Putin

Forces too mighty to control had been set loose. The Berlin Wall would soon be breached. The Center, as the KGB called their Moscow headquarters, was not holding. Soon enough the acrid smell of defeat was in Putin’s nostrils—the smell of documents burned in frantic haste: “We destroyed everything—all our communications, our lists of contacts and our agents’ networks,” says Putin. “I personally burned a huge amount of material. We burned so much stuff that the furnaces burst.”

The unthinkable became commonplace. One day the East Germans are ransacking the Ministry of Security, the next they’re surrounding Soviet KGB headquarters on Angelikastrasse. As Putin put it: “We were forced to demonstrate our readiness to defend our building.” Putin went out and addressed the raging mob. Usoltsev says that Putin grabbed a Kalashnikov; Putin mentions only that he was accompanied by bodyguards. In either case, the defenders’ “determination certainly made an impression on them, at least for a while.”

But only a while. The crowd started becoming aggressive again. Putin called for military backup and was told: “We cannot do anything without orders from Moscow. And Moscow is silent.”

A few hours later Soviet troops did arrive and disperse the crowd. But the incident was profoundly disturbing to Putin. “That business of ‘Moscow is silent’—I got the feeling then that the country no longer existed. That it had disappeared … and had a terminal disease without a cure—a paralysis of power.”

With a beer gut, two kids, and a used car, Putin returned to the USSR in January 1990. His prospects were few and bleak. Perhaps he could get into some sort of law collective. Or maybe drive a cab.

PART THREE ASCENT

The lowest card that wins the current game is worth more than the highest that won an earlier one.

—BALTASAR GRACIÁN

4 RUSSIA’S FALL, PUTIN’S RISE

Blaming Russia for a lack of democracy is similar to complaining about not being able to buy alcohol in Saudi Arabia.

—JAKUB KOREJBA

In January 1990 when Putin returned home, the USSR was still the USSR, Leningrad was still Leningrad, and he was still KGB. None of that would last another two years.

Putin now became a member of the “active reserves,” meaning KGB officers who “were put in place as active agents in business, media and the public sector…. The status of an agent on active reserve is considered a state secret.” Putin returned to his alma mater, a choice that would prove smart and useful. As he says: “I was happy to go ‘undercover’ at Leningrad State University. I wanted to write my doctoral dissertation, check out the university, and perhaps get a job there. So, in 1990 I became assistant to the president of the university, responsible for international liaisons.”

Landing that position was a good solution for Putin. It allowed him to work on his dissertation, some fifteen pages of which would later prove to be plagiarized from an American textbook. It gave him a foothold in viciously fast-shifting Leningrad, where gang wars were fought in the streets, sometimes with the Kalashnikovs and RPGs filched from the collapsing military and sold on the black market, and where ration cards for meat, eggs, butter, and other commodities would soon be introduced, creating an urgent air of wartime poverty and shortage. Most important, the job gave him a piece in the game, one that in time could be moved to a better position.

Putin, like everyone else, was winging it. The system was in a state of slow-motion free fall; the only questions were when it would land and with how much bloodshed. Putin had been offered a KGB post in Moscow, but turned it down for reasons of sentiment and practicality. He wanted to be near his parents, who were getting old, and also because he knew “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.”

Life was becoming increasingly meaningless for Soviet people, Putin included. Putin’s wife, Lyudmila, could see that he “had lost touch with his life’s real purpose.” Every day brought new revelations of crimes committed in the name of Communism, and the system could barely deliver basic goods and services. A grocery store might contain nothing but stale macaroni and large jars of homemade-looking apple juice. Russians started hoarding matches and salt as they always do when crisis approaches. Suddenly, there was a real threat of hunger.