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First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President Vladimir Putin //
От первого лица: разговоры с Владимиром Путиным
Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, Andrei Kolesnikov, 2000
1983. After a stint in counterintelligence with some stodgy hard-liners, Putin is sent to the Andropov Red Banner Institute in Moscow for additional training. The officers quickly take notice of the smart and unflappable trainee. He’s offered a spot in the most coveted of divisions: foreign intelligence. Meanwhile, he meets a stunning airline stewardess, Lyudmila. He impresses her with hard-to-come-by tickets for three nights at the theater, procured through his KGB connections. Their courtship lasts three years. They marry and are transferred on Putin’s first assignment abroad: Dresden, East Germany.
Lyudmila Putina:
I’m from Kaliningrad. I worked as a stewardess on domestic flights. Our flight crew was small and young.
My girlfriend and I flew to Leningrad for three days. She was also a stewardess on our crew, and she invited me to the Lensoviet Theater, to a performance by Arkady Raikin. She had been invited by a boy, but she was afraid to go by herself, so she invited me along. When the boy heard that she was inviting me, he brought Volodya. The three of us—myself, my girlfriend, and her friend—met on Nevsky Prospect, near the Duma building, where there is a theater ticket office. Volodya was standing on the steps of the ticket office. He was very modestly dressed. I would even say he was poorly dressed. He looked very unprepossessing. I wouldn’t have paid any attention to him on the street.
«Володя стоял на ступеньках этой кассы. Он был очень скромно одет, я бы даже сказала, бедно. Совсем невзрачный такой, на улице я бы даже не обратила внимания».
After the show we agreed to meet again and go to the theater. My girlfriend and I had come for only three days, and we wanted to see a lot of cultural things, of course. We understood that Volodya was the kind of person who could get tickets to any theater.
On the second day we went to the Leningrad Music Hall, and on the third day to the Lensoviet Theater. Three days, three theaters.
On the third day, it was time to say goodbye. We were in the metro. Volodya’s friend stood off to one side. He knew that Volodya was the kind of person who didn’t readily give out information about himself, much less his home telephone number. But he noticed that Volodya was handing me his telephone number. After I left, he said to Volodya, “What, have you gone mad?” Volodya never did things like that.
I fell in love later, and fell hard. But not right away. At first I called him, then I began to fly to Leningrad for dates. How do most people travel for dates? On a tram, or a bus, or a taxi. But I flew to my dates. There was something about Volodya that attracted me. Within three or four months, I had decided that he was the man for me. Perhaps it was his inner strength, the same quality that draws everybody to him now. I spent three and a half years courting him!
One night we were sitting at his house, and he said, “You know what kind of person I am by now. In general I’m not very easygoing.” He was being self-critical. He explained that he was the silent type; that he was rather abrupt in some things and could even insult people, and so on. He was saying that he was a risky life partner. And he added: “In three and a half years, you have probably made up your mind.”
It sounded to me like we were breaking up. “Yes, I’ve made up my mind,” I said. He let out a doubtful “Yes?” Then I was sure that that was it, we were breaking up. But then he said, “Well, then, if that’s the way it is, I love you and propose that we get married.” So it all came as a complete surprise to me.
I agreed. Three months later we were married. We had our wedding on a floating restaurant, a little boat tied up to the riverbank.
We took this event very seriously. You can tell from our wedding portrait that we were both super-serious. For me, marriage was not a step taken lightly. And for him, too.
The first year we were married, we lived in total harmony. There was a continuous sense of joy, as though we were on holiday. Then I got pregnant with our oldest daughter, Masha. She was born when I was in my fourth year of school, and Volodya left for a year to study in Moscow.
We lived with his parents, in a 27-meter-square apartment—a boathouse, as we used to call them then. You know the kind, with the high windowsills? It was very hard to exchange it for another. Only one of the rooms had a balcony, and the windows in the kitchen and the other room were way up near the ceiling. When you sat at the table, you couldn’t see the street outside, only the wall in front of your eyes. Volodya’s parents lived in the 15-meter-square room with the balcony. Our room, the one with no balcony, was 12 square meters. The apartment itself was in a district of newly constructed apartment blocks called Avtovo. Volodya’s father had received the apartment as a disabled war veteran.
His parents treated me like the woman who had been chosen by their son. And he was their sun, moon, and stars. They did everything they could for him. No one could do more for him than they did. They invested their whole lives in him. Vladimir Spiridonovich and Maria Ivanovna were very good parents.
