So far (I’m about half-way in) “Volodya” as he is mostly called, seems to be a fairly typical product of his environment. As he himself says, “I was a pure and utterly successful product of Soviet patriotic education,” an interesting remark because it implies that he at least partially sees through that patriotic brainwashing, and yet is not particularly shocked or fundamentally shaken by it. I get the impression of someone who now realizes his boyhood fantasies (of playing the romantic role of super-spy) were illusions, yet still feels almost sentimental or at least somewhat attached to those illusions. (In many ways Putin reminds me of the little I know of Frank Sinatra. Somewhat rough origins, bellicose, interest in martial arts, but with a “soft” side: romantic dream of playing the provider-hero. Compare Sinatra in Tony Rome?)
In general, Putin seems to have more of less gone along with the flow. Perhaps more intensely competitive than most, (he was the 1976 Leningrad Judo Champion), but then he had to be because of the competition-based nature of Soviet education. A certain number of spots were available (to go to university, to get a car, to travel abroad, to have a nice apartment etc…). Getting anything meant that someone else didn’t, so it’s no surprise that competitiveness was encouraged.
It’s interesting that education in the US, which is supposedly a meritocracy where anyone can work their way up through stellar performance, is actually much less grades/competition based than most European countries (France, for example, with its all-important “bac” or the Czech Republic where university admission is based almost entirely on test scores). This is not to say that the Soviet educational system was a meritocracy. Far from it. “Winning” more often involved knowing the right people, or being able to pull various strings, than pure merit. But “winning” was all important.
Putin’s relationship to his wife Lyudmila is not particularly surprising or revealing. She is described as “a real woman, who could stay up all night having a good time, and still clean up the apartment and cook the next morning.” Before marrying Putin she was an airline stewardess. He was a KGB trainee who’s primary appeal at first seems to have been “that Volodya was the kind of person who could get tickets to any theater.”
Where I am at now in the book, Putin and his wife are living in Dresden. Putin performing what he calls “routine” intelligence work. He portrays it as a largely mundane job consisting of gathering information, analyzing it and sending back reports. Not very different from a market analyst, or some such similar job. We’ll see what the second half of the book brings!
recycled paper clips 