coup-plotters.

 Page 134
Accidentally?
No, not accidentally. I worked rather actively with the longtime
veterans.
People have started to talk again about merging the FSB with the
MVD, the Interior Ministry. What do you think about this?*
I'm against it. The community of special services has coalesced, and
to disrupt it again would be bad. From the perspective of ministerial
concerns, it might be okay; but from a policy perspective, it would not
be advantageousit is better to receive information from two sources
than from one.
So maybe it would be even better if they kept watch over each other
rather than merging their forces?
That's not a question for me. In Germany, of course, it was like that in
1933. Everybody was supposed to watch over everybody else. That
was the principle behind the Gestapo.
It's interesting to note that you were twice appointed to posts
previously occupied by another Petersburger, Sergei Stepashin. First,
with the FSB, which was then called the FSK;** and later the post of
prime minister. Is Stepashin not remembered fondly at the FSB?
No, just the opposite, he was well liked. In the FSK, he handled
himself in an unexpectedly mature manner, which earned many
people's respect, including my own.
* On March 6, 1953, the day after Stalin died, his secret police chief,
Lavrenty Beria, succeeded in merging the MVD with the MGB, as the KGB
was then known. The merger lasted about a year, until Beria's execution in
March 1954.
** The FSK was the Federal Counterintelligence Service.


 Page 135
Sobchak very much supported Stepashin's appointment as head of the
Leningrad directorate of the FSK. I was already working in the city
administration by that time. I recall Sobchak telling me that after the
coup, a democrat was going to head the FSK. I didn't like that at all.
Here . . . some kind of policeman was going to be running the
agencies. In the Cheka,* we've never liked policemen. Besides,
Stepashin never had any relationship to the security agencies. No, I
honestly wasn't bothered by the fact he represented the democratic
wave. I myself was already from that milieu. But I was surprised. Do
you remember the situation of the security agencies at that time?
People wanted to tear them down, to break them apart, to shred them
to bits. They proposed opening up the lists of agents and declassifying
files. But Stepashin behaved completely unexpectedly. In fact, he used
his democratic authority to protect the Leningrad special services.
From the outset he said, "If you trust me, then trust me. What we can
publicize, we will. But what will be harmful to the state, we won't
publicize." You have to give him credit; he was able to establish
working relationships with the leaders of the agencies. He was trusted.
Later, Stepashin and I met in Moscow. We were not very close or
friendly. But do you remember that after he resigned from the FSK, he
worked in the government bureaucracy? I was in the presidential
administration by then. And when the question arose of whom to
appoint as Minister of Justice, I suggested Stepashin. I had discussed
it with him beforehand: "Sergei, do you want it? I don't know if I'll be
able to put it
*Cheka, a word formed from the Russian acronym for "Extraordinary
Commission," is the name of the secret police organization founded by
Lenin. The word is still popularly used to refer to the security police.


 Page 136
through, but I'm prepared to support you," I said. He said he did want
it, because he was tired of pushing papers.
Were you happy when Stepashin was appointed prime minister?
Yes.
And did you know that at the same time, you were being considered
as a candidate for this post?
When he was appointed premier? No. No, it never entered my mind.
Stepashin served as prime minister for only a few months. He didn't
hide the fact that his dismissal was very painful for him. Did you
speak to him face-to-face?
Yes. He knows I had nothing to do with his dismissal. Still, it was
terribly awkward when I was telephoned on the eve of the event and
asked to come to visit Yeltsin at The Hills the next morning. The four
of us were sitting there together Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin,
Stepashin, Nikolai Aksenenko, and Iwhen Yeltsin demanded Sergei's
resignation. You can imagine the state I was in. I am his colleague!
What was I supposed to saySergei, you're going to be fired? I couldn't
say that aloud. I wouldn't be able to get the words out. Of course, it
was all very unpleasant.
After you left Yeltsin's, did you talk to each other?
We said goodbye, and that was it.
And you and Stepashin never spoke about that morning again?
We did talk about it. I think he was offended. Or he was hurt. Time
will pass, and he'll forget about it. He hadn't done


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anything obvious for which he deserved to be fired. But the president
believed otherwise. He made the decision, and it probably wasn't just
based on the two or three months that Sergei was prime minister. . . .
Boris Nikolayevich invited me to his office and said that he was
thinking about offering me the post of prime minister but that he had
to talk to Stepashin first. I wasn't especially surprised. It was clear that
things were moving in that direction. I mean, not my appointment, but
Stepashin's dismissal. Yeltsin didn't ask me if I would agree to become
prime minister or not. He just said that he had already made a decision
regarding Stepashin.
By the way, in his conversation with me, Yeltsin didn't use the word
"successor." He used the phrase "prime minister with a future"that is,
if everything went smoothly, it was a possibility.*
And then later, on television, Yeltsin mentioned me as a possible
future president. He said this aloud to the whole country. And when I
was deluged with questions, I replied, "If the president says so, that's
what I'll do." Maybe I didn't sound so sure of myself, but what else
could I say?
Do you remember the state the country was in at the time? It was right
before the elections, and Boris Nikolayevich had to make a decision.
All those governors we've been talking about understood perfectly
well that everything was frozen and that they had to make up their
minds. Why did they form
*Yeltsin changed prime ministers four times in 1989-1999. The order of
Yeltsin's prime ministers is: Viktor S. Chernomyrdin (December 1992-
March 1998), Sergei V. Kiriyenko (five months), Yevgeny M. Primakov
(eight months), Sergei V. Stepashin (three months), Vladimir Putin (since
August 10, 1999).


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the OVR?* Because the governors had no alternative. They had to
create an alternative.
You mean an alternative to Unity?**
Yes.
Lyudmila Putina:
I wasn't surprised that my husband's career advanced at the speed of
lightning. But sometimes I would catch myself thinking: "How strange;
I'm married to a man who yesterday was really just an unknown deputy
mayor of St. Petersburg, and now he's the prime minister." But somehow I
always believed that this could happen to Volodya.
I'm not afraid of it. And I'm not particularly proud. But I do admire
Volodya. He's dedicatednot vain, but dedicated. He always worked hard
and achieved his goals. He always lived for the sake of something. There
are some people who work hard for money, but he works hard for ideas.
He's satisfied by the very process of work. It seems to me that people like
that go far. You know, the fact that I am the prime minister's wife is more
surprising to me than that he is the prime minister.
Marina Yentaltseva:
A few days after Putin became prime minister, his father died. Every
weekend Vladimir Vladimirovich had been coming from Moscow to visit
his father. At that time he was very burdened with work, but he would still
come to St. Petersburg once a week, for at least half a day. He was afraid
that he wouldn't get there in time to say goodbye to his father. But I was
told that he was present for the last few hours of his father's life.
*The OVR is the Fatherland-All Russia Party.
**Unity is Putin's party, created in December 1999.

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When Yeltsin announced to the whole country that you were his
successor, were you quaking inside?
No.
You were so sure of yourself?
No, that's not it. Remember what Gennady Seleznev said at the time:
"Why did they do that to you? They've buried you." Everybody
thought that that was the end for me. I also realized my career could
be over, but for different reasons.
Let me try to explain. All of this took place as tension was mounting
in Dagestan. I had already decided that my career might be over, but
that my mission, my historical mission and this will sound lofty, but
it's trueconsisted of resolving the situation in the Northern Caucasus.
At that time nobody knew how it would all end; but it was clear to
meand probably to other people toothat "the kid was going to get his
butt kicked" on the Northern Caucasus. That's how I saw it. I said to
myself, "Never mind, I have a little timetwo, three, maybe four
monthsto bang the hell out of those bandits. Then they can get rid of
me."
I realized we needed to strike the rebel bases in Chechnya. Frankly,
everything that had been done in recent years, especially in the area of
preserving the government, washow can I put it mildly, so as not to
offend anyone?amateurish. . . . Believe me, back in 1990-1991, I
knew exactlyas
arrogant as it may soundthat the attitude toward the army and the
special services, especially after the fall of the USSR, threatened the
country. We would very soon be on the verge of collapse. Now, about
the Caucasus: What's the situation in the Northern Caucasus and in
Chechnya today? It's a continuation of the collapse of the USSR.
Clearly, at some point it


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has to be stopped. Yes, for a time, I had hoped that the growth of the
economy and the emergence of democratic institutions would help
freeze this process. But time and experience have shown us that this
isn't happening.
This is what I thought of the situation in August, when the bandits
attacked Dagestan: If we don't put an immediate end to this, Russia
will cease to exist. It was a question of preventing the collapse of the
country. I realized I could only do this at the cost of my political
career. It was a minimal cost, and I was prepared to pay up. So when
Yeltsin declared me his successor and everyone thought that it was the
beginning of the end for me, I felt completely calm. The hell with
them. I calculated that I had several months to consolidate the armed
forces, the Interior Ministry, and the FSB, and to rally public support.
Would there be enough time? That's all I worried about.
But the decision to begin a campaign in Dagestan and then in
Chechnya wasn't yours to make. Yeltsin was president, and the burden
of the first unsuccessful operation lay with him and with Stepashin.
Well, Stepashin was no longer prime minister. As for Yeltsin, he
supported me completely. We discussed the situation in Chechnya at
every meeting.
So that means that the entire responsibility was on your shoulders?
To a large degree. I met with the top officials of the Ministry of
Defense, the General Staff, and the Interior Ministry. We met almost
every daysometimes twice a day, morning and evening. And with a lot
of fine-tuning, the ministries

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were consolidated. The first thing that I had to do was over-come the
disarray among the ministries. The army didn't understand what the
Interior Ministry was doing, and the FSB was criticizing everyone and
not taking responsibility for anything. We had to become one team,
one single organism. Only then would we be successful.
You talked about the price that you personally were prepared to pay
for the campaign in the Northern Caucasus: your career. But in fact,
the price of any military campaign is measured in human lives and in
units of currency.
I was convinced that if we didn't stop the extremists right away, we'd
be facing a second Yugoslavia on the entire territory of the Russian
Federationthe Yugoslavization of Russia.
But you could have knocked the rebels out of Dagestan, and
surrounded Chechnya with a cordon sanitaire . . .
That would have been pointless and also technically impossible.
Tell us, does the fact that Lenin gave Finland away many decades ago
bother you? Is the secession of Chechnya impossible in principle?
No, it isn't. But secession isn't the issue.
It seemed to me that it was all absolutely clear. I'll tell you what
guided me and why I was so convinced of the threat that hung over
our country. Everyone says I'm harsh, even brutal. These are
unpleasant epithets. But I have never for a second believedand people
with even an elementary level of political knowledge understand
thisthat Chechnya would

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limit itself to its own independence. It would become a beachhead for
further attacks on Russia.
After all, the aggression began there. They built up their forces and
then attacked a neighboring territory. Why? In order to defend the
independence of Chechnya? Of course not. In order to seize additional
territories. They would have swallowed up Dagestan, and that would
have been the beginning of the end. The entire Caucasus would have
followed Dagestan, Ingushetia, and then up along the Volga River to
Bashkortostan and Tatarstan, reaching deep into the country.
You know, I was frightened when I imagined the real consequences. I
started wondering how many refugees Europe and America could
absorb. Because the disintegration of such an enormous country
would have been a global catastrophe. And when I compare the scale
of the possible tragedy to what we have there now, I do not have a
second of doubt that we are doing the right thing. Maybe we should be
even tougher. The problem is, if the conflict goes further, no amount
of armed forces will be enough. We would be forced to draft people in
the reserves and send them into combat. A large-scale war would
begin.
Another option: We could agree to a division of the country.
Immediately, dissatisfied leaders from different regions and territories
would turn up: ''We don't want to live in a Russia like that. We want to
be independent." And off they'd go.
Now, let's return to the question of the independence of Chechnya.
Today, everyone recognizes that it is necessary to preserve the
territorial integrity of Russia and not to support terrorists and
separatists. But let's say we agreed to the independence of the republic
and allowed Chechnya to succeed.