Marina Yentaltseva (Putin’s secretary from 1991 to 1996):
The first time I saw Vladimir Vladimirovich was from behind the glass door of an office. I was sitting across from the door and putting on my lipstick. Suddenly I saw the new director of the Committee for Foreign Liaison walking down the hall, and I thought, “Uh-oh, now he definitely won’t hire me for the job.” But everything was fine. He pretended that he hadn’t noticed a thing, and I never put my lipstick on at work again.
I wouldn’t say that he was a strict boss. Only people’s stupidity would make him lose his temper. But he never raised his voice. He could be strict and demanding and yet never raise his voice. If he gave an assignment, he didn’t really care how it was done or who did it or what problems they had. It just had to get done, and that was that.
The Putins had a dog, a Caucasian sheepdog called Malysh. The dog lived at the dacha and used to dig under the fence all the time and try to get outside. One day she did finally dig her way out, and she got hit by a car. Lyudmila Aleksandrovna scooped her up and took her to a veterinary clinic. She called from the vetʹs office and asked me to tell her husband that they weren’t able to save the dog.
I went into Vladimir Vladimirovich’s office and said, “You know… we have a situation… Malysh was killed.” I looked at him, and there was zero emotion on his face. I was so surprised at the lack of any kind of reaction that I couldn’t contain myself and said, “Did someone already tell you about it?” And he said calmly, “No, you’re the first to tell me.” And I knew I had made a blunder.
«Захожу в кабинет к Владимиру Владимировичу и говорю: „Вы знаете… такая ситуация… Малыш погиб“. Смотрю, а у него на лице ноль эмоций. Я так удивилась отсутствию какой-либо реакции, что не удержалась и спросила: „Вам что, уже об этом кто-то сказал?“ А он спокойно: „Нет, вы первая мне об этом говорите“. И тут я поняла, что ляпнула что-то не то».
Vladimir Putin // Владимир Путин
Oleg Blotsky, 2003
Lyudmila Putina:Oleg Blotsky, 2003
Our dates were a story in of themselves. I was never late to them but Volodya constantly was. A one and a half hour wait – a regular occurrence… I remember standing at the subway station. First fifteen minutes of him being late, I can take fine, half hour – it would be okay too. But when it’s almost an hour over, and he’s still not there, you just wail in desperation. In an hour and a half I don’t have any emotions… From date to date, from day to day, everything is on repeat.
Vladimir Vladimirovich himself never did tell me that he was KGB… It’s a shame that Volodya couldn't talk about his actual job. Had he revealed that six months later, it would just seem normal. But a year and a half later with me still having concrete hopes of building our relationship, at that moment it was a sign that they still didn’t fully trust me.
The absence of a husband during pregnancy, who could have helped in some way, was not a problem for me, I have been quite independent ever since my childhood... Just imagine: me, pregnant with Katya in the seventh month, with Masha in one hand and a bag of groceries in another, climbing the stairs to the sixth floor. But then, a married neighbor couple comes out and sees me limping my way up. A silent scene. The man's eyes grew large, large. All he could do is whisper: “Lyuda, how can you go on like this?” Then he grabs Masha, my bag and lifts us all up to the sixth floor. But that happened only once. And I have at least three such trips a day. Then, as I can recall, this neighbor told my husband several times: “Volodya, you need to help. You just have to, Volodya!”. But this did not have any effect since Vladimir Vladimirovich lived by the principle: the woman of the house should do everything by herself.
Say, Volodya comes for lunch. Naturally, I set the table. My husband’s eating. I wait with bated breath for any reaction. There’s none. “How’s the meat?” – I let it seep out. “It’s a bit dry.” For me, this is like a knife to the heart. I tried so hard, I went all the way out to find this meat, and cooked it. You could say, I poured my whole soul out. And – “it’s a bit dry!”
Fragile Friendships // Heikle Freundschaften: Mit den Putins Russland erleben
Irene Pietsch, 2001
Irene Pietsch, 2001
Irene Pietsch (Hamburg socialite, former Putin family friend):
Lyudmila's pain from the countless humiliations was overflowing. What she was talking about was not a simple melodrama with which she seemed to want to relay the story of her entire life – it was a bitter tragedy of a failed friendship which could not endure Lyudmila’s basic principle of “all or nothing” and culminated with [Vladimir’s] betrayal.
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