First Person

by Vladimir Putin

  My father was severely wounded in the “Nickel.” Once he and another soldier were ordered to capture a prisoner who might talk during interrogation. They crawled up to a foxhole and were just settling in to wait, when suddenly a German came out. The German was surprised, and so were they. The German recovered first, took a grenade out of his pocket, threw it at my father and the other soldier, and calmly went on his way. Life is such a simple little thing, really.

  How do you know all this? You said your parents didn’t like to talk about themselves.

  This is a story that my father told me. The German was probably convinced that he had killed the Russians. But my father survived, although his legs were shot through with shrapnel. Our soldiers dragged him out of there several hours later.

  Across the front line?

  You guessed it. The nearest hospital was in the city, and in order to get there, they had to drag him all the way across the Neva.

  Everyone knew that this would be suicide, because every centimeter of that territory was being shot up. No commander would have issued such an order, of course. And nobody was volunteering. My father had already lost so much blood that it was clear he was going to die soon if they left him there.

  Coincidentally, a soldier who happened to be an old neighbor from back home came across him. Without a word, he sized up the situation, hauled my father up onto his back, and carried him across the frozen Neva to the other side. They made an ideal target, and yet they survived. This neighbor dragged my father to the hospital, said goodbye, and went back to the front line. The fellow told my father that they wouldn’t see each other again. Evidently he didn’t believe he would survive in the “Nickel” and thought that my father didn’t have much of a chance either.

  Was he wrong?

  Thank God, he was. My father managed to survive. He spent several months in the hospital. My mother found him there. She came to see him every day.

  Mama herself was half dead. My father saw the shape she was in and began to give her his own food, hiding it from the nurses. To be sure, they caught on pretty quickly and put a stop to it. The doctors noticed that he was fainting from hunger. When they figured out why, they gave him a stern lecture and wouldn’t let Mama in to see him for awhile. The upshot was that they both survived. Only my father’s injuries left him with a lifelong limp.

  And the neighbor?

  The neighbor survived, too! After the blockade, he moved to another city. He and my father once met by chance in Leningrad twenty years later. Can you imagine?

  Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich:

  Volodya’s mother was a very nice person—kind, selfless, the soul of goodness. She was not a very educated woman. I don’t know if she finished even five grades of school. She worked hard her whole life. She was a janitor, took deliveries in a bakery at night, and washed test tubes in a laboratory. I think she even worked as a guard at a store at one time.

  Volodya’s papa worked as a toolmaker in a factory. He was much liked and appreciated as a ready and willing worker. For a long time, incidentally, he didn’t collect disability, although one of his legs was really crippled. He was the one who usually cooked at home. He used to make a wonderful aspic. We remember that Putin aspic to this day. Nobody could make aspic like he did.

  After the war my father was demobilized and went to work as a skilled laborer at the Yegorov Train Car Factory. There is a little plaque in each metro car that says, “This is car number such-and-such, manufactured at the Yegorov Train Car Factory.”

  The factory gave Papa a room in a communal apartment in a typical St. Petersburg building on Baskov Lane, in the center of town. It had an inner airshaft for a courtyard, and my parents lived on the fifth floor. There was no elevator.

  Before the war, my parents had half of a house in Peterhof. They were very proud of their standard of living then. So this was a step down.

  Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich:

  They had a horrid apartment. It was communal, without any conveniences. 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. The stairs weren’t safe either—there were gaps everywhere.

  There, on that stair landing, I got a quick and lasting lesson in the meaning of the word cornered. There were hordes of rats in the front entryway. My friends and I used to chase them around with sticks. Once I spotted a huge rat and pursued it down the hall until I drove it into a corner. It had nowhere to run. Suddenly it lashed 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. Luckily, I was a little faster and I managed to slam the door shut in its nose.

  Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich:

  There was practically no kitchen. It was just a square, dark hallway without windows. A gas burner stood on one side and a sink on the other. There was no room to move around.

  Behind this so-called kitchen lived the neighbors, a family of three. And other neighbors, a middle-aged couple, were next door. The apartment was communal. And the Putins were squeezed into one room. By the standards of those days it was decent, though, because it measured about 20 meters square.

  A Jewish family—an elderly couple and their daughter, Hava—lived in our communal apartment. Hava was a grown woman, but as the adults used to say, her life hadn’t turned out well. She had never married, and she still lived with her parents.

  Her father was a tailor, and although he seemed quite elderly, he would stitch on his sewing machine for whole days at a time. They were religious Jews. They did not work on the Sabbath, and the old man would recite the Talmud, droning away. Once, I couldn’t hold back any longer and asked what he was chanting. He explained about the Talmud, and I immediately lost interest.

