A Tsar Is Born
- From: Skagra <skagra2000@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:32:15 -0800 (PST)
Tuesday, Dec. 04, 2007
A Tsar Is Born
By Adi Ignatius
No one is born with a stare like Vladimir Putin's. The Russian
President's pale blue eyes are so cool, so devoid of emotion that the
stare must have begun as an affect, the gesture of someone who
understood that power might be achieved by the suppression of ordinary
needs, like blinking. The affect is now seamless, which makes talking
to the Russian President not just exhausting but often chilling. It's
a gaze that says, I'm in charge.
This may explain why there is so little visible security at Putin's
dacha, Novo-Ogarevo, the grand Russian presidential retreat set inside
a birch- and fir-forested compound west of Moscow. To get there from
the capital requires a 25-minute drive through the soul of modern
Russia, past decrepit Soviet-era apartment blocks, the mashed-up
French Tudor-villa McMansions of the new oligarchs and a shopping mall
that boasts not just the routine spoils of affluence like Prada and
Gucci but Lamborghinis and Ferraris too.
When you arrive at the dacha's faux-neoclassical gate, you have to
leave your car and hop into one of the Kremlin's vehicles that slowly
wind their way through a silent forest of snow-tipped firs. Aides warn
you not to stray, lest you tempt the snipers positioned in the shadows
around the compound. This is where Putin, 55, works. (He lives with
his wife and two twentysomething daughters in another mansion deeper
in the woods.) The rooms feel vast, newly redone and mostly empty. As
we prepare to enter his spacious but spartan office, out walk some of
Russia's most powerful men: Putin's chief of staff, his ideologist,
the speaker of parliament—all of them wearing expensive bespoke suits
and carrying sleek black briefcases. Putin, who rarely meets with the
foreign press, then gives us 3 1⁄2 hours of his time, first in a
formal interview in his office and then upstairs over an elaborate
dinner of lobster-and-shiitake-mushroom salad, "crab fingers with hot
sauce" and impressive vintages of Puligny-Montrachet and a Chilean
Cabernet.
Vladimir Putin gives a first impression of contained power: he is
compact and moves stiffly but efficiently. He is fit, thanks to years
spent honing his black-belt judo skills and, these days, early-morning
swims of an hour or more. And while he is diminutive—5 ft. 6 in.
(about 1.7 m) seems a reasonable guess—he projects steely confidence
and strength. Putin is unmistakably Russian, with chiseled facial
features and those penetrating eyes. Charm is not part of his
presentation of self—he makes no effort to be ingratiating. One senses
that he pays constant obeisance to a determined inner discipline. The
successor to the boozy and ultimately tragic Boris Yeltsin, Putin is
temperate, sipping his wine only when the protocol of toasts and
greetings requires it; mostly he just twirls the Montrachet in his
glass. He eats little, though he twitchily picks the crusts off the
bread rolls on his plate.
Putin grudgingly reveals a few personal details between intermittent
bites of food: He relaxes, he says, by listening to classical
composers like Brahms, Mozart, Tchaikovsky. His favorite Beatles song
is Yesterday. He has never sent an e-mail in his life. And while he
grew up in an officially atheist country, he is a believer and often
reads from a Bible that he keeps on his state plane. He is impatient
to the point of rudeness with small talk, and he is in complete
control of his own message.
He is clear about Russia's role in the world. He is passionate in his
belief that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a tragedy,
particularly since overnight it stranded 25 million ethnic Russians in
"foreign" lands. But he says he has no intention of trying to rebuild
the U.S.S.R. or re-establish military or political blocs. And he
praises his predecessors Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev for destroying
a system that had lost the people's support. "I'm not sure I could
have had the guts to do that myself," he tells us. Putin is, above
all, a pragmatist, and has cobbled together a system—not unlike China's
—that embraces the free market (albeit with a heavy dose of
corruption) but relies on a strong state hand to keep order.
Like President George W. Bush, he sees terrorism as one of the most
profound threats of the new century, but he is wary of labeling it
Islamic. "Radicals," he says, "can be found in any environment." Putin
reveals that Russian intelligence recently uncovered a "specific"
terrorist threat against both Russia and the U.S. and that he spoke by
phone with Bush about it.
