194  CHAPTER Six  ■  Th e I n d ivi d ual
­B ehind The Headlines
Vladimir Putin: The Individual
and His Policies
“Putin Is a Soviet Leader for the 21st C ­ entury,”
writes Maxim Trudolubov, editor of an in­de­pen­
dent Rus­sian newspaper, in The Moscow Times.
Putin’s regime is “an attempt to strengthen the
Soviet experiment and take it to its logical
conclusion . . . ​improving upon the per­for­mance
of former Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin, Josef
Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yury
Andropov and Mikhail Gorbachev.”a Ashton Car­
ter,  U.S. secretary of defense, thinks that Putin
“says what he thinks; he ­couldn’t be clearer. He
regrets the demise of the Soviet Union. He
wants re­spect for Rus­sia’s greatness. He wants a
voice in the world. And he wants a nonthreaten­
ing neighborhood.”b But is that all we need to
know?
Putin’s personal website reveals birth in 1952
to parents of ­humble origins, living an ordinary
life in a communal apartment in Leningrad, ­today’s
St.  Petersburg. An unmotivated and undistin­
guished student through the ­middle school years,
he later began to take studies seriously and
see a ­future. ­After earning a degree from Lenin­
grad State University, he spent 16  years in the
Soviet secret ser­vice, the KGB, where he was
schooled in intelligence and counterintelli­
gence. From 1985 to 1990, he was stationed with
the KGB in East Germany, just as East Germany
was unravelling. After resigning from the KGB, he
spent six years in administration in his native city
before moving to Moscow and rapidly rising
through the ranks of Rus­sian bureaucracy.
While Putin was the first post–­World War II
generation leader, he worked closely with the
struggling Rus­sian leadership. Then from 2000–
2008, he was president of the Rus­sian Federa­
ESSIR7_CH06_180-207_11P.indd 194
tion; prime minister from 2008–12, and then
president again starting in 2012.
Putin has carefully crafted a strong personal
image—­ a 5-­ foot-7-­inch bare chested, horse­
backing riding, tiger wrestling, race car driving,
hockey playing macho man. Yet in the same
breath, he is viewed as a straight-­shooting, prag­
matic prob­lem solver willing to respond to que­
ries in an annual televised phone-in. He is viewed
as a moral ­family man, an image skewed by a
recent official divorce. The passage of a contro­
versial law banning homosexual propaganda in
2013 and the failure of the government to pre­
vent homophobic vio­lence illustrate Putin’s sup­
port of traditional values. He has established
excellent relations with the vari­ ous religious
groups in Rus­sia and shown strong support for
the Orthodox Church, a purveyor of traditional
Rus­sian values. He supports the construction of
a huge but controversial 82-­foot monument in
Moscow to St.  Vladimir, Rus­ sia’s patron saint,
founder of both the Rus­sian Orthodox Church
and the modern Rus­sian state. As a female mem­
ber of his teenage fan club gloated, “Putin is like
God to me. I perceive him as ­daddy. He is a per­
fect man—­ politician, sportsman, f­amily man. I
want my husband to be like him.”
Much of Putin’s personal image has mani­
fested itself in policy positions. He has stood up to
the West, saying no to NATO expansion. Seeing
weakness in former leaders like Tsar Nicholas II
and Mikhail Gorbachev, he has vowed never to
bend to ­others. He responded to the travesty
of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s cession of
Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 by retaking Crimea in
2014 to g ­ reat popu­lar acclaim. And, buoyed by
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 Foreign Policy Elites: Individuals Who ­M atter   195

high prices for Rus­sia’s oil exports, the real dis­ Liberals would argue that leaders like Putin do
posable income of Rus­sians doubled between make a difference, even though they may not
1999 and 2006, with Putin taking credit. explain all of Russia’s policies. Putin’s carefully
An impor­tant culmination of Rus­sia’s reestab­ crafted image and his use of the media, unpre­ce­
lishment of a central role in international circles dented in Rus­ sia, has enabled him to acquire
was the success of the Sochi Winter Olympic greater power, and his personal success like the
Games of 2014. Not only a triumph for Rus­sia, it staging of the Olympics has become synonymous
was also a major personal triumph for Putin, who with the success of the nation.
oversaw all parts of the games. Equally as impor­
tant to Putin’s prestige was the awarding of the
2018 FIFA World Cup to Rus­sia. Thus, when U.S.
authorities indicted FIFA officials for corruption,
Putin came to FIFA’s defense, calling it “another
blatant attempt by the United States to extend its
jurisdiction to other states.”
For standing up against the United States, and
the West more generally, and for presiding over a
period of relative po­liti­cal stability and economic
growth, Putin’s approval ratings have been above
80 ­percent for much of the era.
Realists see Putin as yet another leader who
acts according to Rus­sian historical national inter­
ests. As a former ­great power whose power has
been diminished with the dissolution of the terri­
tory, Rus­sia needs to reaffirm its rightful place Russian president Vladimir Putin greeting athletes at
among nations. Putin’s actions are consistent the Sochi Olympic Games, the scene of personal
with ­those interests. success and national prestige.

a. Maxim Trubolyubov, “Putin Is a Soviet Leader for the 21st ­Century,” Moscow Times, March 23, 2015.
b. Ashton Car­ter, “The Scholar as Secretary. A Conversation with Ashton Car­ter,” Foreign Affairs 94:5 (Sept./Oct.
2015): 75.

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