First Person

by Vladimir Putin

  You know, working in a military-style organization is, after all, a very difficult kind of service. I remember coming into the KGB building where I worked and feeling as if they were plugging me into an electrical outlet. I don’t know, maybe I was the only one who felt that way, but I think the majority of people who worked there did too. It put you in a constant state of tension. All the papers are secret. This isn’t allowed, that isn’t allowed.

  And you couldn’t even go out to a restaurant! They thought only prostitutes and black-marketeers went to restaurants. What would a decent officer of the security agencies be doing in such company?

  And then, if you were an intelligence officer, you were always the object of a potential vetting. They are always checking up on you. It might not happen very often, but it wasn’t very pleasant. And the meetings every week! And the plan of work for the day! You shouldn’t laugh. There was a notebook stamped “Classified,” and on Friday you had to come in, open it up, and write your work plan for the week—day by day. And then each day, you signed off on every hour.

  In the Kremlin, I have a different position. Nobody controls me here. I control everybody else. But at the FSB I reported to the division head and the department head. He would open the work plan: What had been done during the week? And I would begin to report, and explain why something wasn’t finished. I would explain that something was a large-scale project and that it couldn’t be finished immediately. Then why did you put it in the plan? Only write down what you can do!

  I’m telling you all this to explain what it was like. There was a lot of pressure.

  I went into the office of the FSB director, and I was met by my predecessor, Nikolai Kovalev. He opened the safe and said, “Here’s my secret notebook. And here’s my ammunition.” And I looked at all this mournfully.

  Lyudmila Putina:

  I believe the only appointment that we discussed at home was Volodya’s post of prime minister. I remember we talked about the FSB once, about three months before he was offered the post, and he said that he would never agree to take it. We were taking a walk at the dacha in Arkhangelsk and talking about his work, and he said that he did not want to go to the FSB. I understood why. It would mean a return to the closed life. When Volodya worked in the KGB, it was really a very closed life. Don’t go there, don’t say that. Talk to that person, don’t talk to this person. And then it had been such a hard decision to leave the KGB, that when he left, he thought he was leaving forever.

  I was vacationing on the Baltic Sea when he called and said, “You be careful there, because I’ve been returned to the place where I began.” I thought that he had given back the job as Borodin’s deputy—that he had been demoted. I couldn’t decode what he was saying. I thought that something had happened in the country while I was away, that the situation had changed somehow. Then he repeated it: “I’ve been returned to the place where I began.” And when he said it the third time, I got it. When I got back from vacation, I asked him how it had happened. “They appointed me, and that’s it.” I asked no more questions.

  When Volodya returned to the FSB, they offered him the rank of general. He was still in the civil service. But you can’t have a colonel commanding generals. You need someone with authority.

  Did this new position affect our lives? No, but I had some friends in Germany—a husband and wife—and I was forced to break off all contact with them. I thought it would just be for a while, but to this day, we have not renewed our friendship.

  How did they greet you at the FSB? There you were, a former KGB colonel . . .

  I was greeted cautiously. Then things got better. As for being a colonel . . . Let’s take a closer look. . . . First of all, I was a colonel in the reserves. I had completed my service as a lieutenant colonel, ten years earlier. During those ten years, I had had a different life. And when I came to work at the FSB, it was not as a colonel but as a civilian who held the position of first deputy to the chief of the presidential administration.

  That is, you in fact became the first civilian leader of the security agencies?

  Of course, but nobody paid attention to that, either because they were stupid or ignorant, or because they didn’t want to.

  Did the top leadership change under you?

  It changed, but not a lot. I didn’t make any drastic moves, really. I just took a look at the situation and the people and began to make the changes that I felt were necessary.

  Why did Yevgeny Primakov say that you had put Leningraders everywhere?

  Others said that I had fired all the Leningraders and put in unknowns. But I took the whole FSB leadership to Primakov for a meeting. And it turned out that everybody was in place. Nobody had been fired. Primakov then apologized, and said that he had been misled.

  Is it true that as director of the FSB, you used to run into Vladimir Kryuchkov?15

  It’s true.

  Accidentally?

  No, not accidentally. I worked rather actively with the longtime veterans.

  People have started to talk again about merging the FSB with the MVD, the Interior Ministry. What do you think about this?16

  I’m against it. The community of special services has coalesced, and to disrupt it again would be bad. From the perspective of ministerial concerns, it might be okay; but from a policy perspective, it would not be advantageous—it is better to receive information from two sources than from one.

  So maybe it would be even better if they kept watch over each other rather than merging their forces?

  That’s not a question for me. In Germany, of course, it was like that in 1933. Everybody was supposed to watch over everybody else. That was the principle behind the Gestapo.

  It’s interesting to note that you were twice appointed to posts previously occupied by another Petersburger, Sergei Stepashin. First, with the FSB, which was then called the FSK;17 and later the post of prime minister. Is Stepashin not remembered fondly at the FSB?

