putin biography book pdf

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Author: Philip Short

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1 Baskov Lane Vladimir Putin was born on Tuesday, October 7, 1952, at Maternity Hospital No. 6, known locally as the Snegiryov hospital, five minutes’ walk from his parents’ home on Baskov Lane, which, despite its name, was a straight, wide street of what had once been elegant nineteenth-century apartment buildings, now shabby and dilapidated, just north of Leningrad’s principal thoroughfare, Nevsky Prospekt, leading to the Winter Palace.1 The hospital, founded in 1771 by Catherine the Great, was the oldest in Russia and the largest and reputedly the best in Leningrad.2 That was not saying a great deal. In Russian maternity clinics in those days, expectant mothers were crammed into filthy wards, infested with cockroaches, with blood and faeces on the floor and soiled bedlinen, where they were left to the mercy of nurses who, when they were not sadistic, were often callous. ‘It doesn’t hurt when you’re screwing your husband, does it, but now you’re having a baby, you’re wailing,’ one woman remembered a midwife telling her. Even at the Snegiryov, cleanliness was rudimentary and painkillers were unknown. Babies were separated from their mothers for 36 hours after birth. From the outset it was the survival of the fittest. One newborn in 50 died before leaving hospital.3 Husbands were kept away, and Putin’s father had to stand on the street outside with the other men, hoping to see his wife at one of the windows and to learn from her or another woman if the birth had gone well and whether he had a son or a daughter.4 Other traditions proved equally tenacious. In the cities, infants were no longer swaddled, as they were in the countryside; instead they were ‘wrapped tight’, so that they could not move, which amounted to the same thing. Otherwise, it was believed, their arms or legs would ‘turn out crooked’.5 Forty years later, a French medical team visiting the city was appalled to find that this ‘medieval practice’ continued and ‘no one questions that it is correct.’6 Young Volodya, as his parents called him, spent the first weeks of his life in a wicker basket, suspended from the ceiling, as had been the custom in the countryside.7 Both his father and mother had grown up near Tver, on the Volga River, 110 miles north-west of Moscow along the main highway to Leningrad. They lived in neighbouring hamlets which had once formed part of the domains of a Privy Councillor to Tsar Alexander the First, where Putin’s great-grandfather, Ivan Petrovich, had been a serf. Ivan’s son, Spiridon – Putin’s grandfather – had moved to St Petersburg, then Russia’s capital, in the 1890s, to train as a chef, eventually taking charge of the kitchens at the Astoria Hotel, the newest and most luxurious establishment in the city, built for the tercentenary of the Romanov dynasty in 1913. The family was comfortably off and lived in an apartment in nearby Gorokhovaya Street. It was there, two years earlier, that Putin’s father, Vladimir, had been born. Among Spiridon’s regular clients was Grigory Rasputin, the Siberian mystic whose hold over Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, the Tsarina Alexandra, helped bring about their downfall. According to family legend, when Spiridon cooked for him, the monk would tip him a ten-rouble gold coin.8 But after the Revolution, the hotel closed and the rooms were taken over by Communist Party officials. The banks closed, too, and Spiridon, a frugal man, lost his considerable savings. As the White Russian armies, backed by the European powers, sought to strangle the new revolutionary regime at birth, civil war broke out. The Bolsheviks’ leader, Lenin, unleashed a ferocious wave of terror against suspected counter-revolutionaries, conducted by the newly established Cheka, the ancestor of the KGB, which claimed at least a hundred thousand lives. Famine set in, killing five million more. In Leningrad two thirds of the population, recent immigrants from the countryside, fled back to the villages from which they had come. The city became a wasteland, with grass growing in the streets.9 Spiridon left, too, taking the family to his birthplace at Pominovo, a tiny settlement of crooked wooden houses straight out of a painting by Chagall, strung out along either side of a narrow dirt road, three hours on foot from Tver. It was there that his second son, Putin’s father, Vladimir, met his future wife, Maria Ivanovna Shelomova, from the hamlet on the other side of the river. They married in 1928, when both were seventeen, and four years later moved to Peterhof, then a small garrison town that had grown up around Peter the Great’s seafront palace on the Gulf of Finland, 20 miles west of Leningrad, where Maria’s elder brother, Pyotr, who had wed Vladimir’s younger sister, was living. At first the two couples shared a single room. But in 1934, after Vladimir had completed his military service as a submariner in the Baltic Fleet, he and Maria finally obtained a room of their own. Two children were born: Albert, who died of whooping cough in infancy, and Viktor, who succumbed to diphtheria when he was about two years old during the blockade of Leningrad in March 1942.10 Viktor’s death has given rise to many unanswered questions. As the Germans advanced on Peterhof at the end of August 1941, Maria and her baby son were alone: her husband was with the Red Army, no one knew where or even whether he was still alive. Another of her brothers, Ivan, a naval liaison officer attached to the Communist Party’s Regional Committee, brought her to Leningrad and found her a place to stay with relatives.11 But the city was already in the grip of famine and as a refugee from the suburbs, she had no ration book and no way of obtaining food for herself and her small son.12 At first Ivan shared his own rations with them, but after he was transferred away from the city, their situation became desperate.13 There are conflicting accounts of what happened next. Putin remembered his parents saying that the authorities took his brother away, against his mother’s wishes, and placed him in an orphanage on the grounds that he would have a better chance of surviving the winter there than if he stayed with her.14 Another version, which may have come from Putin’s mother herself, recounts that one day, when she was too weak to move, ‘two young women came to her door. She asked them, “Take my son. Save him.” And they took the boy away. A few days later she learnt that he had died.’15 Neither version is credible. The city’s orphanages did not accept children under three years old, and Viktor was not yet two. The 30,000 or so orphans rescued from the streets or from empty, freezing apartments in the winter of 1941–2, when the city was blockaded by the Germans and starvation was at its height, were all from families where the adults had died and there was no one left to take care of them. At least as many others were left to fend for themselves because there were not enough places.16 Moreover conditions in the shelters were often appalling. The staff stole the children’s food; the dormitories were unheated; in some establishments, one child in six died in the first weeks after admission.17 Even in Moscow, which was far better provided for than Leningrad, the orphanages had a dreadful reputation. One mother, who had been warned by a friend that she would be well advised to bring her daughter home, found when she went to fetch her that the children’s stomachs were swollen with hunger and they were all covered in lice.18 The story of the two mysterious young women is even less believable. At a time when the whole city – apart from the Party elite, which was well fed throughout the war – was maddened by hunger and everyone knew that there were cases of cannibalism, no parent, however desperate, would surrender their child to strangers. One may legitimately wonder whether, behind Viktor’s death, there lurked a family tragedy which no one would ever discuss. Putin himself did not learn until long afterwards that his brother had been buried in a mass grave in the Piskaryovskoe Cemetery, with some 470,000 others who had died during the blockade.19 Copyright © 2022 by Philip Short

