There are no jokes about Russia’s acting President, Vladimir Putin (46), a fact which is remarkable in a country whose enthusiasm for scathing political humour is unrivalled. Dismissed as a faceless bureaucrat on his appointment as prime minister in August, in the space of a few months, Putin has been successfully transformed into an iron leader. He looks like a man in control of his destiny, basking in the successes of his main political project, the war in Chechnya.
Most of Moscow’s Kremlin-watchers are embarrassed by Putin’s metamorphosis, having written him off as a serious contender from the start. When Yeltsin appointed Putin as his fifth prime minister in 17 months, Russians couldn’t decide whether to be amused or appalled.
Some political analysts said the appointment of this former KGB colonel smacked of desperation, a last-ditch attempt by the ailing Yeltsin to guarantee himself a safe retirement and protect the interests of his inner circle. His suggestion that Putin was a realistic candidate to succeed him was interpreted as yet another sign of his woeful mental decline.
Pundits warned that, in any case, a seal of approval from such an unpopular president was as good as the kiss of death for Putin’s political ambitions. But determined to boost Putin’s chances, the Kremlin hurled the full weight of government-friendly media behind him (backed by pro-Kremlin oligarchs) and began a rebranding campaign.
A poor public speaker, he was taught how to talk in clipped sentences, masking his inarticulacy with an immensely popular, no-nonsense style, reinforcing his image as a doer, not a talker. His most memorable soundbites have been his coarsest. Pledging to track down Chechen rebels, he promised “to wipe them out, even on the toilet”. Launching a campaign against graft this month, he said corrupt officials would be “squashed like rats”.
The Kremlin has greatly helped its protégé by launching a bitter, scandal-mongering campaign against potential rivals in the presidential race, especially those who pose a threat to the Kremlin élite. And Putin has worked hard to further his own cause. Presenting the war in Chechnya as an “anti-terrorist operation”, in the wake of the terrifying apartment-bombing campaign, he has not only avoided the public-relations catastrophe of Russia’s last war in the region, but has cynically used the brutal battle as a platform for his own political ambitions.
The son of a locksmith, Putin was brought up in St Petersburg and studied in the prestigious law faculty at Leningrad University, where former tutors remember him as an otlichnik, a model pupil. Fellow students attest that he was sensitive, preferring the library to parties.
This Putin blushed at crude language and several students remember his loud weeping at the funeral of a teammate. Any trace of that sensitivity was stamped out when he was recruited to work for the KGB and posted to East Germany, where he spent most of the next 15 years picking up tricks of the trade that were to prove useful when he moved to the Kremlin.
Then in the early Nineties, he switched to politics and emerged as aide to St Petersburg’s liberal mayor, Anatoly Sobchak. The race to find kompromat (compromising material) on Putin has dredged up some moments from his time in the notoriously corrupt St Petersburg administration.
There are stories of fraudulent export licences granted for personal gain, of abuse of position to benefit from privatisation ventures, of a villa in Benidorm bought with dubious money. But the stories are inconclusive and attempts to blacken his name are drowned by the chorus of approving voices.
It was only after his move to Moscow in 1996 that Putin’s extraordinary ascent began when he was befriended by Yeltsin’s all-powerful daughter, Tatiana (whom he fired days after assuming the acting presidency), and other Kremlin insiders. Within two years, he had been appointed to head the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB.
His personal life is equally poorly sketched in. Colleagues describe him as an extremely private person and very little is known about his family. Putin married the sister of a friend from university and has two daughters, now aged 13 and 14.
Putin’s shrewdest achievement has been to portray himself as all things to all people. In this, he has offered contradictory versions of himself to the electorate — a staunch nationalist ready to strengthen the army and restore Russia as a great power; a committed democrat determined to push forward reform; a fervent proponent of order (but not necessarily law); a spymaster willing to crack down on dissent.
The one hurdle for Putin is the gulf that stretches between now and the March 26 elections, time for Putin’s ratings to tumble. Ultimately, his fate will be tied to the war’s continuing success which, with the absence of any clear endgame, is far from guaranteed