Did you always think along these lines?
For better or for worse, I was never a dissident. My career was shaping up well. But you know, a lot of things that our law-enforcement agencies began indulging in since the 1990s were absolutely impossible back then. Things were stricter. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say a group of dissidents were gathering in Leningrad for some kind of protest. Let’s say it is timed to coincide with the birthday of Peter the Great. Dissidents in Peter generally timed their demonstrations to coincide with those sorts of dates. They also liked the anniversaries of the Decembrists.
They would think up some act of protest and then invite diplomats and reporters in order to attract the attention of the international community. What could we do? We couldn’t disperse them because we had no orders to do so. So we would organize our own laying of the wreaths at exactly the same place where the reporters were supposed to gather. We would call in the regional party committee and the trade unions, and the police would rope everything off. Then we’d show up with a brass band. We would lay down our wreaths. The journalists and the diplomats would stand and watch for awhile, yawn a couple of times, and go home. And when they left, the ropes would come down and anyone who wanted to protest could. But they wouldn’t get any attention.
Did you take part in that activity?
My group was not particularly involved in these activities.
How do you know the details, then?
Nobody made a secret of it. We met in the cafeteria and chatted openly about it. Why am I saying this? Because what the agents did was wrong, of course. They were a manifestation of a totalitarian state. But the way they did things was covert. It was considered indecent to be too obvious. Things were not always so crude.
And the Sakharov affair wasn’t crude?6
The Sakharov affair was crude.
Sergei Roldulgin:
Sometimes Vovka and I would go to the Philharmonic after work. He would ask me about the proper way to listen to a symphony. I tried to explain it to him. If you ask him about Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, he can tell you a lot because he loved it terribly when he first heard it and I explained it to him. And then Katya and Masha took up music. I’m the one to blame for that.
I’m absolutely convinced that our lecturers with their highfalutin talk about music are wildly wrong. The propaganda for classical music is really missing the mark. I explained to Volodya what a normal person should see and hear. I would say, “Listen, the music has started. That’s the peaceful life—they’re building communism. You hear that chord, ta-ti, pa-pa? And now the fascistic theme is coming in. Look, there it goes—those brass instruments are playing. That theme will now grow. And there’s the peaceful theme, from the beginning. The two will clash now, here and there, here and there.” He just loved this terribly.7
Volodya has a very strong character. Let’s say I was a better soccer player. I would lose to him anyway, simply because he’s as tenacious as a bulldog. He would just wear me down. I would take the ball away from him three times and he would tear it away from me three times. He has a terribly intense nature, which manifests itself in literally everything. Don’t forget: He was the judo champion for Leningrad in 1976.
Once, right before Volodya went to Germany, we went to visit our friend Vasya Shestakov at a sports camp. Vasya was a coach for young kids. We got there at night, and he showed us some cots where we could get some sleep. In the morning, the kids from the camp woke up and said, “Hey, look at those two guys. We can take them, no sweat.”
The boys went to work out on the mats. They were practicing judo. And Vasya said to Volodya, “Do you want to fight?” Volodya answered, “What, are you kidding? I haven’t stood on a mat for years.” So I pitched in: “Come on! What’s wrong with you? Those kids said they could take us with no sweat. . . .” And Vasya kept egging him on. “Alright, alright,” Volodya finally said. “You talked me into it.” He needed a kimono, and he went up to a kid and said, “Listen, will you lend me your robe to fight in?” The kid said rudely, “Take somebody else’s.” So Volodya borrowed somebody else’s kimono and came out onto the mat. The rude kid was his opponent. Vovka flipped that kid so fast that he earned a clear victory right away. Vasya took the microphone and announced, “And the winner is the master Vladimir Putin, 1976 Leningrad champion!” Volodya took the robe off, gave it back, and calmly walked away. I turned to the kid and said, “You’re lucky I’m not the one who was fighting you!”
Once, at Eastertime, Volodya called me to go to see a religious procession. He was standing at the rope, maintaining order, and he asked me whether I wanted to go up to the altar and take a look. Of course I agreed. There was such boyishness in this gesture—“nobody can go there, but we can.” We watched the procession and then headed home. We were waiting at a bus stop, and some people came up to us. Not thugs, but students who had been drinking. “Can I bum a cigarette off you?” one of them asked. I kept silent, but Vovka answered, “No, you can’t.” “What are you answering that way for?” said the guy. “No reason,” said Volodya.