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The first comprehensive, fully up-to-date biography of Vladimir Putin, woven into the tumultuous saga of Russia over the last sixty years Vladimir Putin is the world’s...

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The first comprehensive, fully up-to-date biography of Vladimir Putin, woven into the tumultuous saga of Russia over the last sixty years Vladimir Putin is the world’s most dangerous man. Alone among world leaders, he has the power to reduce the United States and Europe to ashes in a nuclear firestorm and has threatened to do so. He invades his neighbors, most recently Ukraine, meddles in western elections, and orders assassinations inside and outside Russia. His regime is autocratic and deeply corrupt. But that is only half the story. Unflinching, hard-hitting, and objective, Philip Short’s biography gives us the whole tale, up to the present day. To the fullest extent anyone has yet been able, Short cracks open the strongman’s thick carapace to reveal the man underneath those bare-chested horseback rides. In this deeply researched account, readers meet the Putin who slept in the same room as his parents until he was twenty-five years old, who backed out of his wedding right beforehand, and who learned English in order to be able to talk to George W. Bush. Vladimir Putin is wreaking havoc in Europe, threatening global peace and stability and exposing his fellow citizens to devastating economic countermeasures. Yet puzzlingly many Russians continue to support him. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the many facets of the man behind the mask that Putin wears on the world stage. Drawing on almost two hundred interviews conducted over eight years in Russia, the United States, and Europe and on source material in more than a dozen languages, Putin will be the last word for years to come.

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Henry Holt and Co.