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The situation would be completely different. If we agreed to
Chechnya's independence, then quite a few countries would
immediately grant official recognition to Chechnya, and that very
same day, would begin to provide large-scale official support to the
Chechens. Our current actions would be viewed as aggression, and not
the resolution of internal problems. This would radically change the
situation and make it far, far worse for Russia.
Last summer, we began a battlenot against the independence of
Chechnya but against the aggressive aspirations that had begun to
flourish on that territory. We are not attacking. We are defending
ourselves. We knocked the rebels out of Dagestan, and they came
back. We knocked them out again, and they came back again. We
knocked them out a third time. And then, when we gave them a
serious kick in the teeth, they blew up apartment houses in Moscow,
Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk.
Did you make the decision to continue the operation in Chechnya
before the apartment house explosions or after?
After.
You know that there is a version of the story that says the apartment
houses were deliberately blown up, in order to justify the beginning of
military actions in Chechnya? That is, the explosions were supposedly
the work of the Russian special services?
What?! Blowing up our own apartment buildings? You know, that is
really . . . utter nonsense! It's totally insane.
No one in the Russian special services would be capable of such a
crime against his own people. The very supposition is


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amoral. It's nothing but part of the information war against Russia.
Lyudmila Putina:
About three weeks before New Year's Eve, Volodya said, "I'm flying to
Chechnya for New Year's. Are you coming with me?" At first I was
surprised. How could I leave the children alone? And what if something
happened to both of us: What would happen to them? I decided I wouldn't
go. A few days later I flew to Peter, thought calmly for awhile, returned to
Moscow, and told Volodya that I would go to Chechnya after all. I don't
know why.... I think I was terrified of staying behind without him. No one
could guarantee that something wouldn't happen. Things were
unpredictable.
The wife of Patrushev, director of the FSB, also came along. The rest were
all men. We flew to Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, then transferred
to three helicopters and flew to Gudermes, the second largest city of
Chechnya. But the pilot decided not to risk landing the helicopter in
Gudermesthe visibility was poor. I think he needed to see ahead at least
150 meters, but he could only see 100. Twenty minutes before the New
Year, we turned around and flew back. At midnight we opened champagne
in the helicopter. We had no glasses, so we drank right out of the bottles.
There were two bottles of champagne for the entire group.
When we turned back, the people in Gudermes figured that we weren't
going to make it. But you have to know Volodya. I didn't have a minute's
doubt that we would somehow reach that military unit. It wasn't important
when or how, but we would get there. When we got back to Makhachkala,
Volodya said to me, "You stay behind. We'll go in cars." No way! Was it
worth flying such a long way to sit and wait for who knows how long? We
piled into some cars. It was already 2:30 A.M. Two and a half hours later,
we arrived at the unit. I slept the whole way.
You should have seen the surprise and amazement in the eyes of our boys
when we arrived. They looked tired and a little disorientedas though they


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wanted to pinch themselves: Was this really Putin who had come to see
them and celebrate New Year's Eve with them? Were they dreaming?
We spent an hour in the unit and then drove back. Several hours later, the
road on which we had just been traveling was bombed. That was it. Then
we flew back to Moscow. On January 1, we were invited to the home of
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin. It was only the second time in my life that I
saw him.
Masha:
We kept asking our parents, "Where will we spend New Year's Eve?" And
about a week before the holiday, Mama said that she and Papa would be
away for New Year's. But she didn't say where they were going. My sister
and I didn't think about it much. We weren't hurt that they were going
away. Our aunt and cousin were visiting, and we had invited a girlfriend
over. We had already received our presents. We had asked for a computer,
and they had given us two, so that we each had our own. Our parents came
back the next evening and went out again right away. It was only later,
watching television, that we realized they had been in Chechnya.

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PART 8
THE FAMILY MAN: INTERVIEW WITH LYUDMILA
PUTINA
Interviews with Putin, Lyudmila, and their two daughters, Masha and Katya,
take us inside the Putin home. Of course, things have changed since Papa's
rise to power, but the family tries to remain clearheaded about their newly
found fame. They share their shopping habits, TV preferences, and talk frankly
about their father's temper and the pressures of being the First Family.

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You've lived with your husband for 20 years. You must know
everything about him.
No, you can never know everything about a person. Something
remains secret in every person.
He's not very talkative?
I wouldn't call Volodya the silent type. He's very eager to talk about
topics that interest him, with people who interest him. But he is not
inclined to discuss people, especially the people he works with. I'm
just the opposite. If I know someone or I see someone on television, I
tend to express my opinion. And he doesn't like to do that.
Well, express yourself about somebody. What about Chubais, for
instance. Do you know him?
A little bit.
Women usually like him.
And it seems to me that he doesn't take women seriously. He treats
them with a certain contempt. I'm not a feminist,

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but I want women to occupy the place they deserve in this world.
Do you influence your husband? He's always saying that Russian
women are underestimated.
That's hardly my influence. Our views just coincide.
Does he ever look at women?
I think that beautiful women attract his attention.
Do you take that calmly?
Well, what sort of man would he be, if he weren't attracted by
beautiful women?
A lot of husbands bring their work frustrations home with them at the
end of the day.
Volodya has never taken his problems out on me. Never! He has
always solved them himself. Also, he won't discuss a problem until he
has found a solution himself. Later he might say something. But I
always sense when he has some problems or when he's simply in a
bad mood. That's something he's not able to hide. In general he's a
composed person, but at certain moments it's better not to bother him.
Or else there will be a fight?
It depends on what you mean. If you mean breaking dishes and
flinging saucepans, no. He doesn't even raise his voice. But he can
answer rather sharply.
Can he get drunk?
There hasn't been any of that. He is indifferent to alcohol, really. In
Germany, he loved to drink beer. But usually he'll drink a little vodka
or some cognac.


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You've never been well-off, have you? Was there ever a period in your
life when you didn't have to count your money before payday?
No, there's never been a time when we didn't have to count our
money. I don't know. Probably you'd have to own a large business in
order to not count your money.
Are you the one who runs the family finances?
Yes.
Vladimir Putin:
Lyuda is still basically running the finances. I didn't use to pay attention to
our family finances, and I won't start now. I'm not very good at saving
money. And what should I save it for? I believe that you need to have a
comfortable living space, eat normally, dress decently, provide your
children with a good education, and go away somewhere on vacation every
once in awhile. That's all you need money for. What else would you need
it for?
If I had a pile of money, I would travel. I would take a journey. I haven't
been to many exotic countries. I've only been to America twiceto New
York, in the sweltering heat, and also to Los Angeles. You don't see much
when you're traveling on businessthe airport, the hotel, the conference
room, the airport. That's it.
I'd like to go on safari in Africa. To Kenya. I wanted to take my children
there, but they were afraid of all the necessary shots. I'd like to travel to
India. I've never been to any Arab countries. I'd like to see Egypt and
Saudi Arabia. I've never been to Latin America at all. That would be
interesting, too. They say that it looks like the Soviet Union in the 1950s.
Do you do the cooking at home?
I used to cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Now we have a cook.


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Have you ever noticed that when somebody takes up a serious post in
our country, they begin to gain weight?
Volodya works out every morning for 20 to 30 minutes. And he swims
in the morning and the evening.
Vladimir Putin:
I usually don't have lunch. I don't have time. In the morning, I try to eat
fruits and drink some kefir when I can. And when I don't manage to, I'd
prefer not to eat anything at all. I eat in the evening. I'm not on a diet, but I
also don't want to gain weight. Lyudmila has lost 15 kilograms, and I didn't
even expect it. My girls are very slender as well.
At the prime minister's dacha, where we are now living, there's a little
poolabout 12 meters long. I try to swim every day. And experience has
shown it is better not to give up my workouts. If I give them up, I
immediately have to buy clothes several sizes larger. I had a period, as I
was saying, when I went from a size 44-46 to a 52. Then I took myself in
hand. So at home I try to work out at least half an hour a day.
I have to tell you, it has reached the point of insanity. I told everyone that I
used to do martial arts, and now people call me and say, "We have a
tournament scheduled. When should it be held?" "What?" I ask. And they
repeat, "We have a tournament scheduled, but when do you think we
should have it?" And I say, "Have it whenever you like." And they ask,
"When is it convenient for you? You'll be coming, won't you?'' Well, I can't
contain myself and I tell them to go to hell: "If I can come, I will, and if I
can't, I won't. Don't be ridiculous!"
You went skiing together near Sochi, in Krasnaya Polyana. Did you
get addicted to skiing in Germany?
No, before. The children ski better than we do. But they had guests
that day and didn't go with us.


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Vladimir Putin:
I've been skiing for a long time. I used to go to Cheget, and to Slavsk, in
Ukraine. I've been abroad a few times. Lyudmila skis as well. Last time we
went she was pretty good. People were amazed to see us in Sochi in
February. But their reaction was very kind and human. Maybe because we
didn't have 150 bureaucrats with us who didn't know how to ski but were
waiting to hold the ski poles.
We went down the first time, and then I went over to the lift and took my
goggles off. A line had formed, and suddenly I heard shouts of "It can't
be!" People began letting us through to the head of the line. Nobody
bothered us, really. Some wanted to take photographs. A group of people
gathered around us, and we were photographed all together. I did refuse to
give autographs, because I was there to ski and I would have gotten stuck
signing autographs the whole time. It was funny. Somebody said, "How
can it be that you're here among us, skiing?!" I laughed. "But who should I
ski among? The Africans? They don't know how to skithey don't have any
snow."
Do you wait for your husband to get home in the evening?
Yes. And I get up with him in the morning. You know, before he
became prime minister, it was easy to get up in the morning, even
though we went to bed at midnight or 1 a.m. We were less tired. Now,
it's a huge load. It seems just inhuman to me. I was horrified when I
saw his meeting with Madeleine Albright on TV. He had slept about
four hours the night before, and he had a three-hour meeting with
Albrightand it wasn't just a social visit.
Aren't you amazed at the way he manages all of this?
I am amazed. Of course, Volodya always had a good memory. I
remember when he was still working in Peter. We were invited to a
reception at the French consulate. This was at the


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very start of his career. Volodya was late, and all of us about seven
peoplewere waiting for him. When he arrived, people threw questions
at him, and for two hours he practically gave a press conference, even
though we had just been invited for a visit.
What did he talk about?
Oh, everything. It was the first time I saw him in action. I sat there
openmouthed. He talked about politics, the economy, history, and the
law. I listened, and I kept thinking, "How does he know all this?" But
you know, I always somehow believed in him. He had to start from
zero so many times, and it always worked out. And in Moscow it all
came together. You know, he had a hard time after he left the post of
vice mayor. He couldn't find work. That period was really difficult for
him. He was silent. He didn't say anything, but I understood. I still
believe in him, although I'm a little afraid for him.
Your husband's status has changed dramatically, and that must affect
your life. Strange as it seems, you must suffer from more limitations.
Your friends can't just up and visit you. Your girls are growing up,
isolated from friends . . .
And they are kept home from school, too, because the security
measures have increased. Masha is in ninth grade, and Katya is in
eighth grade. The teachers come to our home. But girlfriends come
over as well. They still go to the movies, to the theater.... Of course,
they're less free than they were
before. But our girls have turned out to beknock wood somehow very
smart about life. I hope all these changes don't affect them.

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Masha:
To be honest, I'd like to go to school. Of course, they ask all sorts of
questions about Papa there. Polite people don't ask, but rude ones do. The
ones who are really curious. When Papa became prime minister, people
began to treat us with a lot more respect, it was really noticeable. But you
know, some of them would flatter us or try to get in good with us. And that
really bothers me. Some of them would be telling others on the street, "I
know that Putin girl." But on the whole, the friends I had last year are still
my friends.
Katya:
We're not really concerned about politics. We ask Papa to watch cartoons
and sometimes he joins us. Our favorite movie right now is The Matrix,
but Papa hasn't seen it. We invited him to see it with us. He said he didn't
have time now, but he would definitely see it later. First we went to the
movie theater on Krasnaya Presnya Street and watched the film with
Russian subtitles. Then we bought the cassette in English. We have three
languages in school German, English, and French.
Masha:
They give us a lot of homework. Even if we don't go to school, we still
have a lot of homework. . . .
Katya:
We have guards when we go to the movies. There's a guy who sits there
watching the movie, but I think he's guarding us at the same time. Usually,
we don't even notice the bodyguards. Even when we go somewhere with
our friends, they stay nearby, but they try not to get in the way. We've
called them over to drink coffee with us a thousand times, but they don't
want to.
Masha:
Sometimes people ask us, "Do you know what your Papa intends to do?"
We never ask him. Why would we? He's already getting asked a bunch of


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questions. We spend more time telling him about ourselves. I think it's
more interesting to him.
It seems like the two of them get along. Wasn't it hard to have them
one after the other like that?
Volodya wanted it that way. He really loves the girls a lot. Not all men
treat their girls as lovingly as he does. And he spoils them. I'm the one
who has to discipline them.
He didn't want a boy?
He always said, "Whatever God gives us is good." He never said he
wanted a boy.
Now, that white, fluffy thing over by the dooris that a girl or a boy?
She's a girl, too. Her name is Toska. She's a toy poodle. She hasn't had
her hair cut in a long time. Volodya was sort of amazed by her at
firstshe's so littlebut now he loves her.
Do Masha and Katya talk about the future? What would they like to
be when they grow up?
Masha pronounces the English word management very seriously; and
Katya says that she'd like to be a furniture designer.
The girls probably never see their father.
They see him more often on television than at home. But he always
goes in to see them, no matter what time he gets home. We have a rule
with Masha and Katya that they must be in bed by 11 p.m. If they go
to bed later, then they can't have anyone over on Saturdays. It's
probably too strict, but


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otherwise they'll stay up until 3 a.m. I'm all for self-discipline: You
can stay up until 3, but you know what the consequences are.
And they can probably wrap Papa around their little fingers?
Nobody can wrap Papa around their little finger.
What's that book in German? Do you read German?
Yes, our daughters' teacher gave us this. She's German. It's a very
interesting present, very touching. I haven't read it yet.
Vladimir Putin:
You know what the book is called? My wife translated it as "Talented
Women in the Shadow of Their Great Husbands." But that's not
completely accurate. The literal translation is "Gifted Women in the
Shadow of Their Famous Husbands." I think that sounds much less
complimentary to the husbands. The women are gifted, and the men are
just famous.
Women who are in the shadow of their politician husbands probably
have a complicated life. Women want attention. They like to be
coddled . . .
I don't need to be coddled. I'm more like the women in those old
Russian tales"She stops a horse in mid-gallop, and runs into a burning
hut." These are women who don't need coddling.
But everybody's interested in the wives of famous politicians. Have
you never gotten mad at the press?
"Mad?"that isn't quite the right expression. You get mad at people
who are close to you, who matter to you. Of


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course, there have been some unpleasant episodes. It's unpleasant, for
example, when a journalist bothers your mama and your sister for
interviewswithout any warning, taking advantage of their naïveté. It's
unpleasant when they dig into your background. It's unpleasant when
they lie.
What is your husband's attitude toward the press? Does he watch TV?
The news and sometimes a movie.
Does he react at all?
Either he laughs or he gets upset, or he worries. I would say he reacts
quite emotionally. On Saturday or Sunday, if we're home, he watches
the analytical programs.
Vladimir Putin:
I read all the newspapers. The actual newspapers, not digests. It doesn't
matter what order I read them in. I just start with whatever's on top. I read
Izvestia, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Sovetskaya Rossiya, Kommersant. I
watch the news if there's time. I've watched Kukly,* but only a couple of
times; it doesn't annoy me, but my friends take offense. Friends no doubt
have the right to do that.
Do you have friends?
I have three girlfriends.
And your husband?
It always seemed to me that half of St. Petersburg was friends with
Volodya. We always had a full house. Especially on weekends, but
even during the week. Somebody was always coming overusually at
Volodya's invitation. He
*Kukly is a satirical puppet show.


