The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin

I leave my friends at the restaurant to return to my family at the dacha. I drive over the Big Stone Bridge—the largest bridge over the Moscow River—just as the police leave Bolotnaya Square. There are hundreds upon hundreds of them, moving along the sidewalk four and five across, the length of the bridge. For the first time that I can remember, I do not get a knot in my stomach while I look at police in riot gear. I am stuck behind an orange truck with a snowplow. It still has not snowed, so I am not sure what the truck is doing out in the street, but I notice a white balloon tied to the corner of the plow.

Protests were held today in ninety-nine cities in Russia and in front of Russian consulates and embassies in more than forty cities around the world.

In the evening, Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, tells journalists that the government has no comment on the protest and promises to let them know if a comment is formulated.

A few minutes later, NTV, the television channel taken away from Vladimir Gusinsky ten years ago and eviscerated, airs an excellent report on the protest. I watch it online—it’s been years since I had a working television in the house—and I recognize something I have observed in other countries when I covered their revolutions. There comes a day when you turn on the television and the very same goons who were spouting propaganda at you yesterday, sitting in the very same studios against the very same backdrops, start speaking a human language. In this case, though, this moment gives my head an extra spin, because I can still remember these journalists before they became goons, when they last spoke human about a dozen years ago.

As I approach our dacha, it starts to snow. By morning, the countryside will be covered in white.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Cullen Murphy, who first suggested I write a piece about Vladimir Putin for Vanity Fair, and to my agent, Elyse Cheney, who noticed that the resulting piece wanted to become a book. My editor, Rebecca Saletan, made that book immeasurably better than it would have been without her. Many other people helped along the way, and I hope someday soon I will be able to thank them in print without fearing that such recognition might be harmful. You know who you are, and I hope you know how grateful I am. Two people cannot avoid mention, however: my friend and colleague Ilya Kolmanovsky, whose research and insights were crucial in the early stages of this project; and my partner, Darya Oreshkina, who has made me happier and more productive than I have ever been.

Notes

PROLOGUE

Page 3a draft law onlustratsiya: The full text of the law is available at http://www.shpik.info/statya1.html. Accessed July 14, 2010.

Page 3she learned that the KGB: Marina Katys, “Polozhitelny itog: Interview s deputatom Gosudarstvennoy Dumy, sopredsedatelem federalnoy partii Demokraticheskaya Rossiya Galinoy Starovoitovoy,” Professional, July 1, 1998. http://www.starovoitova.ru/rus/main.php?i=5&s=29. Accessed July 14, 2010.

Page 31991 post–failed-coup decree: Constitutional Court decision citing the decree and overturning its most important provisions. http://www.panorama.ru/ks/d9209.shtml. Accessed July 14, 2010.

Page 4a decree forbidding protests: In fact, the ban on protests was a one-two punch: the cabinet issued a ban, and Gorbachev followed with a decree creating a special police body to enforce the ban. Both were deemed unconstitutional by the Russian government, whose authority Gorbachev, in turn, did not recognize. http://iv.garant.ru/SESSION/PILOT/main.htm. Accessed July 15, 2010.

Page 6she immersed herself in an investigation: Andrei Tsyganov, “Seleznev dobilsya izvineniya za statyu Starovoitovoi,” Kommersant, May 14, 1999. http://www.kommersant.ru/doc-rss.aspx?DocsID=218273. Accessed July 15, 2010.

ONE. THE ACCIDENTAL PRESIDENT

Page 14experienced overall improvement: Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman, “A Normal Country: Russia After Communism,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 19, no. 1 (Winter 2005), pp. 151–74. http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/shleifer/files/normal_jep.pdf. Accessed April 30, 2011.

Page 15importing used European cars: David Hoffman, The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia (New York: PublicAffairs, 2002).

Page 15“He was the first bureaucrat”: Author interview with Boris Berezovsky, June 2008.

Page 17swindled Russia’s largest carmaker: Hoffman.