  No, just the opposite, he was well liked. In the FSK, he handled himself in an unexpectedly mature manner, which earned many people’s respect, including my own.

  Sobchak very much supported Stepashin’s appointment as head of the Leningrad directorate of the FSK. I was already working in the city administration by that time. I recall Sobchak telling me that after the coup, a democrat was going to head the FSK. I didn’t like that at all. Here . . . some kind of policeman was going to be running the agencies. In the Cheka,18 we’ve never liked policemen. Besides, Stepashin never had any relationship to the security agencies. No, I honestly wasn’t bothered by the fact he represented the democratic wave. I myself was already from that milieu. But I was surprised. Do you remember the situation of the security agencies at that time? People wanted to tear them down, to break them apart, to shred them to bits. They proposed opening up the lists of agents and declassifying files. But Stepashin behaved completely unexpectedly. In fact, he used his democratic authority to protect the Leningrad special services. From the outset he said, “If you trust me, then trust me. What we can publicize, we will. But what will be harmful to the state, we won’t publicize.” You have to give him credit; he was able to establish working relationships with the leaders of the agencies. He was trusted.

  Later, Stepashin and I met in Moscow. We were not very close or friendly. But do you remember that after he resigned from the FSK, he worked in the government bureaucracy? I was in the presidential administration by then. And when the question arose of whom to appoint as Minister of Justice, I suggested Stepashin. I had discussed it with him beforehand: “Sergei, do you want it? I don’t know if I’ll be able to put it through, but I’m prepared to support you,” I said. He said he did want it, because he was tired of pushing papers.

  Were you happy when Stepashin was appointed prime minister?

  Yes.

  And did you know that at the same time, you were being considered as a candidate for this post?

  When he was appointed premier? No. No, it never entered my min
d.

  Stepashin served as prime minister for only a few months. He didn’t hide the fact that his dismissal was very painful for him. Did you speak to him face-to-face?

  Yes. He knows I had nothing to do with his dismissal. Still, it was terribly awkward when I was telephoned on the eve of the event and asked to come to visit Yeltsin at The Hills the next morning. The four of us were sitting there together—Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, Stepashin, Nikolai Aksenenko, and I—when Yeltsin demanded Sergei’s resignation. You can imagine the state I was in. I am his colleague! What was I supposed to say—Sergei, you’re going to be fired? I couldn’t say that aloud. I wouldn’t be able to get the words out. Of course, it was all very unpleasant.

  After you left Yeltsin’s, did you talk to each other?

  We said goodbye, and that was it.

  And you and Stepashin never spoke about that morning again?

  We did talk about it. I think he was offended. Or he was hurt. Time will pass, and he’ll forget about it. He hadn’t done anything obvious for which he deserved to be fired. But the president believed otherwise. He made the decision, and it probably wasn’t just based on the two or three months that Sergei was prime minister. . . .

  Boris Nikolayevich invited me to his office and said that he was thinking about offering me the post of prime minister but that he had to talk to Stepashin first. I wasn’t especially surprised. It was clear that things were moving in that direction. I mean, not my appointment, but Stepashin’s dismissal. Yeltsin didn’t ask me if I would agree to become prime minister or not. He just said that he had already made a decision regarding Stepashin.

  By the way, in his conversation with me, Yeltsin didn’t use the word “successor.” He used the phrase “prime minister with a future”—that is, if everything went smoothly, it was a possibility.19

  And then later, on television, Yeltsin mentioned me as a possible future president. He said this aloud to the whole country. And when I was deluged with questions, I replied, “If the president says so, that’s what I’ll do.” Maybe I didn’t sound so sure of myself, but what else could I say?

  Do you remember the state the country was in at the time? It was right before the elections, and Boris Nikolayevich had to make a decision. All those governors we’ve been talking about understood perfectly well that everything was frozen and that they had to make up their minds. Why did they form the OVR?20 Because the governors had no alternative. They had to create an alternative.

  You mean an alternative to Unity?21

  Yes.

  Lyudmila Putina:

  I wasn’t surprised that my husband’s career advanced at the speed of lightning. But sometimes I would catch myself thinking: “How strange; I’m married to a man who yesterday was really just an unknown deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, and now he’s the prime minister.” But somehow I always believed that this could happen to Volodya.

  I’m not afraid of it. And I’m not particularly proud. But I do admire Volodya. He’s dedicated—not vain, but dedicated. He always worked hard and achieved his goals. He always lived for the sake of something. There are some people who work hard for money, but he works hard for ideas. He’s satisfied by the very process of work. It seems to me that people like that go far. You know, the fact that I am the prime minister’s wife is more surprising to me than that he is the prime minister.

  Marina Yentaltseva:

  A few days after Putin became prime minister, his father died. Every weekend Vladimir Vladimirovich had been coming from Moscow to visit his father. At that time he was very burdened with work, but he would still come to St. Petersburg once a week, for at least half a day. He was afraid that he wouldn’t get there in time to say goodbye to his father. But I was told that he was present for the last few hours of his father’s life.