What gets Putin agitated—and he was frequently agitated during our talk
—is his perception that Americans are out to interfere in Russia's
affairs. He says he wants Russia and America to be partners but feels
the U.S. treats Russia like the uninvited guest at a party. "We want
to be a friend of America," he says. "Sometimes we get the impression
that America does not need friends" but only "auxiliary subjects to
command." Asked if he'd like to correct any American misconceptions
about Russia, Putin leans forward and says, "I don't believe these are
misconceptions. I think this is a purposeful attempt by some to create
an image of Russia based on which one could influence our internal and
foreign policies. This is the reason why everybody is made to
believe...[Russians] are a little bit savage still or they just
climbed down from the trees, you know, and probably need to have...the
dirt washed out of their beards and hair." The veins on his forehead
seem ready to pop.
Elected Emperor
Putin has said that next spring, at the end of his second term as
President, he will assume the nominally lesser role of Prime Minister.
In fact, having nominated his loyal former chief of staff (and current
Deputy Prime Minister) Dmitri Medvedev to succeed him as President,
Putin will surely remain the supreme leader, master of Russia's
destiny, which will allow him to complete the job he started. In his
eight years as President, he has guided his nation through a
remarkable transformation. He has restored stability and a sense of
pride among citizens who, after years of Soviet stagnation, rode the
heartbreaking roller coaster of raised and dashed expectations when
Gorbachev and then Yeltsin were in charge. A basket case in the 1990s,
Russia's economy has grown an average of 7% a year for the past five
years. The country has paid off a foreign debt that once neared $200
billion. Russia's rich have gotten richer, often obscenely so. But the
poor are doing better too: workers' salaries have more than doubled
since 2003. True, this is partly a result of oil at $90 a barrel, and
oil is a commodity Russia has in large supply. But Putin has deftly
managed the windfall and spread the wealth enough so that people feel
hopeful.
Russia's revival is changing the course of the modern world. After
decades of slumbering underachievement, the Bear is back. Its
billionaires now play on the global stage, buying up property, sports
franchises, places at élite schools. Moscow exerts international
influence not just with arms but also with a new arsenal of weapons:
oil, gas, timber. On global issues, it offers alternatives to
America's waning influence, helping broker deals in North Korea, the
Middle East, Iran. Russia just made its first shipment of nuclear fuel
to Iran—a sign that Russia is taking the lead on that vexsome issue,
particularly after the latest U.S. intelligence report suggested that
the Bush Administration has been wrong about Iran's nuclear-weapons
development. And Putin is far from done. The premiership is a perch
that will allow him to become the longest-serving statesman among the
great powers, long after such leaders as Bush and Tony Blair have
faded from the scene.
But all this has a dark side. To achieve stability, Putin and his
administration have dramatically curtailed freedoms. His government
has shut down TV stations and newspapers, jailed businessmen whose
wealth and influence challenged the Kremlin's hold on power, defanged
opposition political parties and arrested those who confront his rule.
Yet this grand bargain—of freedom for security—appeals to his Russian
subjects, who had grown cynical over earlier regimes' promises of the
magical fruits of Western-style democracy. Putin's popularity ratings
are routinely around 70%. "He is emerging as an elected emperor, whom
many people compare to Peter the Great," says Dimitri Simes, president
of the Nixon Center and a well-connected expert on contemporary
Russia.
Putin's global ambitions seem straightforward. He certainly wants a
seat at the table on the big international issues. But more important,
he wants free rein inside Russia, without foreign interference, to run
the political system as he sees fit, to use whatever force he needs to
quiet seething outlying republics, to exert influence over Russia's
former Soviet neighbors. What he's given up is Yeltsin's calculation
that Russia's future requires broad acceptance on the West's terms.
That means that on big global issues, says Strobe Talbott, president
of the Brookings Institution and former point man on Russia policy for
the Clinton Administration, "sometimes Russia will be helpful to
Western interests, and sometimes it will be the spoiler."
Up from the Ruins
How do Russians see Putin? For generations they have defined their
leaders through political jokes. It's partly a coping mechanism,
partly a glimpse into the Russian soul. In the oft told anecdotes,
Leonid Brezhnev was always the dolt, Gorbachev the bumbling reformer,
Yeltsin the drunk. Putin, in current punch lines, is the despot.