9781627793667

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Praise for Philip Short's Putin “A compelling, impressive and methodically researched account of Putin’s life so far. [It] extensively covers the dark moments of Putin’s career…. The Putin of Short’s book is not someone you would invite to dinner: he is crude and cold, arrogant and heartless.” — Peter Baker, The New York Times “Convincing. . . . The most comprehensive English-language biography to date of the Russian leader.” — The New Yorker “Anyone wanting to learn more about Putin’s personality, ideas, power and the threat he has come to pose to world peace should read this outstanding biography.” — Ian Kershaw, author of Hitler “A biography years in the making offers a thorough look at the Russian president’s life, career and concentration of power. Short…draws on hundreds of interviews for this portrait, charting Putin’s transformation into a ruthless autocrat.” — The New York Times Book Review “Magisterial…. Illuminating…. Short’s Putin is a man of violent emotions ruthlessly repressed; habitually late (a power play over those kept waiting); devoid of small talk; so inscrutable that when he proposed to his wife she initially thought he was dumping her.” — The Guardian “Philip Short’s elegantly written and pacy Putin is a doorstopper and the product of eight years of research. Its publication, a few months after the invasion, makes it the most up-to-date biography available of Vladimir Putin.” — Gideon Rachman, Financial Times “Compelling and nuanced.” — San Francisco Chronicle “An unflinching, comprehensive, up-to-date biography of autocratic Russian President Vladimir Putin as he wreaks havoc on the global stage, digging deep to reveal the man behind the mask.” — USA Today Praise for Biographies by Philip Short “[Short] is excellent at coining pithy summations of political motives that ring humanly true.” — The New York Times Book Review “Achieves the near impossible feat of translating madness into logic. This biography is a tour de force.” —David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of W.E.B. Du Bois “Nowhere has the story . . . been told with greater authority.” — The Washington Post “Unerringly broadens the inquiry to the point where serious history begins, and serious judgments can be made.” — Financial Times “Masterfully prob[ing].” — Wall Street Journal “The best sort of biography—deeply informed, entirely readable, and at the level of sophistication and complexity needed for its particular subject.” —Richard Bernstein, coauthor of The Coming Conflict with China “Chillingly clear . . . Complete and unflinching.” — The Economist

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Putin and the rise of Russia

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The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin Paperback – Illustrated, August 23, 2016

As the world struggles to confront a bolder Russia, the importance of understanding the formidable and ambitious Vladimir Putin has never been greater. This gripping narrative of Putin's rise to power recounts Putin's origins—from his childhood of abject poverty in Leningrad to his ascent through the ranks of the KGB, and his eventual consolidation of rule in the Kremlin. On the one hand, Putin's many domestic reforms—from tax cuts to an expansion of property rights—have helped reshape the potential of millions of Russians whose only experience of democracy had been crime, poverty, and instability after the fall of the Soviet Union. On the other, Putin has ushered in a new authoritarianism—unyielding in its brutal repression of dissent and newly assertive politically and militarily in regions like Crimea and the Middle East.  The New Tsar is a staggering achievement, a deeply researched and essential biography of one of the most important and destabilizing world leaders in recent history, a man whose merciless rule has become inextricably bound to Russia's forseeable future.  

• Print length 592 pages
• Language English
• Publication date August 23, 2016
• Dimensions 6.14 x 1.13 x 9.16 inches
• ISBN-10 0345802799
• ISBN-13 978-0345802798
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (August 23, 2016)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 592 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0345802799
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345802798
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.7 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.14 x 1.13 x 9.16 inches
• #394 in Historical Russia Biographies
• #2,073 in Russian History (Books)
• #4,735 in Political Leader Biographies

About the author

Steven lee myers.

Steven Lee Myers has worked at The New York Times since 1989. He has focused most of his career on international affairs, covering the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House during three presidential administrations. He has covered conflicts in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Iraq. He was a reporter embedded with the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and returned to Baghdad as a correspondent and bureau chief during the winding down of the American war from 2009 to 2011. He first traveled to Russia in 1998 and, beginning in 2002, has spent more than seven years based in Moscow. He has witnessed and written about many of the most significant events that have marked the rise of Vladimir Putin: from the war in Chechnya and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine to the Winter Olympics in Sochi and the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

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Customers find the book very informative, excellent, and entertaining. They also describe the writing quality as good, well-researched, and exceptionally well written. Readers say the book makes Putin's actions and policies understandable.

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Customers find the book very informative, well-documented, and entertaining. They also say it's an up-to-date biography of Vladimir Putin that offers an opportunity to reflect on the current Foreign Relations issues between Russia. Readers also mention that the book provides a solid chronological account of Putin's rise to power.

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Customers find the writing quality of the book good, well developed, and worth the effort. They also say it's a real page turner and worth reading to understand policies.

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Putin: The explosive and extraordinary new biography of Russia’s leader Hardcover – 30 Jun. 2022

**A DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022** 'Anyone wanting to learn more about Putin's personality, ideas, power...should read this outstanding biography' Ian Kershaw, author of Personality and Power This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what is happening in Ukraine today. Vladimir Putin has the power to reduce the United States and Europe to ashes in a nuclear firestorm. He invades his neighbours, most recently Ukraine, meddles in western elections and orders assassinations inside and outside Russia. Yet many Russians continue to support him. Despite western sanctions, the majority have been living better than at any time in the past. By fair means or foul, under Putin's leadership, Russia has once again become a force to be reckoned with. Philip Short's magisterial biography demolishes many of our preconceptions about Putin's Russia and explores in unprecedented depth the personality of its enigmatic and ruthless leader. What forces and experiences shaped him? What led him to challenge the American-led world order that has kept the peace since the end of the Cold War? To explain is not to justify. Putin pursues his goals relentlessly by whatever means he thinks fit. But on closer examination, much of what we think we know about him turns out to rest on half-truths.