  When Yeltsin announced to the whole country that you were his successor, were you quaking inside?

  No.

  You were so sure of yourself?

  No, that’s not it. Remember what Gennady Seleznev said at the time: “Why did they do that to you? They’ve buried you.” Everybody thought that that was the end for me. I also realized my career could be over, but for different reasons.

  Let me try to explain. All of this took place as tension was mounting in Dagestan. I had already decided that my career might be over, but that my mission, my historical mission—and this will sound lofty, but it’s true—consisted of resolving the situation in the Northern Caucasus. At that time nobody knew how it would all end; but it was clear to me—and probably to other people too—that “the kid was going to get his butt kicked” on the Northern Caucasus. That’s how I saw it. I said to myself, “Never mind, I have a little time—two, three, maybe four months—to bang the hell out of those bandits. Then they can get rid of me.”

  I realized we needed to strike the rebel bases in Chechnya. Frankly, everything that had been done in recent years, especially in the area of preserving the government, was—how can I put it mildly, so as not to offend anyone?—amateurish. . . . Believe me, back in 1990—1991, I knew exactly—as arrogant as it may sound—that the attitude toward the army and the special services, especially after the fall of the USSR, threatened the country. We would very soon be on the verge of collapse. Now, about the Caucasus: What’s the situation in the Northern Caucasus and in Chechnya today? It’s a continuation of the collapse of the USSR. Clearly, at some point it has to be stopped. Yes, for a time, I had hoped that the growth of the economy and the emergence of democratic institutions would help freeze this process. But time and experience have shown us that this isn’t happening.

  This is what I thought of the situation in August, when the bandits attacked Dagestan: If we don’t put an immediate end to this, Russia will cease to exist. It was a question of preventing the collapse of the country. I realized I could only do this at the cost of my political career. It was a minimal cost, and I was prepared to pay up. So when Yeltsin declared me his successor and everyone thought that it was the beginning of the end for me, I felt completely calm. The hell with them. I calculated that I had several months to consolidate the armed forces, the Interior Ministry, and the FSB, and to rally public support. Would there be enough time? That’s all I worried about.

  But the decision to begin a campaign in Dagestan and then in Chechnya wasn’t yours to make. Yeltsin was president, and the burden of the first unsuccessful operation lay with him and with Stepashin.

  Well, Stepashin was no longer prime minister. As for Yeltsin, he supported me completely. We discussed the situation in Chechnya at every meeting.

  So that means that the entire responsibility was on your shoulders?

  To a large degree. I met with the top officials of the Ministry of Defense, the General Staff, and the Interior Ministry. We met almost every day—sometimes twice a day, morning and evening. And with a lot of fine-tuning, the ministries were consolidated. The first thing that I had to do was overcome the disarray among the ministries. The army didn’t understand what the Interior Ministry was doing, and the FSB was criticizing everyone and not taking responsibility for anything. We had to become one team, one single organism. Only then would we be successful.

  You talked about the price that you personally were prepared to pay for the campaign in the Northern Caucasus: your career. But in fact, the price of any military campaign is measured in human lives and in units of currency.

  I was convinced that if we didn’t stop the extremists right away, we’d be facing a second Yugoslavia on the entire territory of the Russian Federation—the Yugoslavization of Russia.

  But you could have knocked the rebels out of Dagestan, and surrounded Chechnya with a cordon sanitaire . . .

  That would have been pointless and also technically impossible.

  Tell us, does the fact that Lenin gave Finland away many decades ago bother you? Is the secession of Chechnya impossible in principle?

  No, it isn’t. But secession isn’t the issue.

  It seemed to me tha
t it was all absolutely clear. I’ll tell you what guided me and why I was so convinced of the threat that hung over our country. Everyone says I’m harsh, even brutal. These are unpleasant epithets. But I have never for a second believed—and people with even an elementary level of political knowledge understand this—that Chechnya would limit itself to its own independence. It would become a beachhead for further attacks on Russia.

  After all, the aggression began there. They built up their forces and then attacked a neighboring territory. Why? In order to defend the independence of Chechnya? Of course not. In order to seize additional territories. They would have swallowed up Dagestan, and that would have been the beginning of the end. The entire Caucasus would have followed—Dagestan, Ingushetia, and then up along the Volga River to Bashkortostan and Tatarstan, reaching deep into the country.

  You know, I was frightened when I imagined the real consequences. I started wondering how many refugees Europe and America could absorb. Because the disintegration of such an enormous country would have been a global catastrophe. And when I compare the scale of the possible tragedy to what we have there now, I do not have a second of doubt that we are doing the right thing. Maybe we should be even tougher. The problem is, if the conflict goes further, no amount of armed forces will be enough. We would be forced to draft people in the reserves and send them into combat. A large-scale war would begin.