Here's an example: Stalin's ghost appears to Putin in a dream, and
Putin asks for him help running the country. Stalin says, "Round up
and shoot all the democrats, and then paint the inside of the Kremlin
blue." "Why blue?" Putin asks. "Ha!" says Stalin. "I knew you wouldn't
ask me about the first part."
Putin himself is sardonic but humorless. In our hours together, he
didn't attempt a joke, and he misread several of our attempts at
playfulness. As Henry Kissinger, who has met and interacted with
Russian leaders since Brezhnev, puts it, "He does not rely on personal
charm. It is a combination of aloofness, considerable intelligence,
strategic grasp and Russian nationalism" (see Kissinger interview).
To fully understand Putin's accomplishments and his appeal, one has to
step back into the tumult of the 1990s. At the end of 1991, just a few
months after Yeltsin dramatically stood on a tank outside the
parliament in Moscow to denounce—and deflate—a coup attempt by hard-
liners, the Soviet Union simply ceased to exist. Yeltsin took the
reins in Russia and, amid great hope and pledges of help from around
the world, promised to launch an era of democracy and economic
freedom. I arrived in Moscow a week later, beginning a three-year
stint as a Russia correspondent.
I retain three indelible images from that time. The first: the legions
of Ivy League—and other Western-educated "experts" who roamed the
halls of the Kremlin and the government, offering advice, all
ultimately ineffective, on everything from conducting free elections
to using "shock therapy" to juice the economy to privatizing state-
owned assets. The second: the long lines of impoverished old women
standing in the Moscow cold, selling whatever they could scrounge from
their homes—a silver candleholder, perhaps, or just a pair of socks.
The third, more familiar image: a discouraged and embattled Yeltsin in
1993 calling in Russian-army tanks to shell his own parliament to
break a deadlock with the defiant legislature when everything he was
trying to do was going wrong.
Yeltsin bombed his way out of the threat of civil war and managed to
hang on to power, but Russia was left hobbled. Virtually every
significant asset—oil, banks, the media—ended up in the hands of a few
"oligarchs" close to the President. Corruption and crime were rampant;
the cities became violent. Paychecks weren't issued; pensions were
ignored. Russia in 1998 defaulted on its foreign debt. The ruble and
the financial markets collapsed, and Yeltsin was a spent force. "The
'90s sucked," says Stephen Sestanovich, a Columbia University
professor who was the State Department's special adviser for the new
Independent States of the former Soviet Union under President Bill
Clinton. "Putin managed to play on the resentment that Russians
everywere were feeling." Indeed, by the time Putin took over in late
1999, there was nowhere to fall but up.
Path to Power
That Russia needed fixing was acknowledged by all. But how was it that
Putin got the call? What was it that lifted him to power, and to the
dacha in Novo-Ogarevo?
Putin's rise continues to perplex even devoted Kremlin observers. He
was born into humble circumstances in St. Petersburg in 1952. His
father had fought in World War II and later labored in a train-car
factory. Putin's mother, a devout Orthodox Christian, had little
education and took on a series of menial jobs. The family lived in a
drab fifth-floor walk-up in St. Petersburg; Putin had to step over
swarms of rats occupying the entranceway on his way to school. Putin's
only ancestor of note was his paternal grandfather, who had served as
a cook for both Lenin and Stalin, though there's no sign that this
gave his family any special status or connections.
Putin describes his younger self as a poor student and a "hooligan."
Small for his age, he got roughed by his contemporaries. So he took up
sambo—a Soviet-era blend of judo and wrestling—and later just judo.
From all accounts, he devoted himself to the martial art, attracted by
both its physical demands and its contemplative philosophical core.
"It's respect for your elders and opponents," he says in First Person,
his question-and-answer memoir published in 2000. "It's not for
weaklings."
It was the KGB that rescued Putin from obscurity—and turned the child
into the man. Putin had begun to apply himself to schoolwork, and in
1975, during his senior year at Leningrad State University, he was
approached by an impressive stranger who said, "I need to talk to you
about your career assignment. I wouldn't like to specify exactly what
it is yet." Putin, who had dreamed of becoming a spy, was intrigued.