• Print length 864 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Bodley Head
• Publication date 30 Jun. 2022
• Dimensions 16.4 x 5.8 x 23.6 cm
• ISBN-10 1847923372
• ISBN-13 978-1847923370
• See all details

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Product description, about the author.

Philip Short has written authoritative biographies including Mao: A Life and Pol Pot: History of a Nightmare, following a long career as a foreign correspondent for the BBC in Moscow, Washington and other world capitals. He spent eight years researching and writing this book, working mainly from sources within Russia, but also in Britain, France, the United States and a dozen other countries.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bodley Head (30 Jun. 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 864 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1847923372
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1847923370
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.4 x 5.8 x 23.6 cm
• 142 in Cold War History
• 281 in Russian Historical Biographies

About the author

Philip short.

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Customers find the book well researched and highly readable. They also say it's very much worth a read as a corrective to some of the other books on the subject.

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Customers find the book's content deeply researched, highly readable, and extensive. They also say it's a real eye opener.

"...reservations notwithstanding, this is a very good book that presents a deeply researched and highly readable account of the life of one of the..." Read more

"...Generally, it is quite balanced with meticulous research and extensive notes however, it sometimes strays into unsubstantiated opinion, but not that..." Read more

"This is a thoroughly researched book about Vladimir Putin, who rose from provincial thug and bully to Russian President, via membership of the KGB...." Read more

"Ok this book is a real eye opener . We all have opinions on Putin and i have been saying for a long time NOT to keep poking the bear...." Read more

Customers find the book very much worth a read and highly readable account of the life of one of the pivotal figures.

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Who Is Vladimir Putin?

Philip Short’s “Putin” is an impressive biography but one that necessarily lacks the final chapters of the story.

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PUTIN , by Philip Short

In the days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Moscow suddenly felt different. My wife and I, serving there as correspondents, were overwhelmed by expressions of sympathy and solidarity. Russians we had never met faxed condolence letters. A teary-eyed stranger stopped me on the street brandishing a picture of herself at the World Trade Center from a trip years earlier. The outside of the American Embassy was carpeted with flowers, icons, crosses, candles and a note that said, “We were together at the Elbe, we will be together again.”

A young master of the Kremlin named Vladimir Putin seemed to take that to heart, pledging steadfast support for the United States. For a heady moment, it seemed as if the planet’s two dominant nuclear powers would rekindle the World War II alliance that led Russian and American troops to meet at Germany’s Elbe River in 1945. But now as then, it would not last. The sense of good will soon evaporated, and the illusion that Putin was a Western-oriented modernizer was shattered. Two decades later, Russia and America are facing off in a twilight struggle in Ukraine arguably as dangerous as the Cold War that followed the defeat of the Nazis.

Was that Putin’s fault or ours? Did we misjudge him or did we mislead him? Was it inevitable that Putin would come to see himself as a latter-day Peter the Great seeking to re-establish the czarist empire or could we have done more to anchor a post-Soviet Russia in the community of nations? Never have those questions been more profoundly relevant. Now weighing into the debate is the British journalist Philip Short, with his expansive new biography, “Putin,” which sees the rift between East and West largely through the eyes of its protagonist.

Short’s account is both perfectly and unfortunately timed, arriving just when we most need to understand Putin, yet missing the chapter that may yet define his place in history. The invasion of Ukraine does not take place until Page 656 of a 672-page text, having erupted just as Short was completing eight years of research and composition. Such is the peril of writing biographies of figures who are still alive and not finished writing their own stories.

But if the story is unavoidably incomplete, Short’s version nonetheless offers a compelling, impressive and methodically researched account of Putin’s life so far. He plumbs an array of sources, including his own interviews, to reconstruct the tale of a street brawler from a bleak communal apartment in postwar Leningrad who embarks on a mediocre career as a midlevel K.G.B. officer in East Germany only to make a stunning leap to power in Moscow following the chaos of 1990s post-Soviet Russia.

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Biography of Vladimir Putin: From KGB Agent to Russian President

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Vladimir Putin is a Russian politician and former KGB intelligence officer currently serving as President of Russia. Elected to his current and fourth presidential term in May 2018, Putin has led the Russian Federation as either its prime minister, acting president, or president since 1999. Long considered an equal of the President of the United States in holding one of the world’s most powerful public offices, Putin has aggressively exerted Russia’s influence and political policy around the world.

