Putin is less interested in presenting a particular version of reality than in seeing how others react to the information. For him, others are participants in a game he directs. He chooses inputs; they react. He judges. Their responses to his input tell him who they think he is—but by responding they also tell him who they are, what they want, what they care about. For his part, Vladimir Putin reveals very little in return. Indeed, he goes to great, often elaborate, lengths to throw other participants off track. As president and prime minister, he has presented himself as a myriad of different personas. Since 2000, Mr. Putin has been the ultimate international political performance artist.
I would add, however, that Putin’s character and his performance have begun to merge under pressure over the last few years. When he was forced to switch from currying favor with the leading democratic nations to raging against them to stoke domestic support, the real Putin came to the surface and the layers of masks could come off. This wasn’t only a matter of Putin acting on his nature, like the scorpion on the frog’s back, but of being allowed to grow into and fulfill his nature.
That is the ultimate answer to the question of dictators being born or raised. As with most nature-nurture questions, it’s both in varying degrees of balance. In 2000, Putin didn’t know he wanted to be a dictator. (Unlike Hitler and Stalin, whose early writings and statements made their dreams all too clear.) Insider stories from 1999 even suggest Putin was alarmed by Yeltsin’s proposal to resign early and thrust him into the presidency early.
Putin’s instinct was to align himself with power and to bring power to himself. Anything he didn’t control was something he couldn’t trust. His solution was to try to control everything. Unlike the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union, which handed all control to the system, Putin aimed for the totalitarianism of one person: himself.
When Putin took over the presidency in 2000 he was surrounded by many other potent forces. Various Yeltsin advisors (including his daughter) and oligarchs still wielded power inside and outside of the Kremlin walls. These included Yeltsin’s longtime eminence grise, Boris Berezovsky, and his collaborators Alexander Voloshin and Roman Abramovich. Berezovsky had been acquainted with Putin for years and is credited with lifting him out of the bureaucracy and into the prime minister’s post.
While Yeltsin’s reforms had weakened the Duma considerably relative to the presidency, it was still a factor and couldn’t be completely ignored. The media was subjected to considerable government influence, but there were still many alternatives, and political reporting, while biased and vitriolic, was unrestrained.
Since I have often touted my prescience, I should give some time to my mistakes as well. Two days after Putin took office, I eulogized Yeltsin’s tenure and tried to set an optimistic tone for the future under Putin. My January 3, 2000, op-ed in the Wall Street Journal made no mention of Putin’s KGB background or horrific human rights record in Chechnya. My focus was Yeltsin’s legacy and any predictions were difficult since Putin was still mostly an unknown. Plus, like any patriot I wanted the best for my country. Foreign support and investment were still very important for Russia, something I surely had in mind when I took to the pages of the newspaper. I wrote:
I’m convinced Mr. Yeltsin genuinely believed in the necessity of making Russia a full-fledged democracy and wanted to be certain that a new strongman in the Kremlin would be able to protect precious democratic reforms. Only time will tell whether Mr. Putin can be a good president. But today we may state that, under the circumstances, Mr. Yeltsin bet on the right horse…. The obvious question is how Mr. Putin’s team will cope with Russia’s mounting economic problems, but undoubtedly they will be looking for a solution within the constitutional framework Mr. Yeltsin drew up. By doing so they will contribute to the final historical triumph of the first president of Russia.
Of course it turned out that Yeltsin wanted a strongman in the Kremlin to protect the precious wealth he and his family and associates had accumulated, not democratic reforms. And I simply could not imagine that the constitutional framework itself would be targeted so quickly and so brutally. Like most, I imagined Putin would favor his own friends and be more disciplined, not that he would immediately steer the entire country back toward totalitarianism.
Then we come to the forces outside of Russia, the Western administrations and investors that had practically given up on Russia as the decade came to a close. Instead of using their considerable leverage to back reforms and democratic institutions, the leading free world nations limited their investment to nuclear disarmament and other relatively easy cooperation. While it should already be clear that I do not subscribe to the myth of Russian humiliation, much more could have been done had there been a sincere interest in the West regarding the future of Russia.
George Soros was a participant in and a witness to many of the events around the attempts to reform and rebuild the Russian economy in the post-Soviet years. His investment fund was as important a factor in many ways as the International Monetary Fund. He was also very disappointed in the feeble and hypocritical engagement by the West in the late 1990s. By the time Putin arrived at the presidency, Soros saw the writing on the wall. Much earlier than most observers, he saw where Putin would take the country. In February 2000, the famous investor penned an article in Moskovsky Novosti. Most of it was dedicated to describing the battle royal behind the scenes between Chubais and Berezovsky, and criticizing the West for what he saw as its failure to support Russia adequately. In between, he had this to say about the future of the new Putin regime:
But the state built by Putin will hardly be based on the principles of the open society. It will continue to use the feeling of fear that emerged after the apartment explosions. This state will try to establish its power over private life and it will struggle for the world superiority of Russia. It will be authoritarian and nationalistic. It is impossible to predict the development of events, but it is also clear that this perspective is emerging, and that it could have been avoided if the Western free society followed the principles of free society.
When it comes to getting Putin right, and getting him right early, the highest laurels must go to Andrei Piontkovsky. One of the sharpest minds in political analysis, Andrei also has one of the sharpest tongues. In January 2000, he called Putinism “the highest and final stage of bandit capitalism” and “the coup de grace” to the head of the Russian nation. The article he penned in February 2000 in the Russia Journal deserves immortality for seeing very clearly what most of us only feared. He begins the article in the World Economic Forum in Davos that January, where he was amused to watch a panel of Russian officials attempt to answer the question “Who is Putin?”
The distinguished gentlemen who in the corridors had been busy aggressively pushing their product under the brand-name “Vladimir Putin, next Russian president” were at a loss—none of them wanted to speak out in public, or they dared not to speak out in public. It was as when referring to the deceased—“one either speaks well of them, or says nothing at all.” Only Putin is still very much alive and politically kicking.
He then relates how he answered the question himself on his own panel the next day. As ever, Andrei pulled no punches:
“Don’t pretend you don’t know who Putin is,” was my answer. You are just not prepared to face the truth. I have no more knowledge about Putin than you have. But what I do know is enough for me to make my personal judgement as an ordinary Russian voter about this contender for the post of president—that this man is dangerous for my country and for the world.