E@zyVG’s Vichar::World Connected

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Владимир Владимирович Путин) is one of the persons who is today shapping the world, and especially the future of Russia and its people. Here is his short biography:

• Vladimir Putin was born in Leningrad on October 7, 1952.
• In 1975, he graduated with a degree in law from Leningrad State University. He later earned a Ph.D. degree in economics.
• After graduation, Mr. Putin was assigned to work in the KGB. From 1985 to 1990, he worked in East Germany.
• In 1990, he became assistant to the rector of Leningrad State University responsible for international affairs.
• His next position was an advisor to the chairman of the Leningrad City Council.
• In June 1991, he became chairman of the St. Petersburg City Council’s International Relations Committee and, starting with 1994, he combined this post with the position of First Deputy Chairman of the St. Petersburg City Government (First Deputy Mayor).
• In August 1996, he was appointed deputy head of the President’s Administrative Directorate (Property Management Directorate).
• In March 1997, he became deputy head of the Executive Office of the President (Presidential Administration) and head of the Central Supervision and Inspections Directorate.
• In May 1998, he was promoted to first deputy head of the Presidential Administration.
• In July 1998, he was appointed director of the Federal Security Service and, as of March 1999, he combined this position with that of Secretary of the Security Council.
• In August 1999, he was appointed Prime Minister.
• On December 31, 1999, he became acting President.
• On March 26, 2000, he was elected President of Russia and was inaugurated as president on May 7, 2000.
• On March 14, 2004, he was elected President of Russia for the second term.
• Speaks German and English.
• Married to Lyudmila Putina. They have two daughters: Maria (1985), Katerina (1986).

THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW. Vladimir Putin in his working office.

BARENTS SEA. On board the heavy nuclear cruiser Peter the Great during the Northern Fleet military exercises.

In his first decade as a KGB agent, Putin’s job was to help prevent change. In 1985, only months before Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in power and started to advocate glasnost and perestroika, Putin was assigned to the Soviet Union’s hardline ally East Germany. True, it was not “exile”; but psychologically, Putin’s isolation in Dresden may have been experienced as emigration. Like a true emigrant, he kept his home alive, sweet and unchanged, in his heart: the Soviet rodina, the place of his youth, his parents - and his tongue.

While his generation personally experienced the erosion of Soviet power, Putin spent the Gorbachev years in an East German time-bubble, isolated both from a Russian society in transition and (as a KGB bureaucrat) from his crumbling host country as well. He missed the moments of awakening, the years full of hope as the Soviet empire crumbled, when millions took to the streets and democracy was a dream. It was only after the fall of Soviet power that he returned from Germany to his native St Petersburg.

To this day, Putin seems to be nostalgic for the pre-Gorbachev USSR - like the people of a decade older than him, who have been unable to make the transition. He has even reinstated some of its insignia, such as the Soviet anthem and the red banner for the military. And his team consists mostly of so-called siloviki, former Soviet military and security-apparatus officers who also speak the language of the past.

It is not Putin’s connection to KGB, which makes him noteworthy, but his Russian version of Gaullism. Like De Gaulle, Putin is a nationalistic, populist leader, insistent on a strong presidency, and determent to actively encourage a `multi-polar’ world, in order to check US dominance. All these have clear earmarks of French Gaullism a la Russe, and, incidentally, and not surprisingly France has been the closest Russian ally in the world.

Putin’s Russia is not a trivial authoritarian state. It is not “Soviet Union lite”. It is not a liberal democracy either. It is some sort of “managed democracy”, which time will tell if this was the best option for his country and people when he was the head of state. As for Putin’s legacy, in many respects he deserves credit for curbing the excesses of the Yeltsin period and bringing financial resources back under state control as well as introducing a lot of programmes that is helping to bring more stability into Russian society.

Time is ticking …..

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006 at 11:54 am and is filed under People, Russia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.