Within months he was being trained in counterintelligence. By the
mid-1980s he was assigned to East Germany, where he worked undercover,
pursuing intelligence on nato and German politicians. He was in
Dresden, not Berlin where the action was, and probably would have been
only a bit player in the Le Carré version of the cold war. But when
the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, so did Putin's KGB career. As angry
crowds moved on the local KGB headquarters, Putin and his colleagues
feverishly burned files that detailed agents' names and networks—so
much paper, he recalls in the memoir, that "the furnace burst." Then
he slipped into the crowd and watched as the newly liberated mobs
sacked the detested building. Within two years, he left the KGB
altogether.
Putin's big break was a friend's introduction to Anatoli Sobchak, the
liberal mayor of St. Petersburg, who was happy to bring in an
intelligent, no-nonsense outsider to help push his reformist agenda.
Putin ran the office that registered businesses and promoted foreign
investment. He was responsible for ensuring that President Clinton's
visit to the city in 1996 went smoothly—it was the first time American
officials saw Putin in action. But later that year, Sobchak, damaged
by a perception of ineffectiveness and rumors of corruption, lost his
re-election bid. As Putin tells us at the dacha, as a member of the
losing team, he was suddenly untouchable. "Nobody would hire me
there," he says.
So Putin headed to Moscow. What transpired next seemed to Kremlin
watchers as unlikely as Chauncey Gardiner's unwitting rise to power in
the Jerzy Kosinski novel Being There. Although Putin often says that
he had no connections when he arrived in the capital in mid-1996, he
had several powerful allies who landed him work in the Kremlin. He
became deputy to the head of Yeltsin's general-affairs department.
Within two years he was asked to head the FSB, the spy-agency
successor to the disbanded KGB. Putin, in his memoir, says he received
a call out of the blue asking him to head to the airport to meet
Russia's Prime Minister, Sergei Kirienko. Kirienko offered
congratulations. When Putin asked why, he replied, "The decree is
signed. You have been appointed director of the FSB." Then, in August
1999, Putin was named Prime Minister. It's a grand title, but it
doesn't come with much security: Putin was Yeltsin's fifth Prime
Minister in 17 months. But Putin did far better than survive; within
four months a declining Yeltsin asked Putin to take over as acting
President. Putin tells us he initially declined but that Yeltsin
raised it again, saying, "Don't say no." By the last day of 1999 Putin
was running the country.
We ask if it had ever occurred to Putin that history would place him
in such a role. "It never occurred to me," he says. "It still
surprises me."
Experts generally believe that Putin won Yeltsin's endorsement because
he was competent, because he wasn't part of any of the major Moscow
factions competing for power and because his KGB past gave him a
source of authority. But they also widely assume that he made a deal
with Yeltsin and his family: in return for Yeltsin's endorsement,
Putin would not pursue corruption charges against the outgoing
President and his relatives, despite the rumors that surrounded the
family's dealings. It's impossible to verify, but neither Yeltsin, who
died this year, nor his well-connected daughter Tatyana Dyachenko was
ever a subject of public investigation (though Putin quickly fired her
from her position as a Kremlin image consultant). Indeed, Putin's
first decree guaranteed Yeltsin and his family immunity from such
probes. Putin explains things to us this way: "Mr. Yeltsin realized
that I would be totally sincere and would spare no effort to fulfill
my duties and would be honest and see that the interest of the country
could be secured." Eight years on, one can't help seeing a parallel
with the latest maneuverings in the Kremlin: just as Yeltsin rewarded
Putin for his loyalty, now Putin is doing the same for his anointed
successor, Medvedev. There is already a new Putin joke: Putin goes to
a restaurant with Medvedev and orders a steak. The waiter asks, "And
what about the vegetable?" Putin answers, "The vegetable will have
steak too."