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loves socializing with people. I think that if he didn't, he wouldn't
have been able to handle the stress. His friends from Peter come to
visit us here and stay overnight.
Vladimir Putin:
The lack of contact with friends has really weighed on me, because I have
some very good friends. In fact, our friends are our lives, they are us, they
are a part of ourselves. I felt this keenly when I went to work abroad. The
first few years, I missed my friends terribly. Without them, it was all empty
and lonely. Although I had a heavy workload at my job, and a family and a
home, I realized that our identity is in our friends. After our third year in
Germany, we began to adapt and develop new ties. And suddenly I
realized that I wasn't looking forward to going home on holiday. Really! It
startled me.
I have a lot of friends, but only a few people are really close to me. They
have never gone away. They have never betrayed me, and I haven't
betrayed them, either. In my view, that is what counts most. I don't even
know why you would betray your friends. For your career? Career alone
doesn't mean much to me. Of course, a career offers you the opportunity to
make something of yourself, to do something interesting. But how can you
make something of yourself if you are betraying yourself? It's all very
simple. If you look at a career as a means to achieve power, control people,
or make money, and if you are prepared to lose everything doing thatwell,
that's another matter. But if you have priorities in lifebenchmarks and
valuesthen you realize that there's no point in sacrificing yourself and
those who are a part of your life. There just isn't any point. You lose more
than you gain. That's the way it is.
You probably have to go to receptions, be visible, and observe
etiquette. Is your husband's social life a burden?
Not if there's somebody to chat with. And it's fun to dress up. Women
like to dress nicely. On the other hand, politics itself has never
interested me. It's boring.


 Page 160
Would you rather wear a skirt or pants?
Now I prefer skirts, but before it was pants. For everyday life I love
knitsa skirt and sweater. But for official meetings now I have to wear
suits.
In the old days, the wives of the leaders used to buy clothes in a
closed section of GUM.* Now where do you go shopping?
In the same stores as everybody else. I recently went to Escada and
bought the pants and the sweater I'm wearing right now. I spent a
week driving around town looking for some boots for myself. I never
found them. I couldn't find the right size.
Do you buy your husband's clothes?
There was a time when I shopped for him. And I still do, now and
then. Clothes have never meant much to him. He's always had twoor,
at the most, threesuits. And then jeans and shirts. At home he usually
wears jeans and a sweater. He dresses very casually. But now, because
he's always in the public eye, he has begun to dress a little more
carefully.
Many people noticed that the sleeves of his suits used to be too long.
Now they're okay.
That was my fault. Sometimes I was just too lazy to shorten his
sleeves. Now he goes to a tailor.
If you buy him a tie, does he wear it without complaining?
Only if it goes with his shirt and suit. And no, he doesn't do anything
without complaining.
*GUM is a Moscow department store.


 Page 161
You used to have long hair, and now you wear it short. Where do you
get your hair done?
At Irina Baranova's. She used to do Nina Iosifovna Yeltsina's hair too.
I think Irina is wonderful. She has her own salon.
And who's your husband's barber?
There are various barbers, either at the FSO or the FSB.* He's never
paid much attention to his haircut. I like it when his hair is cut very
short.
Do you go on vacation together?
We used to. Twice we went to Kurskiy Zaliv [Courland Lagoon] in
Latvia. We've been abroad. But now . . . you know, I don't make plans
anymore. I used to make them, and when they fell apart I would get
very upset and offended. But now I understand it's easier not to make
plans for shared vacations or holidays or time off, so as not to be
disappointed.
You sound so sad when you say that.
No, not at all. I knew it would be like this. After all, if I was only
worried about myself, then at some point I would have said to my
husband, "Volodya, I beg you, don't do that. Let's stay on the
sidelines. Let's do something else." But I didn't say that.
*The FSO is the Federal Guard Service (the personal protection corps of
the president and other high officials), while the FSB is the Federal
Security Service (the KGB's successor, working on domestic and foreign
intelligence).

 Page 163

PART 9
THE POLITICIAN
Putin tackles the toughest issues in Russia todaythe brutal war in Chechnya,
the conflict in Kosovo, squabbles with NATO, financial scandals, corruption,
and the weakness of the Russian judicial system. He discusses peopleYeltsin,
Clinton, the people he trusts, the people he doesn'tand recreates the moment
Yeltsin offered him the reins of power. Was he ready to govern one of the most
complex, formidable, and volatile countries in the world? Would he ever be?

 Page 165
Your wife told us that you once gave an impromptu press conference
to the French and spent two hours answering tricky political
questions. Would you risk doing the same thing with us?
What are we going to talk about?
Everything.
What you're trying to achieve in Chechnya is more or less clear: a
final ousting of the rebels. Do you know what to do in Chechnya after
that?
First, we have to finish the military operation. What does that mean?
We have to break up the major bandit formationsthat is, units of ten or
more fighters. Simultaneously we need to strengthen the role of law
enforcement agencies and restore government agencies. We have to
tackle social problems, schools, and hospitals. We must more actively
create jobs. Then hold elections.
We need to hold a by-election for a parliamentary representative from
Chechnya. The republic must have its own deputy in the Russian
Duma. Depending on how the situa-

 Page 166
tion turns out, the introduction of direct presidential rule may be
necessary.
Direct presidential rule? For how long?
For a year or two. During that time, we have to restore all the
governmental agencies and transition to other new political
procedures: that is, elections to the local governing bodies, and to the
post of leader of the republic. And as a necessary precondition, to
form a base of reliable people.
Will you appoint them from Moscow? Will they be Russians or
Chechens?
Various options are possible, including a mixed leadership. There are
many possibilities. That's something we will have to decide. We have
to choose people not by their ethnic characteristics but by their
abilities.
But we've already had all that, although in a different form elections,
and the government agencies, and the social assistance. And then the
rebels took Grozny back in a heartbeat. There's no guarantee this
won't happen again.
You know what the guarantee is? I repeat: The bandits will be
destroyed. Whoever takes up arms will be destroyed. And we're
prepared to do business with all the rest. Let them elect a head of the
republic. We are prepared to sign an agreement with Chechnya. How
many power limitation agreements are there? Humans have developed
an enormous number of ways to help different people in one state live
in harmony. Yes, some sort of compromise has to be sought, and we
will seek it. But no one will force any sort of decision on us.


 Page 167
But aren't we forcing it on them? Do you really think that no one will
seek revenge? Not one person?
Russia was provoked into taking action. After all, the bandits are
robbing Chechnya, robbing their own people. For three years, they
have been stealing people's pay, pensions, and aid. And the majority
of Chechens believe that their rulers are to blame.
But you're intending to establish diktat.
Nothing of the kind. We are using force against the bandits, not the
people. The bandits are the ones who are trying to dictate to Chechens
how they should live and even how they should pray to Allah. We will
establish order. There will be peace and quiet in the republic. And
then we'll move on to elections, and we'll make an agreement with the
new leader-ship about the power relationship between Chechnya and
the federal center, understanding that we still have to live together.
Do you have any better suggestions? Should we leave again, drop
everything, and then wait for them to attack us? Isn't that a crime?
Wouldn't it be a crime to abandon ordinary Chechens and to
undermine Russia?
Or stay in Chechnya and wait to be attacked? What should we do?
I have said what we must do. We must go through the mountain caves
and scatter and destroy all those who are armed. Perhaps after the
presidential elections, we should introduce direct presidential rule
there for a couple of years. We must rebuild the economy and the
social services, show the people that normal life is possible. We must
pull the

 Page 168
young generation out of the environment of violence in which it is
living. We must put a program of education in place . . . We must
work. We must not abandon Chechnya as we did before. In fact, we
did a criminal thing back then, when we abandoned the Chechen
people and undermined Russia. Now we must work hard, and then
transfer to full fledged political procedures, allowing them and us to
decide how we can coexist. It is unavoidable fact: We must live
together.
We have no plans to deport Chechens, as Stalin once solved the
problem. And Russia has no other choice. Nobody can impose a
solution on us by force but we are prepared to take maximum
consideration of Chechen interests. We will negotiate and search for a
compromise for our coexistence. And when they come to realize that
this is an acceptable solution, they won't want to take up arms
anymore.
But until they come to realize this, peaceful residents will turn into
bandits and attack liberated settlements, and it's not clear whether they
will ever understand this. We will destroy those who resort to arms.
And we will have to create a local elite, which understands that it is in
Chechnya's interests to remain part of Russia. As things stand today,
any discussion of any status outside of the framework of Russia is out
of the question.
The rebels have already sentenced you to death several times.
One should never fear such threats. It's like with a dog, you know. A
dog senses when somebody is afraid of it, and bites. The same applies
here. If you become jittery, they will think that they are stronger. Only
one thing works in such circumstancesto go on the offensive. You
must hit first, and hit so hard that your opponent will not rise to his
feet.
The army will do its business and then go back into its barracks.

 Page 169
Chechnya isn't the whole country. What do you think the country
needs above all? What's the main priority?
We must clearly and accurately determine our goalsnot just speak
about them in passing. These goals must become comprehensible and
accessible to every person. Like the Code of the Builder of
Communism.
And what would you write in the first line of this Code?
Moral values.
Will we once again search for Russia's special path?
You don't have to search for anything, it's already been found. It's the
path of democratic development. Of course, Russia is a very diverse
country, but we are part of Western European culture. No matter
where our people live, in the Far East or in the south, we are
Europeans.
All that remains is for Europe to think that, too.
We will fight to keep our geographical and spiritual position. And if
they push us away, then we'll be forced to find allies and reinforce
ourselves. What else can we do?
Bring Babitsky back!*
I think you have to direct that request to the bandits.
* Andrei Babitsky is a Russian journalist who works for the U.S.-funded
Radio Liberty and has written highly graphic accounts of the horrors of
the war in Chechnya from behind rebel lines. Frustrated by his
''unpatriotic" journalism and his coverage of Russian atrocities, the
Russian government arrested him in February 2000 and then handed him
over to the Chechen rebels, allegedly in exchange for several Russian
POWs. Babitsky himself then reported that in fact he had been handed
over to pro-Moscow Chechens working for the Russian army. This
 conversation took place before Babitsky's release in March 2000 under
pledge not to leave Moscow pending investigation.

 Page 170
But people doubt that he is really being held by the rebels.
Really? Well, they shouldn't. And Cochetel?* Where is he? And
where is General Shpigun?** And they are holding 258 people. Where
are they?
Cochetel didn't even manage to photograph anything. He came across
the Georgian border and he was seized immediately. Now he is sitting
in a basement and writing letters: "I can't endure it any longer. Do
anything to set me free." And Maskhadov*** has been saying up until
now that he has no idea where the Frenchman is, but he recently
called Lord Russell-Johnston**** and offered to swap him.
So it turns out that Maskhadov does after all, control the situation. He
just won't admit it. Which means that he can't be trusted. So when he
says he knows nothing about Babitsky's whereabouts and that he
doesn't know the field commanders who were interceding on his
behalf, we obviously can't believe him.
*Vincent Cochetel is an official from the U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees who was kidnapped and released in 1998 before this interview.
Putin may be confusing him with Brice Fleutiaux, a French freelance
photojournalist who was kidnapped in October 1999 while working in
Chechnya and was still being held hostage by Chechen rebels as of March
2000.
**On March 5, 1999, unidentified persons abducted General Gennady
Shpigun at gunpoint at the airport outside Chechnya's capital. General
Shpigun, a native of the Caucasus, was the representative in Chechnya of the
Russian Interior Ministry and was still being held hostage as of March 2000.
***Aslan Maskhadov is the President of Chechnya, elected in democratic
elections in 1996.
****Lord Russell-Johnston was elected president of the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe in January 1999.