  As is usually the case in a communal apartment, people clashed now and then. I always wanted to defend my parents, and speak up on their behalf. I should explain here that I got along very well with the elderly couple, and often played on their side of the apartment. Well, one day, when they were having words with my parents, I jumped in. My parents were furious. Their reaction came as a complete shock to me; it was incomprehensible. I was sticking up for them, and they shot back with, “Mind your own business!” Why? I just couldn’t understand it. Later, I realized that my parents considered my good rapport with the old couple, and the couple’s affection for me, much more important than those petty kitchen spats. After that incident, I never got involved in the kitchen quarrels again. As soon as they started fighting, I simply went back into our room, or over to the old folks’ room. It didn’t matter to me which.

  There were other pensioners living in our apartment as well, although they weren’t there long. They played a role in my baptism. Baba Anya was a religious person, and she used to go to church. When I was born, she and my mother had me baptized. They kept it a secret from my father, who was a party member and secretary of the party organization in his factory shop.

  Many years later, in 1993, when I worked on the Leningrad City Council, I went to Israel as part of an official delegation. Mama gave me my baptismal cross to get it blessed at the Lord’s Tomb. I did as she said and then put the cross around my neck. I have never taken it off since.

  Part 2

  THE SCHOOLBOY

  Interviews with Putin’s schoolteacher reveal a bad student with a bright mind. Putin is always late for school and doesn’t make it into the Pioneers. But then, at age 10, he discovers the martial arts and, after reading novels and watching spy movies, develops a single-minded ambition to join the KGB. At 16 he troops over to the KGB headquarters where he’s told that he has to go to law school and keep his mouth shut if he really wants to be a spy. Despite the pleas and threats of his parents and judo coaches, he decides to do just that.

  Do you remember first grade?

  I was born in October, so I did not start school until I was almost eight years old. We still have the photo in o
ur family archive: I am in an old-fashioned, gray school uniform. It looks like a military uniform, and for some reason I’m standing with a flowerpot in my hand. Not a bouquet, but a pot.

  Did you want to go to school?

  No, not especially. I liked playing outside, in our courtyard. There were two courtyards joined together, like an air-shaft, and my whole life took place there. Mama sometimes stuck her head out the window and shouted “Are you in the courtyard?” I always was. As long as I didn’t run away, I was allowed to go play in the courtyard without asking for permission.

  And you never once disobeyed?

  When I was five or six, I walked out to the corner of the big street without permission. It was on the First of May. I looked around me. People were rushing around and making a lot of noise. The street was very busy. I was even a little afraid.

  Then one winter, when I was a little bit older, my friends and I decided to leave the city without telling our parents. We wanted to go on a trip. We got off the train somewhere and were completely lost. It was cold. We had brought some matches and somehow managed to start a fire. We had nothing to eat. We froze completely. Then we got back on the train and headed home. We got the belt for that stunt. And we never wanted to go on another trip again.

  So you stopped looking for adventures?

  For a time. Especially when I went to school. From first through eighth grade, I went to School No. 193, which was in the same lane as my house, about a seven-minute walk. I was always late for my first class, so even in the winter, I didn’t dress very warmly. It took up a lot of time to get dressed, run to school, and then take off my coat. So in order to save time, I never put on a coat, and just shot out to school like a bullet and got right behind my desk.

  Did you like school?

  For a time. As long as I managed to be—what would you call it?—the unspoken leader. The school was right next door to my house. Our courtyard was a reliable refuge, and that helped.

  Did people listen to you?

  I didn’t try to command people. It was more important to preserve my independence. If I had to compare it with my adult life, I would say that the role I played as a kid was like the role of the judicial branch, and not the executive. And as long as I managed to do that, I liked school.

  But it didn’t last. It soon became clear that my courtyard skills were not enough, and I began to play sports. And in order to maintain my social status I had to start doing well in school. Up until the sixth grade, to be honest, I had been a pretty haphazard student.

  Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich:

  I met Volodya when he was still in the fourth grade. His teacher, Tamara Pavlovna Chizhova, once said to me, “Vera Dmitrievna, take my class. The kids aren’t bad.”

  I went to visit the class and organized a German language club. It was interesting to see who showed up. About 10—12 students came. Tamara Pavlovna asked me who was there. I told her: Natasha Soldatova, Volodya Putin . . . She was surprised. “Volodya, too? That doesn’t seem like him.” But he showed great interest in the lessons.

  She said, “Well, just you wait. He’ll show you.” “What do you mean?” I asked. She replied that he was too sneaky and disorganized. He wasn’t even in the Pioneers. Usually you are accepted into the Pioneers in the third grade. But Volodya wasn’t because he was such a cutup.

  Some classes studied English, and others German. English was more in fashion than German, and there were more English classes. Volodya ended up in my class. In fifth grade, he hadn’t really proven himself, but I sensed that he had potential, energy, and character. I saw his great interest in the language. He picked it up easily. He had a very good memory, a quick mind.

  I thought: This kid will make something of himself. I decided to devote more attention to him and discourage him from hanging out with the boys on the street. He had friends from the neighborhood, two brothers by the name of Kovshov, and he used to prowl around with them, jumping from the roofs of the garages and sheds. Volodya’s father didn’t like that very much. His papa had very strict morals. But we couldn’t get Volodya away from those Kovshov brothers.

