No Tears For Boris

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Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1952. Little is known about his childhood and family life, though he is married and has two teenage daughters. Putin graduated from Leningrad State University with a law degree in 1975. On graduation he was quickly recruited into the KGB, which he served first in Moscow and then in East Germany. The acting President's spy life remains as much a mystery as the rest of his biography. Friends insist he was involved in "economic intelligence," designed to help the Soviet Union's badly antiquated industrial sector. After Yeltsin's resignation, however, former Prime Minister Stepashin told a television interviewer that inside the KGB Putin was known as "Stasi," possibly implying a link to the East German secret service.

In 1990 Putin was sent back to Leningrad, still in the employ of the KGB, to monitor that city's blossoming perestroika movement. Among his contacts was one of the city's most progressive politicians, and a former law professor of his, Anatoly Sobchak. When Sobchak became mayor, Putin joined him and eventually handled foreign investment, among other responsibilities. Though he hunkered out of public sight--he was known as "a gray cardinal"--Putin began to accumulate power and a quiet reputation among reformers. In 1996, Sobchak lost a re-election campaign, and Putin headed to Moscow, where he quickly rose to become a Yeltsin confidant, to run the FSB and, eventually, to be handpicked as successor.

Elections at the end of March mean that Putin has hardly enough time to make a serious mistake. A disaster in Chechnya could scar him, but his strategists are calculating that for the time being he has developed a Teflon coating. The biggest threat facing Putin, says Pavlovsky, is dramatically inflated popular expectations. Two and a half months of campaigning, however, allow little chance for Putin's 65% confidence ratings or popular expectations to be significantly deflated. There is also a slight possibility that Putin's views on anything, from economics to defense, will become much clearer in this time. Last week--in what with hindsight seems like a heavy hint that Putin was preparing for greater things--the Russian-government website posted a long and somewhat turgid statement of Putin's beliefs. The statement was light on policy and heavy on theory. "Russia will not soon, if ever, become a second copy of, say, the U.S. or England, where liberal values have deep historical traditions," Putin wrote. Russians, he argued, are comfortable with a strong state, a more collective approach to society rather than Western individualism, and considerable government intervention in the economy.

In the absence of policies, a well-honed p.r. campaign by aides, directed at journalists and visiting Western officials, has created the impression of a cool, crisp and ambitious young leader. Skeptical observers saluted his behind-the-throne power with the nickname "Ras-Putin." He has put the word out that he will be an economic reformer, a promise that impresses U.S. officials more than their West European counterparts. Yet a few weeks ago, his economic think tank was still saying that its program would not be ready until the middle of the year 2000. His track record as Prime Minister suggests a cynical pragmatist rather than a tough reformer. He is, for instance, a fan of former KGB head and Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, on whose grave he publicly laid flowers in June. Last fall, when riot troops stormed the Moscow headquarters of Transneft, the Russian oil-pipeline monopoly, and installed a new CEO of the Kremlin's liking, Putin did not intervene. A charitable observer, Mikhail Berger, editor of the Segodnya daily, suggests that he will turn out to be a "free marketeer...with a strong hand. 'Disciplined reform' may be the best way of putting it."

Senior U.S. officials who have met recently with Putin say he is level-headed, intelligent and clearly focused on improving life in Russia. He is, they say, more realist than ideologue. Even after the cold war ended, U.S.-Russia meetings were often tense, usually starting with a long Russian recitation about items on which the two nations would never agree. Putin, by contrast, generally starts his conversation with an old salesman's trick--reviewing things that the U.S. and Russia have in common. There is "none of the Jekyll-and-Hyde ambivalence that characterized former Russian leaders, including Yeltsin," says a State Department official.