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Is Babitsky alive?
Yes, he is alive. I think the rebels even sent a video today. You can see
very clearly in the video that he is alive.
When will he show up in Moscow?
He'll show up. And as soon as he shows up, he will be summoned for
interrogation.
That's odd. First you release him against a written pledge not to leave
Moscow, then you exchange him, and then you summon him for
interrogation.
I'll tell you this: Our country is going through a rather complex period
of time. You would agree that Russia's defeat in the first Chechen war
was due to a large extent due to the state of society's morale. Russians
didn't understand what ideals our soldiers were fighting for. Those
soldiers gave their lives and in return they were anathematized. They
were dying for the interests of their country and they were publicly
humiliated.
This time around, fortunately, it's different. Babitsky and his ilk were
essentially trying to reverse the situation. He was working directly for
the enemy. He was not a neutral source of information. He was
working for the bandits.
So you don't like his reports?
Can I please finish? He was working for the bandits. So, when the
militants said they were ready to release several of our soldiers in
exchange for him, our people asked him, "Do you want to be
exchanged?" And he said, "Yes."
And in exchange we were offered three of our soldiers who were
under death threats if we didn't rescue them. These were


 Page 172
our soldiers. They were fighting for Russia. If we didn't get them
back, they would be shot. But the bandits wouldn't do anything to
Babitsky because they thought of him as one of their own.
And then they told us: if you give us back Babitsky, then as soon as he
gets to our camp in the mountains, we'll let go another two POWs.
And they did release them. So, in sum, it was one of Babitsky versus
five of our soldiers. It would have been worth exchanging him for just
one Russian soldier.
So now he's a hero of Russia?
Or a traitor? It's not good to collaborate with bandits and to write that
they are cutting off the heads of our soldiers in order to portray the
whole horror of war. And the fact that they were cutting off peoples'
heads alive before the start of hostilities, and the fact that they took
the hundred hostages for criminal motives in order to get ransomhow
do you account for that? Babitsky was justifying the decapitation of
people.
What he said exactly was . . .
I have read it. He went there. He went in. And he came out carrying
maps of routes that showed how to skirt around our checkpoints. What
authority did he have to stick his nose in there without official
accreditation?
Then perhaps he should have been brought to Moscow to sort the
whole matter out here?
He was arrested and an investigation was started. He said: "I don't
trust you. I trust the Chechens. They asked that I be handed over to
them, so hand me over." And our people said to him, "The hell with
you."


 Page 173
And what if it is all untrue?
You may ask me some other time to tell you the truth about the war.
What really happens to people when they fight on the side of the
enemy . . .
Journalists don't fight.
What Babitsky did is much more dangerous than firing a machine
gun.
And what about freedom of expression?
We interpret freedom of expression in different ways. If you mean
direct complicity in crimes, I will never agree with that. Let us repeat
the sentence about decapitation.
Please, you can speak your mind, but you have no right to determine
his fate.
We didn't stick him in there. He went himself.
Are you sure?
That's the truth. What I say is confirmed by his own words and what
you say isn't confirmed by anything.
And the tape, where you can see quite clearly just how much he wants
to go there . . . * They took a Russian journalist and gave him to God
knows who.
He's not a Russian journalist.
He's a Russian citizen.
*In a videotape of Babitsky delivered to Radio Liberty after he was said to
be turned over to Chechen rebels, he looked pale and tired, spoke slowly,
and said he wanted to go home.


 Page 174
Well, you say he's a Russian citizen. Then let him behave according to
the laws of his own country, if he wants those same laws to be applied
to him.
Still, it isn't clear, under what law could you hand him over?
He asked for it himself.
And if he had asked for you to execute him, would you?
That's impossible. That is prohibited by the internal regulations. I'll
tell you this. It's senseless to execute him, but getting five of our
soldiers for himI think that's quite acceptable.
Bring back Babitsky.
We can't bring him back. We will hunt for him and turn him over to
the courts. I don't know if this case has any prospect of coming to
trial. I'm not certain about that. But he'll have to be interrogated.
What's wrong with our relationship with NATO?
We don't feel like we're full-fledged participants in the process. If we
were granted full-fledged participation in decision-making, then
things wouldn't be so terrible.
The situation with Yugoslavia illustrates that decisions can be made
without Russia.
That's just the point! We don't need those kinds of relations.
You were secretary of the Security Council, when the events in
Yugoslavia began. Was the president or the prime minister interested
in your opinion?


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The president decided these matters directly with the Ministry of
Defense and the Foreign Ministry.
But if you had been in Primakov's place, would you have turned the
plane around over the Atlantic?*
Possibly. Primakov was in a very difficult position. Yes, he could have
flown to Washington and used his visit as a tribunal to express
Russia's position. But the Americans could have turned such a visit
around for their own purposes. They could have interpreted the arrival
of the Russian prime minister as a sign that Russia agreed with their
proposed option for resolving the Yugoslav problem.
Their means of resolving the problem in Yugoslavia was
predetermined after the fall of the USSR.
Then why these demonstrations, if a weakened Russia could not do
anything?
That's not true. Even in its current state, there's a lot that Russia can
do. We should have analyzed the situation earlierbefore the bombing
of Yugoslaviato see how we could have influence our partners'
decision. We could have worked more actively with the countries that
did not agree with the turn of events.
Since we're talking about cooperation with Europe, let's return to
Chechnya for a minute. Can you imagine allowing a peacekeeping
force into Chechnya?
That's out of the question. If we were to recognize that Chechnya is an
independent state, then yes, it would be pos-
*In March 1999, then Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov was on his way to
the United States to discuss the Balkans crisis with President Clinton.
When he learned that the Americans had made the decision to bomb
Serbia, he turned the plane around and returned to Russia.


 Page 176
sible. Then Chechnya could decide to bring any peacekeeping forces
it wanted.
They said that Kosovo would remain within Yugoslavia, and yet they
brought in the troops.
That's why we are not agreeing to any options like Kosovo. Nothing
analogous to the Kosovo events is possible. And it will never be
possible. Everything that the NATO allies actually achieved in
Kosovo directly contradicted the goals that NATO had established for
itself.
You say, "We are not agreeing." Have they really made such offers?
Let's say that we are being offered mediators to help resolve the
Chechen conflict. We don't need any mediators. That is the first step
toward internationalizing the conflict first come the mediators, then
someone else, then observers, then military observers, and then a
limited contingent of troops. And away we go. . . .
But what about OSCE observers?
In Chechnya? After military operations are completed and the bandit
formations are totally defeated. They will be allowed in when we tell
them, and where we consider it expedient.
With that kind of approach, it looks like integration into Europe isn't
on the horizon.
It depends on what kind of Europe you mean. Let's analyze it: Yes, the
world has changed, and Europe, too, has changedthat's no secret. The
UN Charter was signed with a different array of world powers in
mind. We were the main victors after World War II.


 Page 177
But now, alas, we have become weaker, and the UN Charter remains
in effect. Not everybody likes that. They are trying to change it or
supplant itfor example, with decisions from NATO. We must not
agree to that.
Many have forgotten, by the way, that when NATO was created at the
end of the 1940s, the Soviet Union indicated its intention to enter this
bloc. But we weren't let in. In response, together with the countries of
Eastern Europe, we formed the Warsaw Pact, which no longer exists.
The Pact was a direct response to the formation of the NATO alliance.
So should we reconsider joining NATO?
We can consider it, but not at this moment. It's a question of what kind
of NATO we're talking about. If we're talking about the NATO that
acted in Kosovo in direct violation of UN decisions, that's not even of
theoretical interest for us to discuss. If we're talking about a serious
transformation of this bloc into a political organization prepared to
have constructive interactions with Russia, then there is a topic for
discussion.
In sum, I don't see any reason why cooperation between Russia and
NATO shouldn't develop further; but I repeat that it will happen only
if Russia is treated as an equal partner.
In any case, even when you are making suppositions, you have to
think of the long term. There are a lot of problems political, economic,
military. For example, any blocand NATO is no exceptionsets
weapons standards that substantially affect the interests of the defense
industry.
But what do the members of NATO think about this?
I think they fear the destruction of NATO from within. I understand
them perfectly well. We are too powerful a domi-


 Page 178
nant theme. There is one single powerthe USA. Say a second one
appears, albeit one not as powerful as the first. Yet the balance of
power could be ruined. The founding fathers of NATO fear that their
organization would change drastically. From our perspective, it would
change for the better, and from theirs, possibly for the worse.
Still, it doesn't make sense. It seems as though Russia criticized
NATO because we weren't allowed into the Yugoslavia resolution
process as full-fledged partners. But what if we had been allowed in?
Well, that's just the point. If we had been allowed in, that decision
never would have been made. We never would have agreed to that
type of interference in the internal affairs of another country. That sort
of behavior simply cannot be justified, even for so-called
humanitarian reasons. I believe that the operation itself was a major
mistake in international relations and a violation of the founding
principles of international law.
And the invasion of Hungary by Warsaw Pact troops in 1956, and of
Czechoslovakia in 1968? Were they major mistakes?
You forget that we used force in Germany in 1953, too. In my view,
these were major mistakes. And the Russophobia that we see in
Eastern Europe today is the fruit of those mistakes.
But look: We began talking about Russia's relationship with Europe,
and we have narrowed it down to our relations with NATO. Even with
the North Atlantic orientation of today's European policy, we cannot
forget that NATO and Europe are not one and the same thing. And I've
already said that Russia is a country of European culturenot NATO
culture.


 Page 179
We're always hearing that Russia has grown weak, and that a whole
slew of problems are ensuing from that weakness, both at home and
abroad. Your thesis is that Russia's statehood must be restoreda strong
state is needed. That's under-standable. Does that mean that state
property also has to be restored?
No, of course not. But we have to have state property on a limited
scale, where it is necessary. For example, in the defense industry.
Does that mean that the private sector should be expanded?
First, we need to guarantee property rights. I believe that one of the
main purposes of the state is to create rulesuniversal rulesin the form
of laws, instructions, and regulations. And secondly, to comply with
these rules, and guarantee their compliance.
But we've already had lots of these instructions and rules, regulations,
and laws, and where have they gotten us?
You're right. And that is why the people do not trust the government.
Look at all the types of laws that have been passed in the social
spherefor example, free transportation for members of the military.
They may have passed the law, but in reality, the military pays for
transportation. There are lots of other examples. In order to change
this situation, the government will have to take some unpopular
measures.
What unpopular measures?
We will have to review all the social guarantees that the state has
taken upon itself in recent years and that are completely unfounded
and not backed up. We have no choice.


 Page 180
Can you be more specific? Maybe you could use the example of free
rides for military personnel?
Sure. Wouldn't it be better to raise the salaries of some citizens,
including military people? If you gave them just a little bit more
money, they could pay their own fares and wouldn't be put in such a
humiliating position. But if the government does say that it will
compensate those citizensfor example, for their faresthen it must do
so.
I'm sure the leftist opposition will jump on me, saying that people are
losing their benefits and that this is a blow against the helpless
working people, who already have it so hard. But a government that
doesn't fulfill its obligations is not a government. And that's why
there's such a lack of trust in the government now.
So you are entering into a deal with the leftists because you'll need
them when you have to make some unpopular decisions? Is that why
you needed Seleznev as speaker of the House?
I need them? On the contrary, I told both Seleznev and Zyuganov to
find a fresh face, even if it's a person from their own camp.
But a Communist! You really wound up with a fresh face, didn't you! .
. .
Listen, there has always been cooperation with the Communists in our
Duma. Not a single law passes without support from the Communists.
It seems to me that there is more than one way to deal with the
Communists. They have every opportunity to become a modern
parliamentary party in the European sense of the word. We have very
many parties, groups, grouplets, and associations without any real
social


 Page 181
base. And then there are the Communiststhe only large-scale, really
big party with a strong social base, albeit one infested with ideological
''roaches."
Name the "roaches" for us.
For example, the demands to confiscate and nationalize property.
That's not going to happen?
That's definitely not going to happen. We will not have another major
tragedy. And we will not have a partnership with the Communists
while they maintain that position. If some sort of unlawful actions in
previous years were established and proven in court, that would be
another matter. But nationalization and confiscation of property for
their own sakes, without a judicial procedure is a catastrophe. If for no
other reason than because they would clear the way for arbitrary rule.
Communists can either change their programmatic goals and become
a major left-wing party of the European type, or they can take the
other path and lose their social base through natural attrition. If they
choose the latter, they will gradually exit the political stage.
They themselves hardly believe that.
As surprising as it may sound, their leaders do understand. And they
are prepared to change their ways. But right now they can't do
itthey're afraid that their constituency will feel betrayed. And on that
score, it's pretty important not to miss the momentwhen and to what
extent they can change internally.