Taking Control
Putin is no vegetable. In 1999, when he assumed the role of acting
President, he was a relative unknown. It was his response to a Chechen
rebel incursion in the Russian republic of Dagestan in the North
Caucasus that quickly set him on a path toward national glory. Alexei
Gromov, who has served with Putin as press secretary since he came to
power, remembers being in the room when Putin told his wife Lyudmila
that he was preparing to go on a New Year's Eve trip to the war zone
to meet with the troops. She was worried about his safety and went
along with him. In the end, the trip may have been no more than a
calculated, if risky, photo op, but it was effective. Russians met
their new leader and admired his courage and energy.
The following year Putin stepped up Russia's invasion of the breakaway
republic of Chechnya. Rambo-style, he promised a quick and decisive
victory, reiterating his earlier pledge to defeat enemy fighters "even
in the toilet." Grozny, Chechnya's capital, was all but obliterated;
Russia reassumed power and installed a puppet leader. Despite
heartbreaking subsequent Chechen terrorist attacks—including a 2004
assault on a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, where 339 civilians,
most of them children, were killed—Russians by and large admire Putin
for drawing the line in the south. Having watched Eastern Europe and
the Soviet republics slip from Moscow's grip, Russians were happy to
keep Chechnya—even a bombed-out Chechnya—in the fold.
To the West, meanwhile, Putin was a mystery. Russia watchers debated
endlessly: Was he a pro-Western reformer? (He had worked for Sobchak.)
Or a hard-liner? (He was a career KGB man.) Yet just as 9/11 helped
define President Bush, so did external challenges allow Putin to grow
into a leader. His first steps on the world stage were tentative. His
global coming-out had occurred in Auckland at a 1999 meeting of heads
of apec (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) nations. Sestanovich, who
was traveling with President Clinton, remembers meeting Putin at
Clinton's hotel suite. "He seemed rodentlike," says Sestanovich, "like
an overgrown summer intern." But Clinton was willing to work with him.
Putin tells us how, at an apec dinner at which he was feeling somewhat
lost, Clinton crossed the room past other world leaders and leaned
down to talk to him. "Volodya," Clinton said, using the familiar form
of the name Vladimir, "I suggest we walk out together from this room."
Putin rose to his feet, and the two men strolled out together.
"Everyone applauded," Putin recalls. "I will remember that forever."
It was Putin's only sign of softness during the 3 1⁄2 hours we spoke..
Clinton was not the only American who found something to like about
Putin. Two years later, in a line that has haunted him ever since,
President Bush declared that he had looked inside Putin's soul. It was
their first meeting, at a summit in Slovenia, and Bush said, "I looked
the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and
trustworthy...I was able to get a sense of his soul." We ask Putin to
return the favor, to describe what he has sensed of the U.S.
President's soul. He declines to get personal. "I have a very good
personal relationship with Mr. Bush," he says. "He is a very reliable
partner, a man of honor."
The terrorist attacks on 9/11 provided Putin with another defining
moment. He was one of the first world leaders to offer condolences and
help to President Bush. That probably led the U.S. to back off from
stridently criticizing the Chechnya adventure. But the initial shared
objectives between Putin and the Bush Administration did not last.
Putin strongly opposed America's invasion of Iraq and established
Russia as a steady voice of opposition to Bush's adventure, demanding
that decisions on Iraq be made at the U.N. (where Russia, of course,
has Security Council veto power). America's occupation of Iraq has
affirmed Putin's sense that he was right. "If one looks at the map of
the world, it's difficult to find Iraq, and one would think it rather
easy to subdue such a small country," Putin tell us. "But this
undertaking is enormous. Iraq is a small but very proud nation." The
debacle in Iraq plays into what is perhaps Putin's most cherished
foreign-policy dictum: that nations shouldn't interfere in one
another's affairs. And what that really means, of course, is that no
one should interfere in Russia's affairs.
Another Putin joke: Putin and Bush are fishing on the Volga River.
After half an hour Bush complains, "Vladimir, I'm getting bitten like
crazy by mosquitoes, but I haven't seen a single one bothering you."
Putin: "They know better than that."