I couldn’t believe what happened next. I think one of them shoved or punched Volodya. Suddenly somebody’s socks flashed before my eyes and the kid flew off somewhere. Volodya turned to me calmly and said, “Let’s get out of here.” And we left. I loved how he tossed that guy! One move, and the guy’s legs were up in the air.
During my six months in counterintelligence training, the officers from foreign intelligence began to notice me. They wanted to talk. First one conversation, then another, then a third and a fourth. . . Intelligence is always looking for people for themselves, including people from the security agencies. They took people who were young and had certain appropriate qualities.
Of course I wanted to go into foreign intelligence. Everyone did. We all knew what it meant to be able to travel abroad under the conditions of the Soviet Union. And espionage was considered the white-collar job in the agencies. There were many people who exploited their position in order to trade in foreign goods. It was an unfortunate fact.
Naturally, I agreed to go into intelligence, because it was interesting. I was sent for special training in Moscow, where I spent a year. Then I returned to Leningrad and worked for awhile in the “first department,” as we used to call it. The first chief directorate is intelligence. It had subdivisions in all the large cities of the Soviet Union, including Leningrad. I worked there for about four and a half years, and then I went to Moscow for training at the Andropov Red Banner Institute, which is now the Academy of Foreign Intelligence.
Mikhail Frolov (retired colonel, instructor of the Andropov Red Banner Institute):
I worked at the Red Banner Institute for 13 years. Vladimir Putin came to me from the Leningrad Directorate of the KGB with the rank of major.
I decided to try him out in the role of division leader. At the Red Banner Institute, division leader was not just some sort of illustrious title. A lot depends on the division leader. You need organizational abilities, a certain degree of tact, and a businesslike manner. It seemed to me Putin had all that. He was a steady student, without slips. There were no incidents. There was no reason to doubt his honesty and integrity.
I remember he once came to my lecture wearing a three-piece suit, despite the fact that it was 30 degrees Celsius on the street. I was sitting in a short-sleeved shirt in the heat. Putin thought he had to appear in a business suit. I even pointed him out as an example to the others: “Look at Comrade Platov, now!” At the Institute, we didn’t use students’ real names. That’s why Putin wasn’t Putin, but Platov. As a rule we usually kept the first letter of someone’s name. When I went to intelligence school, I was called Filimonov.
At the Red Banner, we didn’t just teach the rules of intelligence and counterintelligence. We needed to study our trainees—their professional worth and personal qualities. We had to determine, in the final analysis, whether a trainee was suitable for work in intelligence.
The trainin
g at our institute was a kind of testing ground. I taught the art of intelligence, for example. What does intelligence mean? Itʹs the ability to come into contact with people, the ability to select the people you need, the ability to raise the questions that are of interest to our country and our leaders, the ability to be a psychologist, if you will. So we had to study each trainee carefully. We needed to be as sure of him as we were of our own right hand. At the end of the course, we wrote an evaluation of each graduate, which would determine his fate.
We asked all the teachers, from the counterintelligence department to the physical education department, to write their opinion of the trainees on paper. Their reports were sent to the head of the training department, who synthesized all this material and added his own observations, writing an exhaustive, detailed evaluation of each candidate.
It was hellish work. Each evaluation consisted of only four typewritten pages, but everything had to be covered—personal as well as professional qualities. We closed for a week or two, and sat and wrote and wrote. At the end of each evaluation we wrote our conclusion about the suitability or unsuitability of each graduate for work in intelligence.
One time we had a trainee who performed our assignments like clockwork. His fine analytical mind helped him to find the best solutions quickly. In fact, he was so quick that you sometimes had the impression that he knew the answer even before you asked him a question. But the ability to solve problems in and of itself is not the highest priority. At the end of his study I wrote an evaluation that prevented him from working in intelligence. Unfortunately, his personal qualities—his careerism and his lack of sincerity toward his comrades—disqualified him immediately.
For this particular trainee, the evaluation was like a lightning bolt out of the blue. The evaluation was positive on the whole, but it definitively blocked his way to a job in intelligence. He was not going to get a residency as an agent. I had worked in residencies myself, so I knew what could happen if a boy like this one wound up there. He would start quarrels and create a tense and nasty atmosphere, which would prevent people from working productively. So I had to write a negative evaluation.
