分节阅读 Table of contents

• 1.The New Tsar

  • Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s sixtieth birthday on October 7, 2012, was celebrated across the nation in a manner befitting a cult of personality. In the days leading up to it, an exhibition of paintings was held in Moscow entitled, without irony, Putin: The Most Kind-Hearted Man in the World. A youth group affiliated with United Russia produced a four-minute, sexually charged video of beautiful women reenacting his most famous exploits: from riding a horse in the mountains to flying in a fighter jet to driving a yellow Lada in Siberia. There were poetry readings and essay contests for school children.
    
    All those reflected that Putin was the highest power of Russia, as the Tsars were. However, the rise of the new Tsar was actually fraught with risks and uncertainty. Again and again, he resolutely achieved his goals with the tough measures. Is he a hero who shapes the nation as Emperor Peter I, or a product merely well meets Russian people’s longstanding dream of world-class power？Perhaps we can find clues from his three most crucial steps towards the pinnacle of power.

• 2.Step I: From Leningrad to Moscow

  • Putin’s early life didn’t have many signs that he would become the most powerful person in Russia. He joined the active state security services KGB in 1975 upon graduation. From 1985 to 1990, the KGB stationed Putin in Dresden, East Germany. Following the collapse of the communist East German government, Putin was recalled to the Soviet Union and returned to Leningrad, where in June 1991 he assumed a position with the International Affairs section of Leningrad State University. It was during his stint at the university that Putin grew reacquainted with his former professor Anatoly Sobchak, then mayor of Leningrad. Taken into Sobchak’s team, Putin was appointed as an advisor on international affairs，and later, he became head of the Committee for External Relations of the Saint Petersburg Mayor's Office. In 1994, Putin was appointed as First Deputy Chairman of the Government of Saint Petersburg.
    
    However, in 1996, Mayor Sobchak lost his bid for reelection in Saint Petersburg. Putin, who was loyal to his mentor and boss Sobchak, also lost all status. Unexpectedly, before long, Putin’s salvation came from an unlikely source: his boss’s former ally turned foe, Boris Yeltsin.
    
    Putin was called to Moscow and in June 1996, became a Deputy Chief of The Presidential Property Management Department headed by Pavel Borodin, since the “Petersburg clan” in Yeltsin’s new administration needed allies with experience dealing with officials and businessmen. From that post, the department looked after hundreds of buildings and plots of land, palaces, dachas, fleets of aircraft and yachts, hospitals, spas and hotels, art and antiques, and scores of state factories and enterprises that included everything from funeral homes to an Arctic diamond mine.
    
    Putin had met Borodin before when he once visited St. Petersburg in search of a northern dacha for Yeltsin. He also once helped when Borodin’s daughter, a university student in Petersburg, fell ill. The exchange of these kinds of favors—known as blat—had been a tradition of the tsarist and Soviet systems, where informal connections and networks cut through bureaucratic obstacles. Even in a free Russia, where money mattered more, blat remained a currency in Kremlin politics. It also helped land Putin his first job in Moscow.
    
    However, Putin was still an outsider in Moscow, and also something of a naïf. Putin was a subaltern, as a Moscow newspaper wrote at the time in a profile of this new addition to the Kremlin apparatus. He was “absolutely a back stage person” whose greatest professional quality was his inconspicuousness. This quality saved him when the power struggles surrounding Yeltsin exploded in public even as he began his new job.
    
    Perhaps because of his low-key and excellent work, in March 1997, President Yeltsin appointed Putin deputy chief of Presidential Staff. Public began to notice this Moscow official who untypically emphasized on laws and orders. Though, he had another piece of unfinished business in Petersburg, that is, save his mentor, Sobchak.
    
    Anatoly Sobchak’s exile from power had not been tranquil. After he failed the mayor election, he was charged with dozens of crimes. One day in 1997, investigators and ten heavily armed special police arrested Sobchak at his office. While being questioned in the prosecutor’s office, Sobchak complained of chest pains and was taken to the hospital.
    
    During the deadlock, Putin intervened. Putin visited Sobchak in the hospital and arranged for his transfer to a “trusted” hospital. Then he plotted Sobchak’s escape. On November 7, a holiday still although it no longer officially celebrated the Bolshevik revolution, Putin collected Sobchak’s medical records and chartered an aircraft from Finland at a cost of $30,000. Putin called on his old contacts in the local police and intelligence service to accompany an ambulance that quietly transferred Sobchak from the hospital ward to a waiting plane at Pulkovo Airport. Sobchak and his wife flew to Paris.
    