 Page 182
For many people, "strong authority" is associated with dicta-torship.
I prefer another phrasenot "strong," but "effective" authority.
You can call it what you like. But how will that authority become
effective? How will it enforce the rules it establishes?
The courts must workas must the law enforcement agencies and the
courts of arbitration. The role of these agencies has changed, and we
refuse to understand that. Their role has begun to correspond to what
is written in the law. Why don't we pay judges and law enforcement
agents the money that they deserve? Because Soviet ideology governs
our consciousness to this day. Remember how we used to think:
"Well, a court, what's that? Nothing special. The district Party
committee is the body that makes all the decisions. It's important. But
what do the judges do? They will do what they are told."
To this day, people think that judges are not important, and that they
shouldn't be paid more than the average civil servant.
Or take the notary publics. In the French system, if a notary public
stamps a document, it is ironclad law. If a notary public makes a
mistake, he is obliged to pay compensation. Two mistakes, and he is
ruined.
Our society must understand that a minoritya certain category of
peoplemust be paid very well by the state, so that they can secure the
interests of the majority. When will we finally begin to understand
this? Our people aren't stupid. It's just that it hasn't been explained the
right way.
But the role of the courts has been explained. They've been explaining
it for ten years! But until the courts change for the


 Page 183
better, the attitudes toward them won't change either. How else can
you explain it?
More persistently. Without that, nothing will change. And we have to
raise judges' salaries.
Now, the governors are hardly going to line up behind your ideas
about "effective" authority and the governability of the state. They're
all going to be afraid that you will cut off their independence.
I think that we have to preserve both local self-government and a
system of election for governors. But all of these connections have to
be more balanced. While preserving the system of electing governors,
for instance, we should consider applying sanctions against them. To
remove them from office, for example.
That is, elect some and remove others.
We can develop systems to link them more closely to the center. They
cannot have complete independence.
Do you mean a system of oversight?
Oversight and influence. All members of the Russian Federation
should be placed under equal economic conditions vís à vis the federal
center. We have signed a huge number of agreements on the
separation of powers, but some federation members have unjustified
privileges that others don't.
Tatarstan, for example?
Tatarstan, for example.
Shaimiev* may not understand you.
*Shaimiev is the president of Tatarstan.


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You're wrong. He does understand. I recently discussed the problem
with him in general terms. Shaimiev generally agreed with me.
Everyone understands what is eroding the overall economic and
political sphere. And that is one of our priorities.
The next step is science and education. Without modern managers,
without a contemporary understanding of what needs to be done, and
without carriers of this understanding, it will be impossible to achieve
results.
But those "carriers" have already left the country.
Not all of them. And we've preserved the most important
thingfundamental science and education. If we lose that, of course, it's
the end.
Where are you going to get the money for all of this?
You know, we don't need that much money. The problem is not
money. The problem is understanding.
Well what, for example, would you pay young specialists, taking into
account their understanding?
Let's say they are offered about $5,000 a month in the West. What if
we were to pay them, theoretically speaking, $2,000 a month?
Oy!
Yes. And I bet the majority would not leave the country under those
terms. To live in your own country, surrounded by your own language
and peopleclose to youyour friends, your relatives, your
acquaintancesand receive a little more money than others for thatit's
very advantageous.


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Still, it doesn't make sense. You intend to pay higher salaries to
judges, the state bureaucracy, and the army, and you will also need
more money for education and science. Where are you going to get it?
What if America decides tomorrow to sell its strategic oil reserves?
The prices will fall, and then . . .
We have money, but it has been slipping through our fingers. Until
there is a strong state, we will remain dependent on someone's
strategic reserves.
You're a specialist in law. Is the law immutable?
The law has to be observed, but if it becomes outdated, it must be
altered. One of the postulates of legal theory is that the law always
lags behind life.
What about our Constitution? Is it lagging behind life?
The Constitution should enshrine the most general principles.
Therefore it lives longer than ordinary law. This is natural, since the
Constitution guarantees society certain rules for the long term. But
amendments can be made to it.
Should amendments be made to the section in the Constitution about
the powers of the president? Should they be limited? In fact, another
type of amendment is being contemplated nowincreasing the term of
office of the president to seven years.
I don't know, maybe four years is enough time to get things done. But
four years is a short term. The technical experts we're working with
are mapping out a year-by-year program of action. During the first,
the agenda is to form goals and teams; during the second and part of
the third, to gradually achieve concrete results; during the end of the
third and the beginning of the fourth, to present our results and to


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begin the next election campaign. If that cycle is broken and
everything is scattered, we won't be able to get anything done, and we
won't be able to prepare for the next elections.
What about the powers of the president?
I can't rule it outamendments are possible. We must look carefully at
how things are formulated and whether they correspond with the
interests of the state and the society as a whole. If there are
exceptional rights in the section on the powers of the president, then
we should think about reviewing them. I believe this should be the
subject of a broad discussion. But from the very beginning, Russia
was created as a supercentralized state. That's practically laid down in
its genetic code, its traditions, and the mentality of its people.
If you want to take a historical approach to these issues, then
monarchy is also embedded in Russian tradition. Does that mean we
should restore it?
I think that is not very likely. But in general . . . in certain periods of
time . . . in a certain place . . . under certain conditions . . . monarchy
has played and continues to this day to play a positive role. In Spain,
for instance. I think the monarchy played a decisive role in releasing
the country from despotism and totalitarianism. The monarchy was
clearly the stabilizing factor. The monarch doesn't have to worry about
whether or not he will be elected, or about petty political interests, or
about how to influence the electorate. He can think about the destiny
of the people and not become distracted with trivialities.
And the prime minister will think about everything else.
Yes, the government.


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But in Russia, that's not possible.
You know, there's a lot that seems impossible and incredible and
thenbang! Look what happened to the Soviet Union. Who could have
imagined that it would simply collapse? No one saw that comingeven
in their worst nightmares.
Were you present at the burial of the remains of the czar's family in St.
Petersburg?
No.
What do you think? Was burying them the right thing to do?
I think so.
Should the state have relations with big business?
Definitely, because a lot depends on big business. But relations
between the state and business should be defined by the law and by
general rules. Businesses want this sort of regulation too, so that the
state can't play favorites and so that they're all competing under equal
conditions.
So you don't rule out dealing with big businessmen?
Of course not. I think the state has to listen to both work-ers and trade
unions as well as to the representatives of big business and
associations of entrepreneurs. Much depends on the policies of firms
and major companies. How can I pretend that this doesn't matter to
me? That would be a mis-take. But the state should not command
business.

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On the question of favorites: in an interview, Boris Berezovsky* said
that he meets with you once a month. Is that true?
It's probably less often.
On whose initiative?
On his. He has such a lively mind. Most of his ideas are connected to
the Caucasusto Chechnya and Karachay-Cherkessia. He was, after all,
deputy secretary of the Security Council, and worked on these issues.
Incidentally, in my view, his proposals on Chechnya are not realistic
or effective. Frankly speaking, that is why nothing that he has
proposed is being implemented. From time to time, I not only meet
with Berezovsky but also with other businessmenfor example Petr
Aven, Potanin, and Alekperov.
Your wife said that you don't like to discuss your work colleagues. But
we're interested in people. In Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, for example.
. . .
Do you want me to give you an evaluation of his role in history?
Well, you did have a relationship with him, including a personal one.
I did not have a particularly close relationship with Boris
Nikolayevich, just a good working relationship. He treats me very
well and I am grateful to him for that. I hardly ever meet him in
regular life.
*Boris Berezovsky is a prominent and influential Russian businessman. He
is part-owner of ORT, a pro-government television station, and has taken
an active role in the Chechen conflicts. He was former deputy secretary of
the National Security Council in the Yeltsin administration.


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And you don't play tennis?
And I don't play tennis. Before his retirement, I visited Yeltsin at
home only on work-related matters. Moreover, I can say that only
when he began to discuss the question of his resignation with me did I
sense a certain warmth in him.
Do you call him?
Yes. He and I talk more now than we did before his retirement.
Before, I wouldn't have dreamed of calling him. . . .
That is, I did pick up the phone and call him a few times, but only for
work matters. Now our relationship is different. Now I can just call
him and chat.
But do you visit him?
Yes, I visit him. Recently I went to his house on business. Boris
Nikolayevich said to me, "Please stay for dinner. We're going to have
sushi." Apparently he once tried sushi in a restaurant and he liked it.
So his wife and daughter decided to put together a Japanese meal at
home. Of course I stayed. Afterward we sat for a long time drinking
beer and talking.
Does Yeltsin call you himself?
Yes, he has called several times. He was intersted to find out how
things were going in the Caucasus. And then he once asked how our
internal troops were doing. He called about the CIS summit, and we
met at his initiative to discuss how to raise certain issues during the
meeting with the CIS leaders. And we discussed the leadership of the
Commonwealth. His experience in this regard is very helpful.


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Everyone is wondering whether you are going to lock horns with
Luzhkov* like you did before?
Lock horns? But I never had any fight with him.
Alright, then. Will you try to break him, or will you work with him as
with any other member of the Federation Council?**
Of course I'll work with him. I'm prepared to rely on him as someone
with great influence in the largest region of the countrythe capitalbut
his own actions must be directed at strengthening the state.
What were they directed at before?
Until now, to a large extent, they have been aimed at satisfying his
political ambitions. When a regional leader is so ambitious, I think it
is destructive for the country.
Actually, the fault lies not so much with the individual as with the
central authority. As soon as the regional leaders sense that the
government is strong and effective, they will return to the role
prescribed for them by the Constitution, and begin to take care of
business.
Like the Ring Road?
Yes, the Ring Road.
They say a lot of money was stolen on that project.
Whenever I hear someone accused of theft or something like that, I
want to ask: Do we still presume people to be innocent? If a crime is
not proven, no one can be accused of it.
*Yuri Luzhkov has been the mayor of Moscow since the Yeltsin era.
Luzhkov was accused of embezzlement during his rebuilding of the Ring
Road around Moscow.
 **The upper chamber of Parliment, where the mayor of Moscow has a seat.

 Page 191
Of course, there is also a peculiarly Russian feature that is known to
all. Remember that joke from the Soviet era? Brezhnev comes to visit
Carter. Carter says, ''Do you see that beautiful bridge there?" "Yes,"
says Brezhnev. Carter tells him: "It has five lanes running one way
and five lines running in the opposite direction. But the plans called
for 10 lanes one way and 10 lanes the other way." "Well, where are the
missing lanes?" asks Brezhnev. "They're all here!" says Carter, and
points to the furniture in the White House. Brezhnev thinks, "Well,
alright!" Then Carter comes to visit him in Russia. Brezhnev says,
"See the Moscow River?" "I see it," says Carter. "Do you see the
bridge across it?" "No, I don't." "Because it's all right here!" says
Brezhnev and he points to the furniture in the Kremlin.
Of course you can assume that somebody siphoned off funds from the
construction of the Ring Road; but at least that road is out there, isn't
it? And you can be proud of it. And if somebody thinks that
somebody stole something, let him go and prove it.
How do you think Luzhkov is going to treat you?
I think he will behave constructively. I don't think he will really have a
choice.
What are you implying?
Nothing. I'm not implying any forcible actions. You know, I think that
many people believe that the president had ceased to be the center of
power. Before, they behaved quite loyally. If need be, I will simply act
in such a way as to guarantee that no one has such illusions anymore.

 Page 192
The most famous Petersburger is Anatoly Chubais. Do you have a
close relationship with him? Weren't you acquainted with him in
Peter?
When I came to work for Sobchak, Chubais was the deputy chair of
the Leningrad City Council executive committee. I never had any
direct interaction with Chubais. I never dealt with him closely.
How did you react to his voucher plan?
I didn't.
What did you do with your own voucher?
I lost it, at first, and then I found it and bought something with it,
something stupid. About a year before the privatization, I spoke with
Vasily Leontiev, the Nobel Prize winner, and he told me, "Give the
property away to whomever you wish. In two or three years it will end
up in the right hands anyway. Give it away free if you have to." And
Chubais did give it away. I think that was his exact approachalthough,
of course, you should ask him about it yourself.
Two or three years? Do you think that's inevitable?
I don't know whether it's inevitable. What's important is that the
property be in the hands of an effective owner.
But it wound up in the hands of a different owner.
That's just it.
Weren't you offended when Chubais came to work in the presidential
administration, and the first thing he did was eliminate the position
that had been promised to you?
No, I wasn't offended. I know his technocratic approach to the
solution of problems. He had decided that the existing


 Page 193
staff structure did not correspond to the challenges that faced the
administration.
There was nothing personal about it?
There is no question of intrigue here. He is not the sort of person who
is guided by sentiments. Of course I can't say that I was overjoyed at
the time, but I didn't feel angry at him. Quite frankly, I wasn't
particularly hurt.
So when did you establish more or less regular contact with Chubais?
Never.
But he comes and visits you at your dacha on occasion?
Yes, he sometimes comes to visit.
Were you surprised that Chubais supported the operation in
Chechnya?
Yes.
Why?
I thought that he lived in a world of illusions. But it turned out that
he's more of a pragmatist, that he's capable of grasping the realities of
life and is not guided by ephemeral ideas.
And when he said that he supported your candidacy in the presidential
elections?
That didn't surprise me either, because he knows perfectly well that I
am not a dictator and don't intend to return the country to an
administrative economy ruled by directives.
Chubais, by the way, is a very good administrator. I've watched him
run the Commission on Operations, and I've seen him in action at
government meetings. He is able to

 Page 194
grasp the main point, and as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin used to say, pull
out the whole chain. But of course, he is so hard-nosed, like a
Bolshevik . . . yes, that's the right word to describe him.
Unfortunately, he has a bad credit record. I mean his public creditthe
public's trust in himis low.
What political leaders do you find most interesting?
Napoleon Bonaparte. [Laughs.]
No, seriously.
De Gaulle, most likely. And I also like Erhard. He was a very
pragmatic person. He was the one who built the new Germany after
the war. In fact, his entire conception for the reconstruction of the
country began with the creation of new moral values for society. For
Germany, this was particularly important, after the collapse of Nazi
ideology.
Why have you postponed all your trips abroad until after the
elections?
It was a logistical problem: The president and the prime minister do
not have the right to travel abroad at the same time, and I am
simultaneously the acting president and the prime minister.
Any other reason? Were you afraid that you would be pecked apart
over Chechnya?
I'd like to peck them all apart myself. But they didn't really want to
meet with us because of Chechnya. Or if they were prepared to meet,
it was in a format and at a level of discussion that did not suit us. They
would meet with us on our terms, they said, if we agreed to change
our position on the


 Page 195
Caucasus. That suited us even less, as it would have cost more than
my trips abroad.
But when you were still a "traveling" prime minister, you managed to
meet with Clinton in New Zealand.
Yes, I liked him.
What did you like about him?
He's a very charming person. I liked talking to him.
You evidently share a mutual admiration for each other. He recently
supported you on the Internet.
In that first meeting, he also paid special attention to me. When we
were in New ZealandI don't recall whether it was at lunch or dinnerhe
made a point of coming up to me. We had been seated at different
tables. We talked about something for a while, and then he said,
"Well, shall we go?" Everyone lined up in a corridorthe leaders of
other states, guestsand he and I walked together along that corridor.
We exited the hall to the sound of applause. I appreciated this sign of
special regard. Maybe that's why he made such a good impression on
me. No, I'm just kidding around. In conversation, he just seems like a
sincere personopen and friendly and that's very important.
He has a natural charm.
Probably. If you don't have natural charm, it's very hard to learn it. I
know that for sure.
Who else have you met personally?
Kohl, Thatcher, Major.


