Russian President Vladimir Putin, in power since 2000, turned 73 on October 7. He has been in power longer than any Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (29 years in power).
By the time Putin’s fifth term in power ends (2030), he will beat Stalin, also. And, if he stays in power till 2036, which Russia’s new tailored Constitution allows him, he will leave Catherine the Great (34 years) behind, too.
In popular culture, he is already referred to as the Tsar!
There is an interesting anecdote that describes how Putin is already counting his legacy among Russia’s most loved and hated Tsars.
On February 24, 2022, the day Putin launched his most daring and consequential project so far—the invasion of Ukraine—most Russian oligarchs learned of the invasion from Putin’s public announcement on TV earlier that morning.
Shocked, they asked Russia’s longest-serving Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, who is counseling Putin.
Lavrov replied: “He (Putin) has three advisers: Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great.”
The wry, off-the-cuff quip highlighted two things: one, that Putin is not consulting anyone in the Kremlin before taking important decisions, such as the decision to invade a former Soviet Union country, openly backed by the West, and two, that Putin is already in the league of Russia’s most consequential Tsars.
How a poor boy who grew up in the post-war Leningrad, who performed average in studies, and was a mid-level KGB agent, rose from the ranks of St. Petersburg’s city politics in the dark decade of the 1990s to Russia’s most powerful person for over two-and-a-half decades, is the ultimate rags-to-riches story.
However, Putin’s legacy and imprint on history extend beyond Russia. Ever since he launched the Ukraine invasion, Europe’s biggest war since World War II, Putin has become the fulcrum of global geopolitics, around whom all global forces are aligning themselves.
However, throughout this long journey, some of Putin’s childhood experiences/trauma have stayed with him and still influence his decision-making in the highest echelons of power.
Putin’s Childhood Experiences/Trauma
Putin was born just seven years after World War II ended. His father served in the Soviet Navy and fought in World War II.
Putin’s elder brother, Viktor, died of diphtheria and starvation during the Siege of Leningrad in World War II.
Though born after the war had ended, the Second World War, remembered as the Great Patriotic War in Russia, still dominates Putin’s worldview.
In 2020, writing for the US-based National Interest magazine, Putin said, remembering the war: “For my parents, the war meant the terrible ordeals of the Siege of Leningrad, where my two-year-old brother Vitya died. It was the place where my mother miraculously managed to survive. My father, despite being exempt from active duty, volunteered to defend his hometown. He made the same decision as millions of Soviet citizens. He fought at the Nevsky Pyatachok bridgehead and was severely wounded.”
“Almost 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives on the fronts, in German prisons, starved to death, and were bombed, died in ghettos and furnaces of the Nazi death camps. The USSR lost one in seven of its citizens, the UK lost one in 127, and the USA lost one in 320. Unfortunately, this figure of the Soviet Union’s hardest and grievous losses is not exhaustive,” he wrote.
Putin grew up in a poor neighbourhood in Leningrad, where he lived in a communal housing society.
He had a tough childhood that would affect the rest of his life.
According to Putin’s own words, two incidents from his childhood in Leningrad, stark in their imagery, left a lasting impression on him.
The first was when Putin stood on the landing of his kommunalka (communal apartments) in Leningrad and tried to catch a rat which, of course, threw itself at him: “There, on the landing, I got a quick and lasting lesson in the meaning of the word cornered.”
In his later life, Putin has often used this imagery to describe how the West (read NATO) has tried to corner Russia in a box, leaving Moscow with no choice but to snap back at them.
In the second incident, Putin described how he was bullied on the streets of Leningrad, teaching him the most valuable life lesson.
In 2015, he reflected on his early experiences on the streets of what is now St Petersburg: “Fifty years ago, the Leningrad street taught me a rule: if a fight is inevitable, you have to throw the first punch.”
In Putin’s worldview, a fight with NATO is inevitable, and thus, he struck first in NATO-supported Ukraine. And when the time comes, the West should not be surprised if he strikes first at NATO again.
Putin always fancied joining the KGB, having been brought up on Soviet TV shows such as ‘The Sword and the Shield,’ which recounted the heroic exploits of an undercover Russian spy in Nazi Germany.
“I was a pure and utterly successful product of Soviet patriotic education,” he reflected.
Another incident from his KGB days left a permanent mark on young Putin.
On December 5, 1989, crowds stormed the KGB office in East Germany’s Dresden, where Putin was posted.
Unarmed and outnumbered, Putin warned the crowd that they were all armed inside and wouldn’t hesitate to shoot. Ultimately, Putin and his colleagues were able to leave the building unharmed.
Here, Putin learned the art of bluffing and that in a conflict situation, one should never show any weakness.
However, before Putin made the bluff, he called the Red Army’s tank unit for help.