Fast Facts: Vladimir Puton

• Full Name: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
• Born: October 7, 1952, Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia) 
• Parents’ Names: Maria Ivanovna Shelomova and Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin
• Spouse: Lyudmila Putina (married in 1983, divorced in 2014)
• Children: Two daughters; Mariya Putina and Yekaterina Putina
• Education: Leningrad State University
• Known for: Russian Prime Minister and Acting President of Russia, 1999 to 2000; President of Russia 2000 to 2008 and 2012 to present; Russian Prime Minister 2008 to 2012.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born on October 7, 1952, in Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia). His mother, Maria Ivanovna Shelomova was a factory worker and his father, Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin, had served in the Soviet Navy submarine fleet during World War II and worked as a foreman at an automobile factory during the 1950s. In his official state biography, Putin recalls, “I come from an ordinary family, and this is how I lived for a long time, nearly my whole life. I lived as an average, normal person and I have always maintained that connection.” 

While attending elementary and high school, Putin took up judo in hopes of emulating the Soviet intelligence officers he saw in the movies. Today, he holds a black belt in judo and is a national master in the similar Russian martial art of sambo. He also studied German at Saint Petersburg High School, and speaks the language fluently today.

In 1975, Putin earned a law degree from Leningrad State University, where he was tutored and befriended by Anatoly Sobchak, who would later become a political leader during the Glasnost and Perestroika reform period. As a college student, Putin was required to join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union but resigned as a member in December 1991. He would later describe communism as “a blind alley, far away from the mainstream of civilization.”

After initially considering a career in law, Putin was recruited into the KGB (the Committee for State Security) in 1975. He served as a foreign counter-intelligence officer for 15 years, spending the last six in Dresden, East Germany. After leaving the KGB in 1991 with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he returned to Russia where he was in charge of the external affairs of Leningrad State University. It was here that Putin became an advisor to his former tutor Anatoly Sobchak, who had just become Saint Petersburg’s first freely-elected mayor. Gaining a reputation as an effective politician, Putin quickly rose to the position of first deputy mayor of Saint Petersburg in 1994. 

Prime Minister 1999 

After moving to Moscow in 1996, Putin joined the administrative staff of Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin . Recognizing Putin as a rising star, Yeltsin appointed him director of the Federal Security Service (FSB)—the post-communism version of the KGB—and secretary of the influential Security Council. On August 9, 1999, Yeltsin appointed him as acting prime minister. On August 16, the Russian Federation’s legislature, the State Duma , voted to confirm Putin’s appointment as prime minister. The day Yeltsin first appointed him, Putin announced his intention to seek the presidency in the 2000 national election.

While he was largely unknown at the time, Putin’s public popularity soared when, as prime minister, he orchestrated a military operation that succeeded resolving the Second Chechen War , an armed conflict in the Russian-held territory of Chechnya between Russian troops and secessionist rebels of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, fought between August 1999 and April 2009. 

When Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned on December 31, 1999, under suspicion of bribery and corruption, the Constitution of Russia made Putin acting President of the Russian Federation. Later the same day, he issued a presidential decree protecting Yeltsin and his relatives from prosecution for any crimes they might have committed.    

While the next regular Russian presidential election was scheduled for June 2000, Yeltsin’s resignation made it necessary to hold the election within three months, on March 26, 2000. 

At first far behind his opponents, Putin’s law-and-order platform and decisive handling of the Second Chechen War as acting president soon pushed his popularity beyond that of his rivals.

On March 26, 2000, Putin was elected to his first of three terms as President of the Russian Federation winning 53 percent of the vote.

Shortly after his inauguration on May 7, 2000, Putin faced the first challenge to his popularity over claims that he had mishandled his response to the Kursk submarine disaster . He was widely criticized for his refusal to return from vacation and visit the scene for over two weeks. When asked on the Larry King Live television show what had happened to the Kursk, Putin’s two-word reply, “It sank,” was widely criticized for its perceived cynicism in the face of tragedy. 

October 23, 2002, as many as 50 armed Chechens, claiming allegiance to the Chechnya Islamist separatist movement, took 850 people hostage in Moscow’s Dubrovka Theater. An estimated 170 people died in the controversial special-forces gas attack that ended the crisis. While the press suggested that Putin’s heavy-handed response to the attack would damage his popularity, polls showed over 85 percent of Russians approved of his actions.

Less than a week after the Dubrovka Theater attack, Putting clamped down even harder on the Chechen separatists, canceling previously announced plans to withdraw 80,000 Russian troops from Chechnya and promising to take “measures adequate to the threat” in response to future terrorist attacks. In November, Putin directed Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov to order sweeping attacks against Chechen separatists throughout the breakaway republic.