A Ruthless Streak
Now that Putin has solidified his grip on power, he no longer seems
overly concerned with courting Western approval. Despite a chorus of
disapproving clucks from the West, Putin has shackled the press, muted
the opposition, jailed tycoons who don't pledge fealty. In Russia this
has been a terrible time to be a democrat, a journalist, an
independent businessman. Just ask Garry Kasparov. The chess grandmaster
—the highest-rated player of all time—is a far cry from
stereotypically dysfunctional champions like Bobby Fischer. Kasparov
has a keen political mind and a lively sense of humor. For years he
has fought an increasingly lonely struggle as a democratic activist
facing an uncompromising state. On Nov. 24, while holding a political
rally in Moscow, he was arrested on a technicality and spent five days
at Moscow's Petrovka 38 jail.
A week or so after Kasparov's release, we are sitting in Moscow's
Cosmos Hotel, where he is taking part in a human-rights meeting.
Assembled is a ragtag group of Russian activists, and here Kasparov is
a star. (Even here his two bodyguards sandwich him whenever he walks
about.) Unlike many of Putin's other critics, who seem fearful of
chastising their leader openly, Kasparov isn't cowed. "Putin wants to
rule like Stalin but live like Abramovich," he says, referring to
Roman Abramovich, the billionaire Russian oil trader who owns London's
Chelsea soccer team. "Putin's system is more like Mafia than
democracy."
Putin's administration has blocked democrats like Kasparov from
participating effectively in politics by making it all but impossible
for them to meet the entry requirements. The President, in our
discussion, routinely suggests that Kasparov is a stooge of the West
because he spoke to the foreign press in English after his arrest. "If
you aspire to be a leader of your own country, you must speak your own
language, for God's sake," he says. Kasparov recently gave up his long-
shot race for President.
Dmitri Muratov also knows the difficulties of life in the Putin era. A
softspoken, heavyset man whose neatly trimmed beard is turning gray,
Muratov is the editor in chief of Novaya Gazeta, a Moscow newspaper,
published twice a week, with a reputation for pursuing tough
investigative pieces. In the past seven years, three of his
journalists have been murdered; all were looking into corruption and
wrongdoing. After the third murder, Muratov decided to close the 14-
year-old paper to avoid putting any other journalist at risk. But his
staff talked him out of it. The paper is perpetually harassed by
officials around the country, but, Muratov notes with a weary smile,
"we're still alive."
The last of Muratov's journalists to die, Anna Politkovskaya, was shot
in the elevator of her apartment building last year on Oct. 7.
Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer turned government critic
living in London, accused Putin of sanctioning the killing. Within
weeks, Litvinenko himself was dead too, killed by radiation poisoning
from a mysterious dose of polonium 210. (Britain wants to charge a
former KGB officer, Andre Lugovoy, who has just been elected to
Russia's parliament, with the killing. He denies it, and Russian law
prevents the extradition of Russian citizens.)
Muratov, for his part, doesn't know who ordered his journalists'
killings. He says only that he blames "corruption," which has
flourished during Putin's eight years.
Although few Russians seem to think Putin himself is corrupt, it is
commonly believed that he is surrounded by business and political
heavies who are amassing millions in payoffs. Indeed, if anything can
bring him down, it may well be graft. As long as living standards
rise, people are more likely to forgive the perception that officials
are getting obscenely rich by demanding illicit payoffs. But if the
economy stops growing—if the price of oil falls back to earth—Putin
will face a challenge, whether from the masses in the streets or from
military and civilian challengers.
One insider, who asked that his identity be protected, spelled out for
us just one example of how the game is played, detailing the payments
a prospective regional governor has to make to political bagmen in
Moscow in order to get the Kremlin's nod for the post. For wealthier
regions, such an endorsement can cost as much as $20 million, money
that the politicians raise quietly from corporate "sponsors" that
expect special treatment in return. The amount of money flowing to
kingmakers in the Kremlin, in other words, is staggering.
When we ask about the view that he is surrounded by corrupt officials,
Putin turns testy: "If you are so confident, then I presume you know
the names and the systems and the tools...Write to us." As for
Politkovskaya, who had been investigating policy failures and human-
rights abuses in Chechnya when she was killed—and who authored the
2004 book Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy—Putin says he
believes she was murdered by a provocateur to cast suspicion on his
administration.
