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1 Russians use various diminutives for names, depending on degrees of familiarity and affection. Vladimir Putin is often called Vovka and Volodya by bis friends and family.
2 Smolny was a private girls’ school before the Revolution, when Lenin took it over and made it the headquarters of his revolutionary government. Since then it has been the seat of local government in St. Petersburg.
3 Vladimir Vysotsky was a popular Russian folksinger.
4 This segment of questions and answers was published in newspapers, but was not included in the Russian edition of Vladimir Putin’s book, First Person. Several other passages from the interviews that were published only in newspapers are included in this English edition.
5 4 Liteiny Street was the address of the KGB headquarters in Leningrad and currently houses the KGB’s successor, the FSB (Federal Security Service).
6 Dr. Andrei Sakharov, a prominent Russian physicist and human rights campaigner, was kept under constant KGB surveillance and harassment in the 1970s and 1980 for his dissident activities. He was arrested for his outspoken criticism of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 and exiled without trial to the closed city of Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod). Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev released Dr. Sakharov from exile in 1986 and he was subsequently elected to the Soviet parliament, where he continued to criticize Soviet human rights violations and suppression of democracy until his death in 1989.
7 Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony was written in 1937, at the height of Stalin’s Great Terror, when millions were being summarily executed or deported to hard labor. The composer’s “Lady Macbeth of the Mtinsk District” had been attacked in Pravda (a government newspaper) in 1936. The Fifth Symphony was interpreted as Shostakovich’s response to the threats against him and the purges of his associates.
8 In the fall of 1989, Hans Modrow was secretary of the Communist Party (SED) in Dresden and responsible for “emergency situations” while large, peaceful, anti-GDR demonstrations were taking place there nightly. He refrained from suppressing the antigovernment demonstrations and was made prime minister at the height of the agitation against the Communist government (1989—1990). His government and party were soundly defeated in the momentum for German reunification.
9 August 18—19, 1991, was the date of Russian president Boris Yeltsin’s resistance to the attempted coup by Soviet hard-liners, which led to the breakup of the USSR in December 1991.
10 Oleg Kalugin served the KGB for 30 years, but eventually broke with the world of KGB secrecy, and, during the perestroika years under Mikhail Gorbachev, campaigned for public accountability among the security services. Kalugin was stripped of his many KGB decorations by KGB hard-liners in 1990. They were restored the following year.
11 The FSB (Federalnaya sluzbha bezopasnosti) is Russia’s Federal Security Service. It replaced the KGB. Putin was named director of the FSB in 1998.
12 The title for Sobchak was mayor, a new title introduced for the democratically-elected chair of the city council in the democratic reform period of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The name of the top leadership post in St. Petersburg was restored to governor in 1996 when Governor Yakolev was elected.
13 This conversation took place two days before the tragic death of Anatoly Sobchak. On February 19, 2000, Sobchak died of a heart attack in the city of Svetlogorsk.—Authors
14 The U.S. equivalent of Russia’s Main Control Directorate is the Inspector General’s Office.
15 Vladimir Kryuchkov was the former head of the KGB, and was one of the August 1991 coup-plotters.
16 On March 6, 1953, the day after Stalin died, his secret police chief, Lavrenty Beria, succeeded in merging the MVD with the MGB, as the KGB was then known. The merger lasted about a year, until Beria’s execution in March 1954.
17 The FSK was the Federal Counterintelligence Service.
18 Cheka, a word formed from the Russian acronym for “Extraordinary Commission,” is the name of the secret police organization founded by Lenin. The word is still popularly used to refer to the security police.
19 Yeltsin changed prime ministers four times in 1989—1999. The order of Yeltsin’s prime ministers is: Viktor S. Chernomyrdin (December 1992—March 1998), Sergei V. Kiriyenko (five months), Yevgeny M. Primakov (eight months), Sergei V. Stepashin (three months), Vladimir Putin (since August 10, 1999). Sergei V.
20 The OVR is the Fatherland-All Russia Party.
21 Unity is Putin’s party, created in December 1999.
22 Kukly is a satirical puppet show.
23 GUM is a Moscow department store.
24 The FSO is the Federal Guard Service (the personal protection corps of the president and other high officials), while the FSB is the Federal Security Service (the KGB’s successor, working on domestic and foreign intelligence).
25 Vincent Cochetel is an official from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees who was kidnapped and released in 1998 before this interview. Putin may be confusing him with Brice Fleutiaux, a French freelance photojournalist who was kidnapped in October 1999 while working in Chechnya and was still being held hostage by Chechen rebels as of March 2000.
26 On March 5, 1999, unidentified persons abducted General Gennady Shpigun at gunpoint at the airport outside Chechnya’s capital. General Shpigun, a native of the Caucasus, was the representative in Chechnya of the Russian Interior Ministry and was still being held hostage as of March 2000.
27 Asian Maskhadov is the President of Chechnya, elected in democratic elections in 1996.
28 Lord Russell-Johnston was elected president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in January 1999.
29 In a videotape of Babitsky delivered to Radio Liberty after be was said to be turned over to Chechen rebels, be looked pale and tired, spoke slowly, and said he wanted to go home.
30 In March 1999, then Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov was on his way to the United States to discuss the Balkans crisis with President Clinton. When he learned that the Americans had made the decision to bomb Serbia, he turned the plane around and returned to Russia.
31 Shaimiev is the president of Tatarstan.
32 Boris Berezovsky is a prominent and influential Russian businessman. He is part-owner of ORT, a pro-government television station, and has taken an active role in the Chechen conflicts. He was former deputy secretary of the National Security Council in the Yeltsin administration.
34 The upper chamber of Parliment, where the mayor of Moscow has a seat.
35 Borodin was accused of providing kickbacks to Yeltsin and his family through the Swiss construction firm, Mabetex.
36 The “Family” refers to Yeltsin, his family, and his entourage.
37 A newspaper published photos purportedly showing Skuratov with prostitutes, which unleashed a scandal leading to his suspension as prosecutor general.
Copyright © 2000 by Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, and Andrei Kolesnikov
Published in the United States by PublicAffairs™, a Member of the Perseus Books Group.
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All photographs courtesy of Vladimir Putin.
Library of Congress Card Number: oo 132549
eISBN : 978-0-786-72327-0
First Person Page 18