Putin’s harsh military policies succeeded in at least stabilizing the situation in Chechnya. In 2003, the Chechen people voted to adopt a new constitution confirming that the Republic of Chechnya would remain a part of Russia while retaining its political autonomy. Though Putin’s actions greatly diminished the Chechen rebel movement, they failed to end the Second Chechen War, and sporadic rebel attacks continued in the northern Caucasus region.  

During the majority of his first term, Putin concentrated on improving the failing Russian economy, in part by negotiating a “grand bargain” with the Russian business oligarchs who had controlled the nation’s wealth since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Under the bargain, the oligarchs would retain most of their power, in return for supporting—and cooperating with—Putin’s government. 

According to financial observers at the time, Putin made it clear to the oligarchs that they would prosper if they played by the Kremlin rules. Indeed, Radio Free Europe reported in 2005 that the number of Russian business tycoons had greatly increased during Putin’s time in power, often aided by their personal relationships with him. 

Whether Putin’s “grand bargain” with the oligarchs actually “improved” the Russian economy or not remains uncertain. British journalist and expert on international affairs Jonathan Steele has observed that by the end of Putin’s second term in 2008, the economy had stabilized and the nation’s overall standard of living had improved to the point that the Russian people could “notice a difference.”

On March 14, 2004, Putin was easily re-elected to the presidency, this time winning 71 percent of the vote. 

During his second term as president, Putin focused on undoing the social and economic damage suffered by the Russian people during the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union, an event he called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the Twentieth Century.” In 2005, he launched the National Priority Projects designed to improve health care, education, housing, and agriculture in Russia.

On October 7, 2006—Putin’s birthday— Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist and human rights activist, who as a frequent critic of Putin and had exposed corruption in the Russian Army and cases of its improper conduct in the Chechnya conflict, was shot to death as she entered the lobby of her apartment building. While Politkovskaya’s killer was never identified, her death brought criticism that Putin’s promise to protect the newly-independent Russian media had been no more than political rhetoric. Putin commented that Politkovskaya’s death had caused him more problems than anything she had ever written about him. 

In 2007, Other Russia, a group opposed to Putin led by former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, organized a series of “Dissenters’ Marches” to protest Putin’s policies and practices. Marches in several cities resulted in the arrests of some 150 protestors who tried to penetrate police lines.

In the December 2007 elections, the equivalent of the U.S. mid-term congressional election, Putin’s United Russia party easily retained control of the State Duma, indicating the Russian people’s continued support for him and his policies.

The democratic legitimacy of the election was questioned, however. While some 400 foreign election monitors stationed at polling places stated that the election process itself had not been rigged, the Russian media’s coverage had clearly favored candidates of United Russia. Both the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe concluded that the elections were unfair and called on the Kremlin to investigate alleged violations. A Kremlin-appointed election commission concluded that not only had the election been fair, but it had also proven the “stability” of the Russian political system. 

With Putin barred by the Russian Constitution from seeking a third consecutive presidential term, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was elected president. However, on May 8, 2008, the day after Medvedev’s inauguration, Putin was appointed Prime Minister of Russia. Under the Russian system of government, the president and the prime minister share responsibilities as the head of state and head of the government, respectively. Thus, as prime minister, Putin retained his dominance over the country’s political system. 

In September 2001, Medvedev proposed to the United Russia Congress in Moscow, that Putin should run for the presidency again in 2012, an offer Putin happily accepted.

Third Presidential Term 2012 to 2018 

On March 4, 2012, Putin won the presidency for a third time with 64 percent of the vote. Amid public protests and accusations that he had rigged the election, he was inaugurated on May 7, 2012, immediately appointing former President Medvedev as prime minister. After successfully quelling protests against the election process, often by having marchers jailed, Putin proceeded to make sweeping—if controversial—changes to Russia’s domestic and foreign policy.  

In December 2012, Putin signed a law prohibiting the adoption of Russian children by U.S. citizens. Intended to ease the adoption of Russian orphans by Russian citizens, the law stirred international criticism, especially in the United States, where as many as 50 Russian children in the final stages of adoption were left in legal limbo.   

The following year, Putin again strained his relationship with the U.S. by granting asylum to Edward Snowden, who remains wanted in the United States for leaking classified information he gathered as a contractor for the National Security Agency on the WikiLeaks website. In response, U.S. President Barack Obama canceled a long-planned August 2013 meeting with Putin. 

Also in 2013, Putin issued a set of highly controversial anti-gay laws outlawing gay couples from adopting children in Russia and banning the dissemination of material promoting or describing “nontraditional” sexual relationships to minors. The laws brought worldwide protests from both the LGBT and straight communities.  