For all the attention the outside world pays to such cases, formal
polls make it clear that within Russia, Putin's critics are in the
minority. For every journalist distressed at the rollback of freedoms,
there are scores of Russians who quietly applaud Putin's efforts to
reassert stability. Once a year, when Putin takes phone calls from
citizens around the country, tens of thousands of people try to get
through. Listening to the calls, however screened and rehearsed they
may be, one is struck by the ardor of the appeals to the President to
get things done and by the broad range of information at Putin's
fingertips. (A woman who lives on an island off Vladivostok complained
about the local ferry service. Putin told her a bridge will soon be
built to link the island to the mainland.)
Certainly life in Russia today is better than it has been for years.
The stores are stocked with goods. The once worthless ruble is a
genuine currency, strengthening against the dollar these days. Crime
persists, but the cities are not as rough as in previous years.
And then there are the President's loudest and most visible defenders:
members of Nashi (Ours, in Russian), the cultish pro-Putin youth
movement. In mid-December, about 20,000 of the Nashi faithful from all
over Russia gathered for a rally by the Kremlin walls to celebrate the
recent victory of Putin's United Russia Party in elections to the
parliament. From the stage, speakers, rock singers and rappers
declared their patriotism and love for the President. A banner read,
into the future with putin! Someone introduced Dasha, a 10-year-old
member of Mishki (Bear Cubs), the new children's division of Nashi. "I
love Russia," said Dasha. "I love teddy bears. I love Putin. Together
we will win!"
I went to Nashi's Moscow headquarters a few days later and met with
Lyubov Serikova, a pretty 22-year-old redhead from Russia's Chuvash
Republic who is a rising star in the organization. She was thrilled
with the recent election and credited Nashi with helping thwart an
unnamed enemy's attempt to launch an "orange revolution" in Russia.
Her world seemed conspiratorial, and she echoed Putin's own
statements: those who run against the President were trying to bring
the country down. Putin, she said, "has made Russia a leading country
in just a few years."
When we finish talking, I take a look at an official Nashi poster
hanging outside her office, which excoriates U.S. policies. It's
reminiscent of Soviet-era propaganda with its non sequitur
acceleration of hysteria: "Tomorrow there will be war in Iran. The day
after tomorrow Russia will be governed externally!" But this is no
fringe group. Putin frequently visits Nashi's training camps and meets
with its leaders. And from there he sometimes launches anti-Western
tirades, including a recent blast at London authorities who are
demanding the extradition of the suspected killer of Litvinenko.
Putin's mission is not to win over the West. It is to restore to
Russians a sense of their nation's greatness, something they have not
known for years. This is not idle dreaming. When historians talk about
Putin's place in Russian history, they draw parallels with Stalin or
the Tsars. Putin, one can't stress enough, is not a Stalin. There are
no mass purges in Russia today, no broad climate of terror. But Putin
is reconstituting a strong state, and anyone who stands in his way
will pay for it. "Putin has returned to the mechanism of one-man
rule," says Talbott of the Brookings Institution. "Yet it's a new kind
of state, with elements that are contemporary and elements from the
past."
And there's plenty that could go wrong. The depth of corruption, the
pockets of militant unrest, the ever present vulnerability of the
economy to swings in commodity prices—all this threatens to unravel
the gains that have been made. But Putin has played his own hand well.
As Prime Minister, he is set to see out the rest of the drama of
Russia's re-emergence. And almost no one in Russia is in a position to
stop him. If he succeeds, Russia will become a political competitor to
the U.S. and to rising nations like China and India. It will be one of
the great powers of the new world.
Back at the dacha, with snow falling lightly outside, our dinner and
discussion continue. Putin has been irritable throughout, a grudging
host. Suddenly, at 10 o'clock, he stands and abruptly ends the
evening. "We've finished eating, there's nothing more on the table, so
let's call it a day," he declares. Actually, the main course (choice
of sturgeon or veal) and dessert ("bird's milk" cake)—lovingly printed
in gold ink on the prepared menu cards—haven't yet been served. The
Russian President's brusqueness is jarring. Have our questions angered
him? Bored him? Does he have another appointment? It's not clear. "Bye
bye," says Putin—in English—as he walks briskly out of the room. The
work of rebuilding Russia, apparently, is never done.
—with reporting by Yuri Zarakhovich and Dario Thuburn/Moscow
.
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