Who is Vladimir Putin?

Despite his powerful positions, Putin for most Russians remains a faceless bureaucrat, like the KGB spy he once was. Yet it looks as if the presidency will be his to keep.

By Jill Dougherty
CNN Moscow Bureau Chief


Vladimir Putin only recently emerged into the public eye and little is known about him. Some critics have dubbed him "an empty vessel" in which Russian voters can fill with hopes and expectations.

MOSCOW (CNN) -- As a teenager back in the early 1960s Vladimir Putin dreamed of becoming a spy. "It seemed unattainable, like flying to Mars," he recalls in a new biography that just hit the bookshelves, paid for by his election campaign. So in the ninth grade Putin set off for his local KGB office in Leningrad.

"Some old guy came out and listened to me," Putin recalls. "I told him, 'I want to work for you.' 'I'm glad to hear that,' he said, 'but there are a few pointers I have to give you. First, initiative is not enough here. You have to either serve in the army or get a higher education.'"

"What's the best degree to get?" the young Putin asked. "A law degree," the KGB man replied. "I understand," said Putin, who went off to apply to the elite law school at Leningrad State University.

"No one could stop me," Putin says in his biography.

After 17 years as a KGB intelligence officer, Vladimir Putin still is better at eliciting information on others than he is at revealing his own background. The new book, complete with photographs of Russia's acting president as a young father playing with his bare-bottomed daughters, is the first serious attempt by his election campaign to fill in some -- but not all -- of the blanks.

Putin enrolled at the university in 1970. He studied law and German. Much of his spare time he spent at his hobby, judo, which had become his passion.

"Judo," he says, "is not just a sport, but a philosophy." It was the perfect sport for a self-disciplined, no-nonsense young man.

Years later, as Russia's prime minister, he told an interviewer, "Why did the Soviet Union break up? Because things were allowed to happen: laxness. And if we continue like this, Russia will fall apart, and it will happen so fast, you can't even imagine it."

No answer from Moscow

In 1975 the KGB offered Putin a job. He accepted immediately. He began in counterintelligence, then moved to foreign intelligence. Ten years later the KGB sent him to East Germany, to Dresden, to work in political intelligence.

This part of Putin's biography is "murky," as one senior U.S. government official puts it.

U.S. intelligence, which has assembled its own biography of the Russian leader, does not have a deep understanding of what Putin did in Dresden. Putin was low in the hierarchy of KGB agents. "There were not a lot of vital secrets he was looking at in Dresden," says one Washington official.

Putin married before going to East Germany. By Soviet standards he was old when he tied the knot in 1983 -- he was 30. His wife, Lyudmila, is eight years younger than he. She is a specialist in English and French. His two blond-haired daughters, Masha and Katya, were born in Dresden.

The time in East Germany did give Putin exposure to life outside Russia. He was there in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell.

In one riveting moment he recounts in his biography: German demonstrators were rallying outside the security ministry where he worked. He called Moscow for orders. No one in Moscow answered. "Moscow kept silent," he recalls. "I felt the country no longer existed."

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Putin returned to his hometown, Leningrad (soon to revert to its original name, St. Petersburg). He went back to his alma mater, Leningrad State University, and began working in the international affairs department, still as an intelligence officer, monitoring international visitors.


Putin during his days as deputy mayor under Anatoly Sobchak in St. Petersburg

Still a communist at heart?

It was Anatoly Sobchak, Putin's mentor at the university's law school, who wooed him to politics from the KGB. Sobchak himself had left academia and run successfully for mayor of St. Petersburg.

It was the first heady days of post-Soviet reform. Putin became Sobchak's external affairs aide. His job: promote investment in the city Peter the Great built in the early 18th century as his "window on Europe."

Putin quickly became known as a man who could get things done. His KGB past helped him to talk less, listen more. It was here that Putin got to know Western business figures, and he personally helped to put together some of the biggest investment deals in St. Petersburg.

Supporters of Putin point to those days at the mayor's office as proof he is a true reformer at heart. But one of Putin's opponents in this presidential race, Grigory Yavlinsky, claims Putin is really a Soviet communist.

"Communism means that you are ready to pay whatever price for your own political goals," Yavlinsky says. "Communism means that you say one thing and do another. Communism means you are always lying. All those points are the main points of Putin's policies."

Putin's political career in St. Petersburg was linked to Sobchak's. When Sobchak lost his re-election campaign amid scandal in 1996, Putin resigned.

A year later, thanks to connections with St. Petersburg politicians plugged into Moscow, Putin got a job at the Kremlin as an aide to Pavel Borodin, the all-powerful boss of the Kremlin's property administration. Two years later, as acting president, Putin would fire Borodin over allegations of massive corruption.

Popularity based on scanty facts

His appointment in Moscow was the beginning of Putin's breathtakingly fast rise to the top.

In 1998 the former KGB spy was named head of the Federal Security Bureau (FSB), successor agency to the KGB. He also became head of the President's Security Council.

In August 1999 President Boris Yeltsin abruptly fired Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin and named Putin as his new prime minister. Then, on New Year's Eve, came Yeltsin's dramatic announcement that he was stepping down and installing Putin as acting president.

The key to Putin's political success among Russians is also his most controversial action: the brutal war in Chechnya.

Traumatized by apartment bombings in Moscow and other cities blamed on "Chechen terrorists," fed up with lawlessness and kidnappings in Chechnya, fueled by ethnic animosity toward Chechens, most Russians strongly supported the war, and still do.

The war's few opponents see it as proof of Putin's ruthlessness and dictatorial potential -- and testimony of his presumed disrespect for human rights.


Yeltsin last fall with his soon-to-be successor Putin

Yet Putin for most Russians is still a rather faceless bureaucrat, like the spy whose face no one remembers. On Russian TV, in newspapers and on talk shows, the question on everyone's lips is: Who is Vladimir Putin?

Putin is standing traditional political campaigning on its head, refusing to debate his opponents, refusing to run political ads.

As one member of the Russian parliament says, Putin is telling voters, "Elect me now and I'll tell you later who I am." Yet his poll ratings now hover at nearly 60 percent, far outstripping any competitor.

As he did when he dreamed of being a KGB spy, Vladimir Putin now has his eyes set on the Kremlin. And it seems no one can stop him.