 Page 196
Was that back when you were working in Petersburg?
Yes.
Did you speak German with Kohl?
He met with Sobchak for about 30 minutes. I translated. They were
the most general kind of remarks, about nothing really. We were at
lunch. He had said, "Let's not talk about anything serious. Come to
Bonn in about three weeks, and we'll talk about everything."
Later, Sobchak took him up on the offer, and took me along with him.
It was a business trip. You know what surprised me the most? I didn't
expect any major European political figure would know Russia so
well and so deeply. That simply amazed me.
Now I can't recall everything that he said, but I do remember my own
feelings. I was impressed by Kohl's deep knowledge of Russian
history and contemporary life. He understood the essence of the
events taking place. And it was especially gratifying to hear him say
that he couldn't imagine a Europe without Russia. He said that the
Germans were not only interested in the Russian market but in
becoming worthy partners with Russia.
But maybe he was just using polite phrases.
No, I don't think so. These were not just the protocol phrases. I was
convinced that he really felt what he said.
Such a strong leader, and such a scandal after his resignation! It's
strange.
There's nothing strange about it. In fact, the Christian Democratic
Union had grown weak and it was defeated.


 Page 197
Obviously, the leadership made mistakes. But after 16 years, any
peopleincluding the stable Germansget tired of a leader, even a leader
as strong as Kohl. It just took them a while to realize it.
Now you've arrived in the Kremlin, which in recent times has been
linked to scandal after scandal of its ownBorodin and Mabetex,* the
"Family" money**. . . You've been strangely silent about all this, and
people are conjecturing that it's because the "Family" brought you in
and that, in gratitude, you are putting out all the fires.
I never had any special relations with the people close to the
president. And it would be very risky to trust such a serious matter as
"putting out fires" to a little-known person.
It can't be that risky if you appointed Borodin to the post of state
secretary for Belarus and Russia.
I didn't appoint him. I proposed him, and he was selected.
Even though he has a trail of scandalous accusations behind him? You
don't believe that you should have investigated the scandals first,
before nominating him for an official post?
I believe what is written in the law. There is a golden rule, the
fundamental principle of any democratic system, and it is called "the
presumption of innocence."
*Borodin was accused of providing kickbacks to Yeltsin and his family
through the Swiss construction firm, Mabetex.
**The "Family" refers to Yeltsin, his family, and his entourage.

 Page 198
But nothing was proven in court in the case of Prosecutor General
Yuri Skuratov,* and that didn't prevent him from being dismissed.
Skuratov was removed from his position in full compliance with the
law, which states that during the period of investigation of a case
opened against the prosecutor general, he must be removed. That's
what happened.
Do you suppose that if the investigation doesn't find anything, he'll be
reinstated?
Theoretically, yes. But there is more at stake here than just the
criminal and legal aspects. There is a moral aspect as well. I am clear
on the moral side of the story. I know the facts exactly. He and I spoke
about this.
Then why did he later deny the story again?
Because he didn't want to be compromised, that's all.
A newspaper reported that Skuratov wrote his second letter of
resignation after you worked him over. They also said that compared
to you, the cellars of the FSB headquarters in Lubyanka seemed like
paradise.
This is all nonsense.
But what happened?
The four of us met: Boris Nikolayevich, Prime Minister Primakov,
myself, then director of the FSB, and Skuratov.
Boris Nikolayevich took out the videotape and the photographs made
from the videotape. He just put them on the
*A newspaper published photos purportedly showing Skuratov with
prostitutes, which unleashed a scandal leading to his suspension as
 prosecutor general.

 Page 199
table and said, "I don't think that you should work as the prosecutor
general any longer."
Primakov agreed: "Yes, Yuri Ilyich, I think that you had better write a
letter of resignation." Yuri Ilyich thought for a while. Then he took out
a piece of paper and wrote that he was resigning.
If you were in a similar situation, how would you have acted?
If I thought that my personal behavior was incompatible with my
professional duties, of course I would leave. I am certain that the
position of prosecutor general, for example, is incompatible with a
scandal like this.
And the position of prime minister?
Prime minister? Strange as it may sound, it would be less serious. A
prosecutor is different. A prosecutor should be a model of morality
and scruples, because he is the one who ensures that all citizens
comply with the lawthe prime minister, the president, and everyone
else.
Another questionthis one, related to the heroines of this story. Should
we fight prostitution?
Through social and economic means.
What kind?
We need for people to live normally. After World War II, prostitution
flourished in Western Europe because people were poor. Talk to the
veterans of World War II and they will tell you that women gave
themselves away for a chunk of bread. Prostitution arises out of
poverty and desperation. If you live a normal life, if the economy
develops, if the standard of living rises. . .


 Page 200
In Germany there is already a high standard of living, and there's
plenty of prostitution. It's even legalized.
But there are only foreign women in the brothels. There aren't any
Germans.
How would you know?
So I've been told . . . by people like yourselves from the licentious
professions.
Alright. So maybe there are no Germans, but there's prostitution.
There is prostitution. I'm talking now about the nationality of the
participants. They're all operating openly. And there are no Germans
among them, because the standard of living in the country is very
high.
So are you for or against the legalization of prostitution?
I don't think that prostitution should be legalized. You have to combat
it with social and economic methods. Then no one will want to go into
prostitution. Whyare you in favor of legalization?
Well, you could have doctors in the brothels, then. And the girls
would not be ripped off, or mistreated.
You have a kind heart.
Whose proposals do you listen to, and who do you trust? You said that
your goal in the first year is to formulate a team. Who is on your
team?
Trust? Sergei Ivanov, Secretary of the Security Council.


 Page 201
Have you known each other for a long time?
I've known him for a long time, but not very well. We began working
together in the Leningrad Directorate of the KGB. At that time I only
knew that he existed. Then he went to Moscow, and did several long
stints abroad. We had many friends in common. I heard stuff about
him from all different people, and it was positive. He knows several
languages: English, Swedish, and Finnish, I think. And I think that he
is in the right job. He recently returned from the States, where things
went very well. He met with Clinton, Albright, and Berger. I'm happy
with his work.
But there isn't anyone you've spent a lot of time with.
Of course, it is always better to have had the benefit of direct
experience working together. But let's agree that there is such a thing
as comradeship. I get that feeling with Ivanov and with Nikolai
Patrushev and also with Dima Medvedev.
Medvedev is heading your election campaign. Is he also from Peter?
He taught civil law at Leningrad University. He has a doctoral degree
in jurisprudence and is a fine expert. I needed some people when I
worked with Sobchak in the mayor's office. I went to the law faculty
for help, and they suggested Dima. When I was deputy mayor, Dima
was my adviser, and he worked with me for about a year and a half.
Then, after our unsuccessful elections, he left the mayor's office and
went back to the university.
You recently invited him to Moscow?
Just this year. Actually, I had originally planned for Dima to head up
the Federal Securities Commission. He is a specialist in


 Page 202
the securities market. He seems to like to working on our team, but we
haven't yet decided specifically where to use him.
Who else?
I trust Aleksei Kudrin. He is now first deputy minister of finances. I
think that he's a decent and professional guy. We both worked for
Sobchak and we were both his deputies. In years of working together,
you can learn a lot about a person.
And where did Igor Sechin come from?
Sechin also worked with us in Petersburg, in the protocol department.
He is a philologist by training. He knows Portuguese, French, and
Spanish. He worked abroad, in Mozambique and Angola.
Was he in combat?
Yes. Then he landed on the executive committee of the Leningrad
City Council. When I became deputy mayor and was choosing my
staff, I considered a lot of people, and I liked Sechin. I suggested that
he come to work for me. This was in 1992-1993. And when I went to
work in Moscow, he asked to come along, so I brought him with me.
Now what will happen with the old guard in the Kremlin? Everyone
says, just wait, Putin will win the elections and he'll be free of them.
In the best case, he'll fire them.
You know, that kind of logic is characteristic of people with
totalitarian mentalities. That's how they expect a person to behave if
he wants to remain in his post the rest of his life. But I don't want that.

 Page 203
But there are some figures that the public has a uniformly negative
reaction to, such as Pavel Borodin. Then there's also the chief of the
presidential administration, Aleksandr Voloshin. He's not beloved by
the public.
Voloshin is not well liked by the public, or by a part of the
establishment. As groups and clans fought among themselves, a
negative feeling emerged. Voloshin was not immune to it. And these
clans fought dirty. I don't think that's a basis for firing someone.
Voloshin suits me just fine for today. The work he is doing is rather
particular. We discussed who could be put in his place, and we
considered Dima Medvedev. Voloshin himself said, ''Let Dima work
as my deputy, and then, when he grows into the job, let him be
considered as my replacement." There's no sense in second-guessing it
now.
But it does make sense to respond to the public's criticism of officials
in the Kremlin and the entourage of the former president.
I, too, have worked for the state for a long time. Am I in the
entourage, or not? These questions are all about appearances. The
individual, with his knowledge, his professional abilities, and his
talents, is worth far more. I will be guided by whether a person fits the
post he occupies or not. That's the most important thing.
In any event, I'm not president yet. First I have to win the elections.
And to be honest, I'm a superstitious person, so I try not to think about
these things ahead of time. Do you think I should?
You thought you might have to pay for this war with your career, but
you became acting president instead.
It probably helped that I didn't want the president's job.


 Page 204
And when Yeltsin said that he planned to resign before the end of his
term, you didn't say, "No, what are you doing, Boris Nikolayevich?!"
No, I didn't try to talk him out of it; but I also didn't dance with joy
and thank him and assure him that I would justify his faith in me. My
first reaction was "I'm not ready for this."
When I was appointed prime minister, it was interesting and it was an
honor. I thought, "Well, I'll work for a year, and that's fine. If I can
help save Russia from collapse, then I'll have something to be proud
of." It was a while stage in my life. And then I'll move onto the next
thing. About two or three weeks before New Year's Eve, Boris
Nikolayevich invited me into his office and said that he had made the
decision to resign. I would become the acting president. He looked at
me and waited to see what I would say.
I sat in silence. He started to explain it in more detailthat he wanted to
announce his resignation before New Year's . . . When he stopped
talking, I said, "You know, Boris Nikolayevich, to be honest, I don't
know if I'm ready for this or whether I want it, because it's a rather
difficult fate."
I wasn't sure I wanted such a fate. . . . And then he replied, "When I
came here, I also had other plans. Life turned out this way. I, too,
didn't strive for this, but in the end, circumstances forced me to fight
for the post of president. Well, I think your fate is forcing you into a
decision. Our country isn't so huge. You'll manage."
He paused and became lost in thought. I realized this was hard for
him. On the whole, it was a depressing conversation. I had never
thought seriously that I might become his successor, so when Boris
Nikolayevich told me about his decision, I wasn't really prepared for
it.
But I would have to respond one way or the other. The