In December 2017, Putin announced he would seek a six-year—rather than four-year—term as president in July, running this time as an independent candidate, cutting his old ties with the United Russia party. 

After a bomb exploded in a crowded Saint Petersburg food market on December 27, injuring dozens of people, Putin revived his popular “tough on terror” tone just before the election. He stated that he had ordered Federal Security Service officers to “take no prisoners” when dealing with terrorists.

In his annual address to the Duma in March 2018, just days before the election, Putin claimed that the Russian military had perfected nuclear missiles with “unlimited range” that would render NATO anti-missile systems “completely worthless.” While U.S. officials expressed doubts about their reality, Putin’s claims and saber-rattling tone ratcheted up tensions with the West but nurtured renewed feelings of national pride among Russian voters. 

On March 18, 2018, Putin was easily elected to a fourth term as President of Russia, winning more than 76 percent of the vote in an election that saw 67 percent of all eligible voters cast ballots. Despite the opposition to his leadership that had surfaced during his third term, his closest competitor in the election garnered only 13 percent of the vote. Shortly after officially taking office on May 7, Putin announced that in compliance with the Russian Constitution, he would not seek reelection in 2024. 

On July 16, 2018, Putin met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Helsinki, Finland, in what was called the first of a series of meetings between the two world leaders. While no official details of their private 90-minute meeting were published, Putin and Trump would later reveal in press conferences that they had discussed the Syrian civil war and its threat to the safety of Israel, the Russian annexation of Crimea , and the extension of the START nuclear weapons reduction treaty. 

On February 23, 2022, Putin launched an unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine, which had officially declared itself an independent country on August 24, 1991. Putin justified the act with the false narrative that Ukraine was not a real country. That it “belongs” to Russia as part of a “Great Russia” and the “Russian World,” and that there is, according to Putin, no Ukrainian people, no Ukrainian language, and no separate Ukrainian history. 

After Russia launched its 2022 invasion, the United States, the European Union (EU), and other NATO member nations condemned Putin, substantially increased military, humanitarian, and economic assistance to Ukraine, and imposed a series of increasingly crippling financial and economic sanctions on Russia. In addition, hundreds of U.S. and other companies withdrew, suspended, or curtailed operations in or with Russia.

On February 8, 1994, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO ) accepted Ukraine into its Partnership for Peace, a collaborative arrangement open to all non-NATO European countries and post-Soviet states. Russia became a NATO member in June 1994 and conducted various cooperative activities with NATO, including joint military exercises, until 2014, when NATO formally suspended ties with the country. As the Cold War ended, Russia opposed the eastern expansion of NATO. However, thirteen former Soviet partnership members eventually joined the alliance.

Ukraine is not a NATO member. However, Ukraine is a NATO partner country, which means that it cooperates closely with NATO but it is not covered by the security guarantee in the Alliance’s founding treaty.

The invasion seemed to tarnish Putin’s image among the Russian people, as young citizens, along with middle-aged and even retired people, took to the streets to speak out against a military conflict ordered by their President—a decision in which, they claimed, they had no say.

Putin responded by shutting down public dissent against the attack on Ukraine. By the end of July 2022, a total of over 7,624 protesters had been detained or arrested to 7,624 since the invasion began, according to an independent organization that tracks human rights violations in Russia.

During Putin’s third presidential term, allegations arose in the United States that the Russian government had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. 

A combined U.S. intelligence community report released in January 2017 found “high confidence” that Putin himself had ordered a media-based “influence campaign” intended to harm the American public’s perception of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton , thus improving the electoral chances of eventual election winner, Republican Donald Trump . In addition, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating whether officials of the Trump campaign organization colluded with high ranking Russian officials to influence the election. 

While both Putin and Trump have repeatedly denied the allegations, the social media website Facebook admitted in October 2017 that political ads purchased by Russian organizations had been seen by at least 126 million Americans during the weeks leading up to the election.

Vladimir Putin married Lyudmila Shkrebneva on July 28, 1983. From 1985 to 1990, the couple lived in East Germany where they gave birth to their two daughters, Mariya Putina and Yekaterina Putina. On June 6, 2013, Putin announced the end of the marriage. Their divorce became official on April 1, 2014, according to the Kremlin. An avid outdoorsman, Putin publicly promotes sports, including skiing, cycling, fishing, and horseback riding as a healthy way of life for the Russian people. 