  His father was very serious and imposing. He often had an angry look. The first time I came to see him, I was even frightened. I thought, “What a strict man.” And then it turned out that he was very kindhearted. But there were no kisses. There was none of that lovey-dovey stuff in their house.

  Once when I came to visit, I said to Volodya’s father,“Your son is not working to his full potential.” And he said, “Well, what can I do? Kill him, or what?” And I said, “You have to have a talk with him. Let’s work on him together, you at home, and I at school. He could be getting better than C’s. He catches everything on the fly.” At any rate, we agreed to work on him; but in the end, we had no particular influence.

  Volodya himself changed very abruptly in the sixth grade. It was obvious; he had set himself a goal. Most likely he had understood that he had to achieve something in life. He began to get better grades, and did it easily.

  Finally, he was accepted into the Pioneers. There was a ceremony and we went on a trip to Lenin’s home, where he was inducted into the Pioneers. Right after that he became chair of his unit’s council.

  Why weren’t you taken into the Pioneers until the sixth grade? Was everything really so bad up until then?

  Of course. I was a hooligan, not a Pioneer.

  Are you being coy?

  You insult me. I really was a bad boy.

  Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich:

  Most of the kids liked to go to dances. We had evening events at the school. We called it the Crystal Club. And we put on plays. But Volodya didn’t take part in any of this. His father really wanted him to play the accordion and forced him to take lessons in the early grades. Volodya resisted it. Although he did love to pluck away on the guitar. He sang mainly Vysotsky,3 all of the songs from the album Vertical, about the stars, and about Seryozha from Malaya Bronnaya Street.

  But he didn’t like socializing much. He preferred sports. He started doing martial arts in order to learn how to defend himself. Four times a week he took classes somewhere near the Finland Station, and he got pretty good. He loved his sambo. And then he started taking part in competitions, which often required him to travel to other cities.

  I got into sports when I was about 10 or 11. As soon as it became clear that my pugnacious nature was not going to keep me king of the courtyard or schoolgrounds, I decided to go into boxing. But I didn’t last long there. I quickly got my nose broken. The pain was terrible. I couldn’t even touch the tip of my nose. But even though everyone was telling me I needed an operation, I didn’t go to the doctor. Why? I knew it would heal by itself. And it did. But I lost my boxing bug after that.

  Then I decided to go in for sambo, a Soviet combination of judo and wrestling. Martial arts were popular at the time. I went to a class near my house and began to work out. It was a very plain gym that belonged to the Trud athletic club. I had a very good trainer there, Anatoly Semyonovich Rakhlin. He devoted his whole life to his art, and is still training girls and boys to this day.

  Anatoly Semyonovich played a decisive role in my life. If I hadn’t gotten involved in sports, I’m not sure how my life would have turned out. It was sports that dragged me off the streets. To be honest, the courtyard wasn’t a very good environment for a kid.

  At first I studied sambo. Then judo. Coach decided that we would all switch to judo, and we did.

  Judo is not just a sport, you know. It’s a philosophy. It’s respect for your elders and for your opponent. It’s not for weaklings. Everything in judo has an instructive aspect. You come out onto the mat, you bow to one another, you follow ritual. It could be done differently, you know. Instead of bowing to your opponent, you could jab him in the forehead.

  Did you ever smoke?

  No. I tried it a couple of times, but I never smoked regularly. And when I began to do sports, I simply ruled it out. I used to work out every other day, and then ever
y day. Soon I had no time left for anything else. I had other priorities; I had to prove myself in sports, achieve something. I set goals. Sports really had a strong influence on me.

  And you didn’t try karate? That was popular in those days, even thought it was banned.

  We thought karate and all other noncontact sports were like ballet. Sports was only sports if you had to shed sweat and blood and work hard.

  Even when karate became popular and karate schools of all sorts began springing up, we viewed them purely as moneymaking enterprises. We, on the other hand, never paid any money for our lessons. We all came from poor families. And since karate lessons cost money from the start, the kids taking karate thought they were first class.

  Once we went to the gym with Leonid Ionovich, the senior coach from Trud. The karate students were working out on the mat, although it was our turn. Leonid went up to their trainer and told him it was time for our class. The karate trainer didn’t even look his way—as if to say, get lost. Then Leonid, without saying a word, flipped him, squeezed him lightly, and dragged him off the mat. He had lost consciousness. Then Leonid turned to us and said, “Go on in and take your places.” That was our attitude toward karate.

  Did your parents encourage you to take these lessons?

  No, just the opposite. At first, they were very suspicious. They thought I was acquiring some sort of ugly skill to use on the street. Later, when they met the trainer and he began to visit our home, their attitude changed. And when I achieved my first successes, my parents understood that judo was a serious and useful art.