 Page 205
question had been put to me: yes or no? When the conversation went
off on a tangent for a while, I thought I was off the hook. I thought
that it was all forgotten. But then Boris Nikolayevich looked me in the
eye and said: "You haven't answered me."
On the one hand, there were my own internal arguments. But there
was also another logic. My fate was allowing me to work at the
highest level in the country and for the country. And it would be
stupid to say, "No, I'd rather sell seeds" or "No, I'm going into private
law practice." I could always do those things later. So I decided I
would do it.
Katya:
I flipped out when I heard that Papa was going to become acting president.
When Mama told me this, I thought she was joking. Then I realized that
she wouldn't joke about such a thing. Then the phone kept ringing, and
everyone was congratulating us. Our classmates, and even the school
principal. She teaches us English. At midnight we turned on the TV and
saw Papa shaking people's hands. I liked that. He was so serious . . . or
calm. Really, just like always. Papa is Papa. On the one hand, I want him
to become president. On the other, I don't.
Masha:
On the one hand, I don't want him to become president, and then on the
other, I do want it. We also listened to Boris Nikolayevich speak that day.
My throat started to hurt. Not like when you have a cold, but a different
way. He really got to me.
Lyudmila Putina:
I learned about Boris Nikolayevich's resignation on the afternoon of the
31st. My girlfriend called me and said, "Have you heard?" I said, "What is
it?" So I learned it from her. I cried for a whole day because I realized that
our pri-


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vate life was over for at least three months, until the presidential elections,
or perhaps for four years.
So, do you want to be president or not?
When I began to work as the acting president I felt . . . a
satisfactionperhaps that's not the best wordin making decisions
independently, knowing that I was the last resort and that a lot
depended on me. The responsibility was on me. Yes, I took pleasure in
feeling responsible.
I have some rules of my own. One of them is never to regret anything.
Over time, I came to the conclusion that this was the right thing to do.
As soon as you start regretting and looking back, you start to sour.
You always have to think about the future. You always have to look
ahead. Of course you have to analyze your past mistakes, but only so
that you can learn and correct the course of your life.
Do you like that kind of life?
You have to gain satisfaction from the process. We live each second,
and we can never live that second all over again.
You say that so seriously, as if you've never committed any
thoughtless stupidities, or wasted time on trivia.
I have done stupid things and wasted my time.
For example?
Okay. Once I was driving with my senior coach from Trud to a base
outside Leningrad. I was in university at the time. A truck with a load
of hay was coming from the other direction. My window was open,
and the hay smelled delicious. As I drove past the truck on a curve, I
reached out the window to grab some straw. The car suddenly
swerved . . . Whoops! The


 Page 207
steering wheel turned, and we were headed toward the rear wheel of
the truck. I turned the wheel sharply in the other direction, and my
rickety Zaporozhets went up on two wheels. I almost lost control of
the car. We really should have ended up in a ditch, but fortunately, we
landed back on all four wheels.
My coach sat there, frozen speechless. Not until we pulled up at the
hotel and he got out of the car did he look at me and say, "You take
risks." Then he walked away. There is some stupid stuff like that.
What drew me to that truck? It must have been the sweet smell of the
hay.

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APPENDIX
RUSSIA AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM*
Vladimir Putin
Humankind is witnessing two major events: the new millennium and
the 2000th anniversary of Christianity. I think that the general interest
and attention paid to these two events is more profound than the usual
celebration of red-letter dates.
New Possibilities, New Problems
It may be a coincidencebut then again, it may be notthat the beginning
of the new millennium coincides with the dramatic turn in world
developments in the past twenty to thirty years. I mean the deep and
rapid changes in humankind's whole way of life related to the
formation of what we call the post-industrial society. Here are its main
features:
Changes in the economic structure of society, with the diminishing
importance of material production and the growing importance of
secondary and third sectors.
Consistent renewal and quick introduction of novel technologies
and the growing output of science-intensive production.
Landslide developments in information science and
telecommunications.
Priority attention to management and the improvement of systems
of organization and guidance in all spheres of human endeavor.
And lastly, human leadership. It is the individual and his or her high
standards of education, professional training, business, and social
 activity that are the guiding force of progress today.
A new type of society develops slowly enough for careful politicians,
statesmen, scientists, and all those who use their brains to notice two
issues of concern.
*This article by Vladimir Putin while he was prime minister and acting
president of Russia, first appeared on December 31, 1999, on the web site
of the Government of the Russian Federation
(http://www.gov.ru/ministry/isp-vlast47.html).

 Page 210
The first is that changes bring not only new possibilities to improve
life, but also new problems and dangers. These problems and dangers
became obvious in the ecological sphere first. But other acute
problems could soon be detected in all other areas of social life. Even
the most economically advanced states are not free from organized
crime, growing cruelty and violence, alcoholism and drug addiction,
and experienced a weakening of the family and its education role, and
the like.
The second alarming element is that many countries do not benefit
from the booming modern economy and general prosperity. The quick
progress of science, technology, and advanced economy is underway
in only a small number of nations, populated by the so-called "golden
billion."
Quite a few countries achieved new economic and social development
standards in the twentieth century. But they did not join in the process
of creating a post-industrial society. Most of them are still far from it.
And there are grounds to believe that this gap between pre-and post-
industrial societies will persist for quite some time yet.
This is probably why, at the turn of the new millennium, humankind is
peering into the future not only with hope, but also with fear.
The Modern Situation in Russia
It would be no exaggeration to say that Russia feels this mixture of
hope and fear particularly strongly. There are few nations in the
world, which have faced as many trials as Russia in the 20th century.
First, Russia does not rank among the countries with the highest levels
of economic and social development. And second, our Fatherland is
facing difficult economic and social problems.
Russia's GDP nearly halved in the 1990s, and its GNP is ten times
smaller than the U.S. and five times smaller than China. After the
1998 crisis, the per capita GDP dropped to roughly U.S. $3,500,
which is roughly five times smaller than the average for the G7 states.
The structure of the Russian economy has changed. Now the fuel
industry, power engineering, and ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy
occupy the key positions in the national economy. They account for
some 15% of Russia's GDP, 50% of our overall industrial output, and
over 70% of exports.
Labor productivity and real wages in the economy are extremely low.
While our production of raw materials and electricity is about equal to
the world average, our productivity in other industries is 20-24% of
the U.S. average.
The technical and technological standards of manufactured
commodities largely depend on the share of equipment that is less
than five years old. In Russia, that share dwindled from 29% in 1990
to 4.5% in 1998. Over seventy percent of our machinery and
equipment is over ten years old, which is more than double the figure
in the economically developed countries.
This is the result of consistently dwindling national investments,
above all to the real economy sector. And foreign investors are not in
a hurry to contribute to the development of Russian industries. The
overall volume of direct foreign investments in Russia amounts to
barely 11.5 billion dollars. China received as much as 43 billion
dollars in foreign investments.
Russia has been reducing allocations on research and development,
while the 300 largest transnational companies provided 216 billion
dollars on R&D in 1997, and some 240 billion dollars in 1998. Only
5% of Russian enterprises are engaged in


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innovative production, and the output is on an extremely low scale.
The lack of capital investments and the wrong attitude toward
innovation resulted in a dramatic fall in the production of
commodities that are world competitive in terms of price-quality ratio.
Foreign rivals have pushed Russia especially far back in the market of
science-intensive civilian commodities. Russia accounts for less than
1% of such commodities on the world market, while the U.S. provides
36% and Japan 30% of them.
The real incomes of the Russian population have been falling since
the beginning of the reforms. The greatest plummet was registered
after the August 1998 crisis, and it will be impossible to restore the
pre-crisis living standards this year. The over-all monetary incomes of
the population, calculated by the UN methods, add up to less than
10% of the U.S. figure. Health and the average life spanthe indices
that determine the quality of lifedeteriorated, too.
The current dramatic economic and social situation in our country is
the price we have to pay for the economy we inherited from the Soviet
Union. But then, what else could we inherit? We had to install market
elements into a bulky and distorted system based on completely
different standards. And this was bound to affect the progress of the
reforms.
We had to pay for the Soviet economy's excessive focus on the
development of the raw materials and defense industries, which
negatively affected the development of consumer production and
services. We are paying for the Soviet neglect of such key sectors as
information science, electronics, and communications. We are paying
for the absence of competition between producers and industries,
which hindered scientific and technological progress and prevented
the Russian economy from being competitive in the world markets.
This is the cost of the brakes and the bans put on Russian initiatives
and enterprises and their personnel. Today we are reaping the bitter
fruit, both material and mental, of the past decades.
On the other hand, we are responsible for certain problems in this
current renewal process. They are the result of our own mistakes,
miscalculation and lack of experience. And yet, we could not have
avoided the main problems facing Russian society. The path to the
market economy and democracy was difficult for all nations that
searched for it in the 1990s. They all shared roughly the same
problems, although in varying degrees.
Russia is completing the first, transition stage of economic and
political reforms. Despite problems and mistakes, it has embarked
upon the highway that the whole of humanity is travelling. As global
experience convincingly shows, only this path offers the possibility of
dynamic economic growth and higher living standards. There is no
alternative to it.
The question for Russia now is what to do next. How can we make the
new, market mechanisms work to full capacity? How can we
overcome the still deep ideological and political split in society? What
strategic goals can consolidate Russian society? What place can
Russia occupy in the international community in the 21st century?
What economic, social, and cultural frontiers do we want to attain in
10-15 years? What are our strong and weak points? And what material
and spiritual resources do we now have?
These are the questions put forward by life itself. Until we find clear
answers that all people can understand, we will be unable to quickly
move forward to the goals, which are worthy of our great country.

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The Lessons to Learn
Our very future depends on the lessons we learn from our past and
present. This is a long-term job for society as a whole, but some of
these lessons are already clear.
1. For most of the twentieth century, Russia lived under the
communist doctrine. It would be a mistake not to recognize the
unquestionable achievements of those times. But it would be an
even bigger mistake not to realize the outrageous price our country
and its people had to pay for that social experiment.
What is more, it would be a mistake not to understand its historic
futility. Communism and the power of the Soviets did not make
Russia a prosperous country with a dynamically developing
society and free people. Communism vividly demonstrated its
inability to foster sound self-development, dooming our country
to lagging steadily behind economically advanced countries. It
was a blind alley, far away from the mainstream of civilization.
2. Russia has reached its limit for political and socio-economic
upheavals, cataclysms, and radical reforms. Only fanatics or
political forces which are absolutely apathetic and indifferent to
Russia and its people can make calls for a new revolution. Be it
under communist, national-patriotic, or radical-liberal slogans, our
country and our people will not withstand a new radical break-up.
The nation's patience and its ability to survive as well as its
capacity to work constructively have reached the limit. Society will
simply collapse economically, politically, psychologically, and
morally.
Responsible socio-political forces ought to offer the nation a
strategy of revival and prosperity based on all the positive
elements of the period of market and democratic reforms and
 implemented only by gradual, prudent methods. This strategy
should be carried out in a situation of political stability and
should not lead to deterioration in the lives of any section or
groups of the Russian people. This indisputable condition stems
from the present situation of our country.
3. The experience of the 90s demonstrates vividly that merely
experimenting with abstract models and schemes taken from
foreign textbooks cannot assure that our country will achieve
genuine renewal without any excessive costs. The mechanical
copying of other nations' experience will not guarantee success,
either.
Every country, Russia included, has to search for its own path to
renewal. We have not been very successful in this respect thus far. We
have only started groping for our road and our model of
transformation in the past year or two. Our future depends on
combining the universal principles of the market economy and
democracy with Russian realities. Our scientists, analysts, experts,
public servants, and political and public organizations should work
with this goal in mind.
A Chance for a Worthy Future
Such are the main lessons of the twentieth century. They make it
possible to outline the contours of a long-term strategy which will
enable us, within a relatively short time, to overcome the present
protracted crisis and create conditions for our coun-

 Page 213
try's fast and stable economic and social improvement. The paramount
word is "fast." We have no time for a slow start.
I want to quote the calculations made by experts: It will take us
approximately fifteen years and an eight percent annual growth of our
GDP to reach the per capita GDP level of present-day Portugal or
Spain, which are not among the world's industrialized leaders. If
during the same fifteen years we manage to annually increase our
GDP by ten percent, we will then catch up with Britain or France.
Even if we suppose that these tallies are not quite accurate, our current
economic lag is not that serious and we can overcome it faster, but it
will still require many years of work. That is why we should
formulate our long-term strategy and start pursuing it as soon as
possible.
We have already made the first step in this direction. The Strategic
Research Center, which was created with the most active participation
of the government, began its work in the end of December. This
Center will bring together the best minds of our country to draft
recommendations and proposals to the government for both
theoretical and applied projects. It will devise both the strategy itself
and will find the most effective means to tackle the tasks, which will
come up in the course of implementing the strategy.
I am convinced that ensuring the necessary growth dynamics is not
only an economic problem. It is also a political and, in a certain senseI
am not afraid to use this wordideological problem. To be more
precise, it is an ideological, spiritual, and moral problem. It seems to
me that the latter is of particular importance in our current efforts to
ensure the unity of Russian society.
The Russian Idea
The fruitful and creative work, which our country needs so badly, is
impossible in a split and internally disintegrated society, a society
where the main social sections and political forces do not share basic
values and fundamental ideological orientations.
Twice in the outgoing century Russia has found itself in such a state:
After October 1917 and in the 1990s.
In the first case, civil accord and social unity were forged not so much
by what was then called "ideological-educational" work as by brute
force. Those who dis-agreed with the ideology and policy of the
regime were subjected to persecution and oppression.
As a matter of fact, this is why I think that the term "state ideology"
advocated by some politicians, publicists, and scholars is not quite
appropriate. It creates certain associations with our recent Soviet past.
A strict state ideology allows practically no room for intellectual and
spiritual freedom, ideological pluralism, and freedom of the press. In
other words, there is no political freedom.
I am against the restoration of an official Russian state ideology in any
form. There should be no forced civil accord in a democratic Russia.
Social accord can only be voluntary.
That is why it is so important to achieve social accord on such basic
issues as the aims, values, and orientations of development, which
would be desirable for and attractive to the overwhelming majority of
Russians. The absence of civil accord and unity is one of the reasons
why our reforms are so slow and painful. Most of our energy is spent
on political squabbling, instead of handling the concrete steps toward
Russia's renewal.