    Putin’s involvement was certainly audacious and very likely illegal. He risked his own future out of loyalty to his “ friend and a mentor.” Only in a country where the justice system had broken down could he have succeeded in spiriting Sobchak to safety abroad. Only in a dysfunctional political system could his brazen defiance of the law have earned him admiration—and not just among his close circle of friends.
    
    Sobchak’s flight created a furor, and Putin’s role in the affair did not remain secret for long. “Putin understood the injustice of what was happening to his former boss and political mentor better than anyone,” one admirer wrote later. Putin “sensed danger more quickly and acutely than others” and acted out of loyalty and nothing more. “When I learned that Putin had helped send Sobchak abroad, I had mixed feelings. Putin had taken a great risk. Yet I profoundly admired his actions.” The admirer was Boris Yeltsin, and when he mulled the infighting and betrayals of his appointees, he felt awe at such a display of loyalty.” Perhaps from that moment, Putin was destined to become Yeltsin's successor.

• 3.Step II: “Take Care of Russia”

  • After won Yeltsin’s trust, Putin's political career got a meteoric rise. In 1998, Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin head of the Federal Security Service. He became a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation on 1 October 1998 and its Secretary on 29 March 1999. On 9 August 1999, Vladimir Putin was appointed one of three First Deputy Prime Ministers, and later on that day was appointed acting Prime Minister of the Government of the Russian Federation by President Yeltsin.
    
    Putin was entrusted with a mission at a critical and difficult moment. Just a few days before he took office of prime minister, the militants of the Republic of Chechnya invaded Dagestan, the southernmost part of Russia. At that time, a series of bomb explosions conducted by Chechen terrorists happened in Russian cities, killed more than 300.
    
    The day after his formal appointment, Putin declared that Russia’s commanders would reestablish control in Dagestan. He employed extremely tough attitude and strategy to win the war. At last, Russian regained control of Chechnya.
     
    On the other side of the battlefield, the country was awash in rumors that Yeltsin would resign. Yeltsin's main opponents were already campaigning to replace the ailing president, and they fought hard to prevent Putin's emergence as a potential successor.
    
    Yet, to the surprise of all including Yeltsin, Putin’s conduct of the war proved to be immensely popular. This war, under this prime minister, seemed different from any former ones. Putin had been largely unknown to Russians when Yeltsin appointed him prime minister. Now, even though he had not yet had time to articulate any policies or programs, Putin's law-and-order image and his unrelenting approach to the Second Chechen War, soon combined to raise Putin's popularity and allowed him to overtake all rivals.
    
    At the same time, the aging president Yeltsin had invested his hopes for his legacy—and personal security—in this young prime minister. “Authority in Russia had always been transferred through natural death, conspiracy or revolution,” he wrote of his thoughts during the period. “The tsar ceased to rule only after his death or after a coup. It was exactly the same with the general secretary of our Party. I suppose our regime inherited the inability to transfer power painlessly.”
    
    On December 14, 1999, Yeltsin summoned Putin to his residence at Gorky-9 for a secret meeting. They met alone.
    
    “I want to step down this year, Vladimir Vladimirovich,” Yeltsin told him. “This year. That’s very important. The new century must begin with a new political era, the era of Putin. Do you understand?”
    
    Putin did not understand. His reaction made Yeltsin’s heart sink. The two men sat in silence as the realization dawned slowly on Yeltsin that Putin felt unprepared for the presidency.
    
    “I’m not ready for that decision, Boris Nikolayevich,” Putin finally replied. “It’s a rather difficult destiny.
    
    Yeltsin, trying to persuade him, explained that he had arrived in Moscow to work when he was already over fifty—older than Putin—but “an energetic, healthy person” nonetheless. Now, he realized, his political life was exhausted.
    
    “At one time, I, too, wanted to live my life in a completely different way,” he told Putin. “I didn’t know it was going to turn out this way.” He looked out the window at the gray, snowy landscape, lost in thought. After an interlude, he returned to he matter at hand.
    
    “You haven’t answered me,” he said to Putin, looking him in the eye.
    
    Putin, at last, agreed. No one else knew of their conversation, according to Yeltsin, or the momentous decision they had made.
    
    As everyone learned, on 31 December 1999, Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned and, according to the Constitution of Russia, Putin became Acting President of the Russian Federation. While Putin’s opponents had been preparing for an election in June 2000, Yeltsin's resignation resulted in the Presidential elections being held within three months, on 26 March 2000. The rescheduling partially helped Putin won the easy vote.
    
    As Yeltsin prepared to leave the Kremlin, he paused in the hallway outside his office—now Putin’s—and extracted from his pocket the pen he had used to sign his last decree stating that the resignation. He gave it to Putin as they walked out to the door of the Kremlin, two men so different in temperament and physique. Their relationship, Putin said later, had not been “particularly close.” Yeltsin wanted to say “something important” about the burden he would now face. “Take care,” finally he told him, “take care of Russia.”
    
