#10 - JRL 7283
New Straits Times
August 10, 2003
Life Story: A simple life, according to President Vladimir Putin
Hardev Kaur

Aug 10: 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 (Anatoly Sobchak, chairman of the Leningrad City Council).

From Sobchak, to Moscow and to the General Department.

Then to the presidential administration.

From there, to the FSB (Federalnaya Sluzbha Bezopasnosti or Russia's Federal Security Service which replaced the KGB).

Then I was appointed Prime Minister.

Now I'm Acting President. That's it!

THIS is how Russian President Vladimir Putin sums up his life in a book entitled First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait published in 2000.

"But surely there are more details?" he asks, and adds "Yes, there are ...." He was elected President on March 26 and inaugurated on May 7, 2000.

The "young, sober and strong leader" is the most popular politician in Russia.

And according to some in Moscow, if elections are held today, the incumbent President would easily win a second term.

He defies the old image of Russians — stern, severe, prohibiting, cold, distant and unsmiling. Putin is friendly, charming and "a very normal human being," one of his staff assures.

Softspoken, gentle and an unruffled operator with an iron will, Putin also known as Vovka and Volodya to his friends, is determined to take Russia on the road to democracy and instil market reforms.

Described as a "decent and honest" man by Sergey Stepashin (Putin's predecessor as Premier) Putin is determined to return Russia to its former glory.

"Our ultimate goal should be to return Russia to its place among the prosperous, developed, strong and respected nations," he had declared.

There is no turning back to the old Soviet system. He wants the GDP doubled in 10 years and has set in motion reforms that will help to ensure the Russian citizens have a greater say in their own lives.

He is determined to fight poverty, adding: "A country cannot be called prosperous if the majority of its population continue to fight poverty.

"And to be called a prosperous state we need to improve the living standards of the population. We have learnt our lesson from the past and it was a rather murky one for us." He was born in Peterhof, suburb of Leningrad, on Oct 7, 1952. His father first served on a submarine fleet and as a volunteer on the front line when war broke out.

After the war his father was employed as a skilled labourer at the Yegorov Train Factory. His mother worked in a factory. His grandfather was a cook at Stalin's dacha.

Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich, Putin's teacher from grade 4 to 8, says they had a "horrid apartment ...there was no hot water, no bathtub. The toilet was horrendous. It ran smack up against a stair landing. And it was so cold — just awful — and the stairway had a freezing metal handrail".

Putin says there were "hordes of rats in the front doorway. My friends and I used to chase them around with sticks. I got a quick and lasting lesson on the meaning of ‘cornered'".

He says he spotted a huge rat and pursued it until he had driven it into a corner and it had nowhere to run.

"Suddenly it turned 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".

Today he lives in the presidential residence, Novo Ogoryovo, on the outskirts of Moscow with many of the conveniences that he was denied as a child.

He went through university, worked in construction sites during summer vacation. At the age of 10, he discovered martial arts and after reading novels and watching spy movies, developed a single-minded ambition to join the KGB.

At 16 years of age he made his way to the KGB headquarters where he was told that he had to go to law school and keep his mouth shut if he wanted to be a spy.

Despite pleas and threats of his parents and judo coaches, he did just that.

He was accepted into the KGB in 1985, posted to Dresden in East Germany and resigned in 1991. He became disillusioned with the KGB and turned down a post in the Central Office in Moscow.

"I knew that there was no future in 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," he said.

But as his friend Sergei Roldugin reminded Putin: "There's no such thing as a former intelligence agent." The President admits that.

"The experience I have accumulated working abroad, working for the intelligence structures, is a very useful experience because it was concerned with working with people.

"It was a different type of persons, on their status, race, religion and nationality and it was also working with information — receiving information, processing information and deriving key elements from the information. This was a useful kind of job." And useful in his current post where he has to deal with people and information.

He says he is not a politician. On whether this hinders or helps in his current job, he replied: "As far as my professional job as a politician is concerned, in percentage terms, it is a rather small period in my whole life and in my life of labour. There are some people who deal in politics all their lives and in this particular sense I don't believe I am a career politician.

"And to my mind there are more advantages here rather than disadvantages. The major advantage is that those who do not deal with this all the time, day and night, do not lack the perception of or lose touch with the ordinary citizens. They do not lack the understanding of the problem of the ordinary citizen in their own country.

"As far as the minuses and disadvantages are concerned they are primarily the lack of political experience." But he does not demonstrate this lack of "political experience". He had impressed his superiors and moved up quite rapidly. Boris Yeltsin handed the reins of government and reminded Putin to "take care of Russia".

There are challenges not only at home but on the international arena that occupy his time. Thus he has very little time for himself, hobbies, his family and friends. Putin says he loves music and sometimes goes to the theatre. He reads historical novels.

He is into sports, judo which he says is not just a sport. It's a philosophy. He works out every morning and is conscious of his weight adding that he does not want to gain weight.

He says that if he gives up his workouts he will have to buy clothes several sizes larger.

"There was a time 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".

He usually does not have lunch. "I try to eat fruits and drink some kefir when I can," he says in his book.

He is loyal to his friends. "I have a lot of friends ...they have never gone away. We have never betrayed each other.

"In my view, that is what counts most. I don't even know why you would betray your friends." The Russians look up to Putin and expect their lives to be changed. They snap their fingers and sing: "I want someone like Putin, full of strength. Someone like Putin who doesn't drink. I want someone like Putin who won't hurt me, someone like Putin who won't abandon me!" He is married to former stewardess Lyudmila Putina and they have two daughters Masha and Katya.