As for Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin], I can’t say he was a careerist. But I do remember that I wrote about several negative characteristics in his evaluation. It seemed to me that he was somewhat withdrawn and uncommunicative. By the way, that could be considered both a negative and a positive trait. But I recall that I also cited a certain academic tendency among his negative aspects. I donʹt mean that he was dry. No, he was sharp-witted and always ready with a quip.
A very high-ranking graduate commission would then determine how each trainee would be used. After reading his evaluation, the commission would summon each graduate, examine him, and determine which division of the KGB he would be assigned to. As a result of this training, Vladimir Vladimirovich was assigned to KGB representation in the German Democratic Republic [GDR, or East Germany].
When I studied at the Red Banner, it was clear from the very beginning that I was being prepared for Germany because they pushed me to take German. It was just a question of where—the GDR or the FRG [Federal Republic of Germany], East or West.
In order to go to the FRG, you had to work in the appropriate department of the central office of the KGB. You had to stick it out for a year or two, or three. It depended on the person. That was one option. Could I have done that? Sure, in theory.
The second option was to go immediately to the GDR. And I decided it was better to travel right away.
Were you married at the time?
Yes.
Once, when I was working in the first department in Peter, a friend of mine called me and invited me to the theater to see a performance by Arkady Raikin, the comic. He had tickets, and he said there would be girls there. We went, and there really were girls.
The next day we went back to the theater. I got tickets this time. And then we went a third time. I began to date one of the girls. We got to be friends. She was Lyuda, my future wife.
And how long did you date?
For a long time. About three years, probably. I was 29, and I was used to planning every move. But my friends started saying, “Listen, that’s enough, you should get married.”
They were probably envious.
Of course they were. But I knew that if I didn’t get married in the next two or three years, I never would. I had gotten used to the bachelor’s life, but Lyudmila changed all that.
Lyudmila Putina (Putinʹs wife):
I’m from Kaliningrad. I worked as a stewardess on domestic flights. There were no international flights to Kaliningrad. After all, it was a closed city. 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.
We watched the first hour of the show. During the intermission we went to the buffet. We had a good time, and I tried to make everyone laugh. But I was no Raikin—nobody was reacting to me much. Still, I wasn’t discouraged.
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 a cultural things, of course. We understood that Volodya was the kind of person who could get tickets to any theater.
We met up again the next day, although the friend who had introduced us didn’t come.
Sergei Roldugin:
I bought my first car, a Zhiguli, the original model. I had just finished the conservatory and landed a job in Mravinsky’s Collective. We toured Japan and all the rest. I had more money than Vovka. I would bring him souvenirs from my trips—T-shirts and the like.
Once, we agreed to meet on Nevsky. He said, “Two girls will come up to you and say they’re with me. I’ll be there within 15 minutes, and then we’ll go to the theater.” The girls arrived on time, just as agreed. One of them was Lyuda. She was very nice. We got into the Zhiguli and began to wait for him. At first, I felt terribly uncomfortable sitting with them. Some friends of mine passed by and recognized me, and it was all rather unfortunate. We sat there for about an hour. I spent the whole time exhausting these girls with conversation, or so it seemed to me.
Finally, Volodya appeared. He was always late, by the way. We went to the theater. I don’t remember what we saw, of course. No idea. I only remember those friends who passed by and recognized me.
Lyudmila Putina:
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.
Did your husband tell you that?
Of course.
And did he tell you where he worked?
He did: in the criminal investigation department of the police. And then later, I learned that he was in the KGB, in foreign intelligence. For me, at that time, it didn’t matter, whether it was the KGB or the police. Now I know the difference.
I told her that I worked in the police. That was the identity that security agents, especially those in intelligence, would use as a cover. If you blabbed about where you worked, you wouldn�
�t be sent abroad. Almost everybody had an ID from the criminal investigation office. I did, too. And that’s what I told her. Who knew how our relationship was going to turn out?
Lyudmila Putina:
During that first trip, I fell in love with Leningrad at first sight. It was because I had such a good time. A city seems nice and pleasant to you when you meet nice people there.
But did you fall in love with this unprepossessing, modestly dressed guy?
I fell in love later, and fell hard. But not right away. At first, I just called him up.
And you, as a nice girl, didn’t give him your telephone number?
I didn’t have a telephone in Kaliningrad. 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.
The Kaliningrad crew did not have any flights to Leningrad. So I was given three or four days off, and I flew on an ordinary passenger flight. There was something about Volodya that attracted me. Within three or four months, I had decided that he was the man for me.
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