    That evening Putin signed his first decree. It granted Yeltsin an array of benefits and privileges as a former president, including a salary, a staff, and the use of the dacha. It also made Yeltsin immune from prosecution, protecting his assets and papers from search or seizure.
    
    Putin then carried out his own New Year’s surprise. He secretly flew to Dagestan on New Year’s Eve. After arriving, Putin boarded military helicopters and flew toward the frontier of war， and handed out medals and ceremonial knives there. “I want you to know that Russia highly appreciates what you’re doing,” Putin told the soldiers mustered there. “This is not just about restoring Russia’s honor and dignity. It’s about putting an end to the breakup of the Russian Federation.” The Yeltsin era was over. The Putin era had begun.

• 4.Step III: Never Step Down

  • By the end of 2011, Putin spent two presidential terms and another term as prime minister in Kremlin. Russia under his rule, more or less won back some of the past influence in the world. Putin was harshly criticized in the West and also by Russian liberals for authoritarian rule, personality cult, and wide-scale crackdown on opponents and media freedom in Russia. But his personal popularity in the country has continued to upgrade，at least on the surface. But so far, he was merely an imperious Elected Official in Russia; the incident that really established his unshakable position like a Tsar was his actions to return to the throne since 2011.
    
    On September 24, 2011, Russian then sitting President Dmitry Medvedev spoke on United Russia Party Congress, he proposed to nominate the current Prime Minister Putin as candidate of the presidential election in 2012. It was a move that considered the sign that Putin's attempt to stay in highest power in Russia.
    
    Perhaps, it was not a surprise. Medvedev’s political stock had been sinking day by day for most of the year. Medvedev had nurtured the hope to return for a second term at least until the beginning of September, when Putin’s public demeanor started to suggest that it might not happen. He had only learned the details of Putin’s final decision for election at the conference before during a late-night meeting at Novo-Ogaryovo.
    
    Putin felt that his successor had not been a strong enough leader. He never felt he had to explain his decision to anyone. The position was his if he wanted it, which was, in his mind apparently, explanation enough. Election results also proved his strength. At last, Putin's vote was 63.6%.
    
    As you can imagine, if there was any expectation that Putin’s third term would herald a softer, less authoritarian approach, it dissipated almost immediately. Among the thousands who participated in anti-Putin march, hundreds of protests were hurt, arrested and detained. Criminal charges were brought against ordinary people who had joined the protest in the heady desire to have their voices heard. “I think this is to show who is boss,” said a human rights activist. “A new tsar has come.”
    
    In such an atmosphere, Putin’s inauguration unfolded with the pomp, broadcast to the nation solemnly and ceremoniously, just as before. The motorcade passed through streets that had been emptied not only of traffic but, eerily, of people, too. No one watched. No one waved or cheered that sunny morning. No one even dared be outside.
    
    Putin appeared grave and unflappable. He was older; his face tightened by cosmetic surgery, his thinning hair having receded further, but at fifty-nine, he remained fit and lithe. “I see the whole sense and purpose of my life as being to serve our country and serve our people, whose support gives me the inspiration and help I need,” he began. He said the coming years would be crucial in shaping the country Russia would become, a Russia that had, he said, restored its “dignity as a great nation” and would be the center of gravity for all of Eurasia. “The world has seen a Russia arisen anew.”
    
    Putin now found the unifying key factor for a large, diverse nation. He found a millenarian purpose for the power that he held, one that shaped his country greater than any other leader had thus far in the twenty-first century. He had restored neither the Soviet Union nor the tsarist empire, but a new Russia with the characteristics and instincts of both, with himself as secretary general and sovereign, as indispensable as the country itself was exceptional. No Putin, no Russia.
    
    Putin’s rule now seemed inexorable. He faced no obvious challenge to his power before the presidential election scheduled for 2018. He could by law serve six more years after that. When—if—he stepped down in 2024, he would not yet be seventy-two. Brezhnev had died in office at seventy-five; Stalin at seventy-four. He might then hand power to a new leader, Medvedev again perhaps or another member of the inner circle. It would ultimately be up to him. The fate of Russia was now entwined with his own, rushing forward as the troika in Gogol’s Dead Souls to an unknown destiny. Putin probably did not know himself whither—except forward, impetuous, unrepentant, undaunted. “The air rumbles, shattered to pieces, and turns to wind,” Gogol wrote of the troika. “Everything on earth flies by, and, looking askance, other nations and states step aside to make way.”

关于本书 About the book

本书金句 Key insights