Putin was told, “We cannot do anything without orders from Moscow. And Moscow is silent.”
Ever since coming to power in the Kremlin, Putin has ensured one thing: Moscow would not be silent.
In 1999, NATO could get away with bombing Serbia, right in Russia’s backyard.
However, today, whether it’s the Iran war, North Korea, or Venezuela, Moscow has a stand on every issue, and the West is forced to recalibrate its strategy based on Russia’s stand.
Describing the impact of the KGB days on Putin, Masha Gessen, in her 2012 book ‘The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin‘ writes: Putin had “loved the Soviet Union, and he loved its KGB, and when he had power of his own, effectively running [St. Petersburg] he wanted to build a system just like them. It would be a closed system, a system built on total control—especially control over the flow of information and the flow of money.”
Putin’s Wars
Throughout his 25 years in power, violence has been a hallmark of Putin’s reign. Whether it’s the years-long war in Chechnya, the invasion of Georgia in 2008, the occupation of Crimea (2014), sending Russian troops in Syria to boost Bashar al-Assad’s regime (2015), Moscow’s many wars in Africa, including in Libya, and finally the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has been continuously at war with Putin at the helm.
Putin has also used violence to silence critics, the media, and the opposition at home.
Aleksei Navalny, the opposition politician who led a crusade against public corruption, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the mercenary group Wagner, Sergei Yushenkov, the leader of the anti-Kremlin party Liberal Russia, and Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent Kremlin critic, are just some of the people who lost their lives after running on the wrong side of Putin.
He has also used violence, or the threat of violence, to keep the Russian oligarchs in line, with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a case in point, who now lives in exile.
Putin As Head Of A Mafia State
Many Western analysts have described Russia under Putin as a “Mafia State,” with Putin himself serving the role of the ‘Godfather’ for his Mafia clan.
Masha Gessen, in her 2012 biographical book on Putin, describes the nature and power of
Putin’s astonishing corruption and concludes that he has “claimed his place as the godfather of a mafia clan ruling the country. Like all mafia bosses, Putin barely distinguished between his personal property, the property of his clan, and the property of those beholden to his clan…he amassed wealth…by placing his cronies wherever there was money or assets to be siphoned off.”
John Ehrman, a former CIA analyst, says: “Putin has established himself as the chieftain of what is, literally, a gangster state. In this system, any independent actors who refuse to knuckle under become targets and, indeed, many of Putin’s opponents have had their
careers ruined, had assets seized, or been forced into exile.”
In contrast, Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy of the Brookings Institution, in their book ‘Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin,’ explains Putin by looking at him through three different identities.
These include – “Statist, History Man, and Survivalist.”
As a ‘Statist,’ Putin appeals to the Russian political tradition of the strong state, led by a strong leader. Indeed, Russia under Putin has positioned itself as a bulwark against so-called Colour Revolutions.
As a ‘History Man,’ Putin often draws on his understanding of history and Russia’s position in it as a ‘Great Power’ to justify his actions in the present. Indeed, Putin has often used history to justify his invasion of Ukraine, which, in his eyes, is not a legitimate state.
His ‘Survivalist’ identity was formed during his early days in Leningrad, where he had a troubled and challenging childhood full of struggle. Indeed, it is his survivalist identity that has guided his actions in the Kremlin, where he has treated every opposition figure as a challenge not only to his authority, but also to his very survival.
Furthermore, in his ‘Survivalist’ mode, he reminds the country that “Russia constantly battles for survival against a hostile outside world…Russia is always put to the test by God, fate, or history” and so must always be prepared for the worst.
In his book titled Mafia State, journalist and author Luke Harding argues that Putin has “created a state peopled by ex-KGB and FSB officers, like himself, (who are) bent on making money above all.”
The term ‘Mafia State’ points to deep links between the Russian state bureaucracy and organized crime networks, where the state itself protects criminal gangs and often uses them to serve its foreign policy goals, such as evading sanctions, silencing critics, cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, and the trafficking of weapons and illicit goods.
However, notwithstanding these descriptions, no one can deny that Russia today is at the centre of global geopolitics.
Whether it’s the “Rearm Europe” project, Finland and Sweden’s decision to join NATO, or NATO-member countries’ decision to increase defense spending to 5% of their GDP, Russia is at the center of all these decisions.
In fact, all European countries are reacting to Russia. Moscow is a significant issue in the elections of all European countries, particularly in Eastern European countries.
At the same time, the West and the US have failed to isolate Russia.
A resurgent Russia, at the center of global geopolitics, was unthinkable even one decade ago. Former US President Barack Obama has famously described Russia as a ‘regional superpower’.
Notwithstanding its economic size, Putin has been able to place Moscow at the centre of world politics today. And that might be his most significant legacy.
- Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
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- He can be reached at ahlawat.sumit85 (at) gmail.com