While some say he may be the world’s wealthiest man, Vladimir Putin’s exact net worth is not known. According to the Kremlin, the President of the Russian Federation is paid the U.S. equivalent of about $112,000 per year and is provided with an 800-square foot apartment as an official residence. However, independent Russian and U.S. financial experts have estimated Putin’s combined net worth at from $70 billion to as much as $200 billion. While his spokespersons have repeatedly denied allegations that Putin controls a hidden fortune, critics in Russia and elsewhere remain convinced that he has skillfully used the influence of his nearly 20-years in power to acquire massive wealth. 

A member of the Russian Orthodox Church, Putin recalls the time his mother gave him his baptismal cross, telling him to get it blessed by a Bishop and wear it for his safety. “I did as she said and then put the cross around my neck. I have never taken it off since,” he once recalled. 

As one of the most powerful, influential, and often-controversial world leaders of the past two decades, Vladimir Putin has uttered many memorable phrases in public. A few of these include: 

• “There is no such thing as a former KGB man.”
• “People are always teaching us democracy but the people who teach us democracy don't want to learn it themselves.”
• “Russia doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. It destroys them.”
• “In any case, I’d rather not deal with such questions, because anyway it’s like shearing a pig—lots of screams but little wool.”
• “I am not a woman, so I don’t have bad days.” 
• “ Vladimir Putin Biography .” Vladimir Putin official state biography
• “ Vladimir Putin – President of Russia .” European-Leaders.com (March 2017)
• “ First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President Vladimir Putin .” The New York Times (2000)
• “ Putin’s Obscure Path From KGB to Kremlin .” Los Angeles Times (2000)
• “ Vladimir Putin quits as head of Russia's ruling party .” The Daily Telegraph (2002)
• “ Russian lessons .” Financial Times. September 20, 2008
• “ Russia: Bribery Thriving Under Putin, According To New Report .” Radio Free Europe (2005)
• Steele, Jonathan. “ Putin’s legacy is a Russia that doesn't have to curry favour with the west .” The Guardian, September 18, 2007
• Bohlen, Celestine (2000). “ YELTSIN RESIGNS: THE OVERVIEW; Yeltsin Resigns, Naming Putin as Acting President To Run in March Election .” The New York Times.
• Sakwa, Richard (2007). “Putin : Russia's Choice (2nd ed.).” Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 9780415407656.
• Judah, Ben (2015). “Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin.” Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300205220.
• Who Were the Democratic Presidents of the United States?
• Boris Yeltsin: First President of the Russian Federation
• Political Parties in Russia
• A Brief History of the KGB
• What Is Balkanization?
• The Truth Behind 14 Well-Known Russian Stereotypes
• The History and Geography of Crimea
• The "Deep State" Theory, Explained
• The Biggest Donald Trump Scandals (So Far)
• What Was the USSR and Which Countries Were in It?
• Causes of the Russian Revolution
• What Is an Oligarchy? Definition and Examples
• Biography of Nikita Khrushchev, Cold War Era Soviet Leader
• Saparmurat Niyazov
• Geography of Moscow, Russia
• Geography and History of Finland

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From Vladimir Lenin to Vladimir Putin

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This book integrates Soviet and post-Soviet Russian history into a coherent whole by focusing on the culture, role models, habits and behavior patterns that provide continuity between various political regimes, systems, and rulers from Vladimir Lenin to Vladimir Putin.

The unifying theme of all these periods is the central question of identity – how the Russians have defined themselves, their country, and their values. Why did the Bolsheviks try to erase any trace of Old Russia and with what did they try to replace it? Why did Stalin wipe out the kulaks and the old Bolsheviks? What were the political consequences of the Great Patriotic War on the Russians as people? When post-Stalin Russia slowly weakened and gave way to the humanism and Westernization that led to the collapse of the Soviet system, why did the 1990s generate a resurgence of anti-western nationalism? And how to explain the slow and steady break with the West under President Putin?

This will be a core textbook for undergraduate and graduate students of Russian and European history, and a valuable text for all those interested in how the Russian past influenced and shaped current politics, and in the international East–West divide in particular.

For YouTube discussions of the book, see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvG1G1cax-k  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W3V6nb3h18&t=3s  

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter | 10  pages, introduction, chapter 1 | 23  pages, smashing the state, its culture and institutions, chapter 2 | 26  pages, constructing a new political order, chapter 3 | 26  pages, old cultural practices in a new form, chapter 4 | 27  pages, the rise of the stalinist dictatorship and of a new soviet identity, chapter 5 | 20  pages, the great patriotic war, chapter 6 | 18  pages, post-war stalinism, chapter 7 | 30  pages, stalinism with a human face, chapter 8 | 25  pages, the brezhnev era, chapter 9 | 23  pages, back to european values, chapter 10 | 25  pages, disillusionment in capitalism and democracy, chapter 11 | 24  pages, the new beginning.

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