 Page 214
Nonetheless, some positive changes have appeared in this sphere in
the past year or so. The majority of Russians demonstrate more
wisdom and responsibility than many politicians. Russians want
stability, confidence in the future, and the ability to plan for
themselves and for their childrennot for a month, but for years and
even decades to come. They want to work in peace, security, and a
sound, law-based order. They want to use the opportunities opened by
various forms of ownership, free enterprise, and market relations.
It is on this basis that our people have begun to perceive and accept
supranational universal values, which are above social, group, or
ethnic interests. Our people have accepted such values as freedom of
expression, freedom to travel abroad, and other fundamental political
rights and human liberties. People value the fact that they can own
property, be engaged in free enterprise, build up their own wealth, and
so on and so forth.
Another foothold for the unity of Russian society is our traditional
values. These values are clearly seen today:
Patriotism
This term is sometimes used ironically and even derogatorily. But for
the majority of Russians it retains its original, positive meaning.
Patriotism is a feeling of pride in one's country, its history and
accomplishments. It is the striving to make one's country better,
richer, stronger, and happier. When these sentiments are free from the
tints of nationalist conceit and imperial ambitions, there is nothing
reprehensible or bigoted about them. Patriotism is the source of our
people's courage, staunchness, and strength. If we lose patriotism and
the national pride and dignity that are connected with it, we will no
longer be a nation capable of great achievements.
The Greatness of Russia
Russia was and will remain a great power. It is preconditioned by the
inseparable characteristics of its geopolitical, economic, and cultural
existence. They determined the mentality of Russians and the policy
of the government throughout our history and they cannot help but do
so now.
But the Russian mentality should be expanded by new ideas. In
today's world, a country's power is manifested more in its ability to
develop and use advanced technologies, ensuring a high level of
general wellbeing, protecting its security, and upholding its national
interests in the international arena, than in its military strength.
Statism
Russia will not become a second edition of, say, the U.S. or Britain,
where liberal values have deep historic traditions. Our state and its
institutions and structures have always played an exceptionally
important role in the life of the country and its people. For Russians, a
strong state is not an anomaly to be gotten rid of. Quite the contrary, it
is a source of order and main driving force of any change.
Modern Russia does not identify a strong and effective state with a
totalitarian state. We have come to value the benefits of democracy, a
law-based state, and personal and political freedom. At the same time,
Russians are alarmed by the obvious weakening of state power. The
public looks forward to a certain restoration of the guiding and
regulating role of the state, proceeding from Russia's traditions as well
as the current state of the country.

 Page 215
Social Solidarity
It is a fact that the striving for corporate forms of activity has always
prevailed over individualism. Paternalistic sentiments have deep roots
in Russian society. The majority of Russians are used to depending
more on the state for improvements in their own condition than with
their own efforts, initiatives, and flair for business. And it will take a
long time for this habit to die.
Let's not dwell on whether this is good or bad. The important thing is
that such sentiments exist. In fact, they still prevail. That is why they
cannot be ignored. They must be taken into consideration in the social
policy, first and foremost.
I suppose that the new Russian idea will come about as an organic
unification of universal general humanitarian values with the
traditional Russian values that have stood the test of time, including
the turbulent twentieth century.
This vitally important process must not be accelerated, discontinued,
and destroyed. It is important to prevent the first shoots of civil accord
from being crushed underfoot in the heat of political campaigns and
elections.
The results of the recent elections to the State Duma inspire great
optimism in this respect. They reflect a turn towards a growing
stability and civil accord. The overwhelming majority of Russians
said no to radicalism, extremism, and revolutionary opposition. It is
probably the first time since the reforms began that such favorable
conditions for constructive cooperation between the executive and
legislative branches of power have been created.
Serious politicians, whose parties and movements are represented in
the new State Duma, are advised to draw conclusions from this fact. I
am sure that their sense of responsibility for the nation will prevail
and that Russia's parties, organizations, and movements and their
leaders will not sacrifice Russia's interests, which call for a solidary
effort of all sane forces, to narrow partisanship and opportunism.
Strong State
We are at a stage where even the most correct economic and social
policies can start misfiring because of the weakness of the state and
the managerial bodies. A key to Russia's recovery and growth is in the
state-policy sphere.
Russia needs a strong state power. I am not calling for totalitarianism.
History proves all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government
are transient. Only democratic systems are lasting. Whatever our
shortcomings, humankind has not devised anything superior. A strong
state power in Russia is a democratic, law-based, workable federal
state.
I see the following steps in its formation:
streamlining state agencies and improving governance; increasing
professionalism, discipline, and responsibility amongst civil
servants; intensifying struggle against corruption;
reforming state personnel policy through selection of the best staffs;
creating conditions that will help develop a full-blooded civil
society to balance out and monitor the authorities;
increasing the role and authority of the judicial branch of
government;
improving federative relations (including budgetary and financial);
launching an active and aggressive campaign against crime
Amending the constitution does not seem to be an urgent, priority
task. We have a good constitution. Its provisions for individual rights
and freedoms are regarded as

 Page 216
the best constitutional instrument of its kind in the world. Rather than
drafting a new code of law for the country, a serious task indeed is to
enforcing the existing constitution and the laws passed under it, to
apply the constitution for the state, society, and each individual.
Russia currently has more than a thousand federal laws and several
thousand laws of the republics, territories, regions and autonomous
areas. Not all of them correspond to the above criterion. If the justice
ministry, the prosecutor's office and the judiciary continue to be as
slow in dealing with this matter as they are today, the mass of
questionable or simply unconstitutional laws may become critical.
The constitutional security of the state, the federal center's
capabilities, the country's manageability and Russia's integrity would
then be in jeopardy.
Another serious problem is inherent in government authority. Global
experience leads us to conclude that the main threat to human rights
and freedomsto democracy as suchemanates from the executive
authority. Of course, a legislature that makes bad laws also does its
bit. But the main threat emanates from the executive. It organizes the
country's life, applies laws and can objectively distort these laws
rather substantiallyalthough not always deliberatelyby making
executive orders.
The global trend is that of a stronger executive authority. Not
surprisingly, society endeavors to better control itself in order to
preclude arbitrariness and misuses of office. This is why I, personally,
am paying priority attention to building partner relations between the
executive authority and civil society, to developing the institutes and
structures of the latter, and to waging a tough war against corruption.
Efficient Economy
I have already said that the reform years have generated a heap of
problems in the national economy and social sphere. The situation is
complex, indeed. But it is too early to bury Russia as a great power.
Troubles notwithstanding, we have preserved our intellectual strength
and human resources. A number of R&D advances and technologies
have not been wasted. We still have our natural resources. So the
country has a worthy future in store.
At the same time, we must learn the lessons of the 1990s and ponder
the experience of market reform.
1. Throughout these years we have been groping in the dark without
having a clear sense of national objectives and advances which would
ensure Russia's standing as a developed, prosperous and great country
of the world. Our lack of long-range development strategies for the
next fifteen to twenty years hurts our economy.
The government firmly intends to act on the principle of unified
strategy and tactics. Without it, we are doomed to just patching up
holes and responding to emergencies like the fire department. Serious
politics and big business are done differently. The country needs a
long-term national strategy of development. I have already said that
the government has already launched a program to design it.
2. Another important lesson of the 1990s is that Russia needs to form
a system for the state to regulate the economy and social sphere. I do
not mean to return to a system of planning and managing the economy
by fiat, where the all-pervasive state was regulating all aspects of any
factory's work from top to bottom. I mean to make the Russian state
an efficient coordinator of the country's economic and social forces,
balancing out their interests, optimizing the aims and parameters of
social development, and creating conditions and mechanisms for their
attainment.
Of course this notion goes beyond the bounds of the standard formula,
which


 Page 217
limits the role of the state in the economy to establishing the rules of
the game and then monitoring their enforcement. In time, we are
likely to evolve to this formula. But today's situation necessitates
deeper state involvement in the social and economic processes. While
establishing the dimensions and planning mechanisms for the system
of state regulation, we must be guided by the following principle: The
state must act where and when it is needed; freedom must exist where
and when it is required.
3. The third lesson is the transition to a reform strategy that is best
suited to our conditions. It should proceed in the following directions:
3.1. To encourage dynamic economic growth.
Primarily, to encourage investments. We have not yet resolved this
problem. Investment in the real economy sector fell by five times in
the 1990s, including by 3.5 times into fixed assets. The material
foundations of the Russian economy are being under-mined.
We call for pursuing an investment policy that would combine pure
market mechanisms with measures of state guidance.
At the same time, we will continue working to create an investment
climate attractive to foreign investors. Frankly speaking, without
foreign capital, our country's road back to recovery will be long and
hard. We don't have time for slow growth. Consequently, we must do
our best to attract foreign capital to the country.
3.2. To pursue an energetic industrial policy.
The future of the country and the quality of the Russian economy in
the 21st century will depend above all on progress in the high
technologies and science-intensive commodities. Ninety percent of
economic growth today depends on new achievements and
technologies.
The government is prepared to pursue an economic policy of priority
development of the leading industries in research and technology. The
requisite measures include:
assisting the development of extra-budgetary internal demand for
advanced technologies and science-intensive production, and
supporting export-oriented high-tech production
supporting non-raw materials industries working mostly to satisfy
internal demand
buttressing the export possibilities of the fuel and energy and raw-
materials complexes
We should use specific mechanisms to mobilize the funds necessary
for pursuing this policy. The most important of them are the target-
oriented loan and tax instruments and the provision of privileges
against state guarantees.
3.3. To carry out a rational structural policy.
The government thinks that as in other industrialized countries, there
is a place in the Russian economy for the financial-industrial groups,
corporations, small and medium businesses. Any attempts to slow
down the development of some, and artificially encourage the
development of other economic forms would only hinder the rise of
the national economy. The government will create a structure that
would ensure an optimal balance of all economic forms of
management.

 Page 218
Another major issue is the rational regulation of natural monopolies.
This is a key question, as monopolies largely determine the structure
of production and consumer prices. They therefore influence both
economic and financial processes, as well as people's incomes.
3.4. To create an effective financial system.
This is a challenging task, which includes the following directions:
improving the effectiveness of the budget as a major instrument of
the economic policy of the state
carrying out tax reform
getting rid of non-payments, barter, and other pseudo-monetary
forms of settlement
maintaining a low inflation rate and stable ruble
creating civilized financial and stock markets and turning them into
a means to accumulate investment resources
restructuring the bank system.
3.5. To combat the shadow economy and organized crime in the
economic and financial-credit sphere.
All countries have shadow economies. But in industrialized countries
their share of the GDP does not exceed fifteen to twenty percent,
while in Russia, they control forty percent of the GDP. To resolve this
painful problem, we should not just raise the effectiveness of the law-
enforcement agencies, but also strengthen license, tax, hard currency,
and export controls.
3.6. To consistently integrate the Russian economy into world
economic structures.
Otherwise we will not rise to the high level of economic and social
progress attained in the industrialized countries.
The main directions of this work are:
to ensure the state's active support of Russian enterprises,
companies, and corporations operating in foreign economies. In
particular, we must create a federal agency to support exports,
which would guarantee the export contracts of Russian producers
to resolutely combat discrimination against Russia in the global
commodity, service, and investment markets, and to approve and
apply a national anti-dumping legislation
to incorporate Russia into the international system of regulating
foreign economic operation, above all the WTO
3.7. To pursue a modern farm policy.
The revival of Russia will be impossible without the revival of the
countryside and agriculture. We need a farm policy that will
organically combine measures of state assistance and state regulation
with the market reforms in the countryside and in land ownership
relations.
4. We must insist that virtually all changes and measures entailing a
fall in the living conditions of the people are inadmissible in Russia.
We have come to a line beyond which we must not go.
Poverty has reached a mind-boggling scale in Russia. In early 1998,
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world per capita income amounted to some 5,000 dollars a year, but it
was only 2,200 dollars in Russia. And it dropped still lower after the
August 1998 crisis. The share of wages in the GDP dropped from 50%
to 30% since the beginning of reforms.
This is our most acute social problem. The government is elaborating
a new income policy designed to ensure stable growth in the real
disposable incomes of the people.
Despite these difficulties, the government is resolved to take new
measures to support science, education, culture and health care. A
country where the people are not physically and psychologically
healthy, are poorly educated and illiterate, will never rise to the
summits of world civilization.
Russia is in the midst of one of the most difficult periods in its history.
For the first time in the past 200-300 years, it is facing a real danger of
sliding to the second, and possibly even third, echelon of world states.
We are running out of time to avoid this. We must strain all
intellectual, physical and moral forces of the nation. We need
coordinated, creative work. Nobody will do it for us.
Everything depends on us and us aloneon our ability to see the size of
the threat, to consolidate forces, and to set our minds to prolonged and
difficult work.