Siege mentality

The mirrored sunglasses worn by Putin on the cover of Angus Roxburgh’s The Strongman give the Russian president the look of a crude mafia boss, while the half-face photo on the cover of Masha Gessen’s book makes him appear both more ordinary and more sinister. This hints at the difference of the authors’ approach.

Gessen focuses on the trajectory of a postwar Soviet boy growing up in a shabby communal flat, fierce and vengeful in street fights, who dreams of joining the KGB. This dream was fulfilled: Putin got a boring job as an agent in East Germany, and ten years after returning home he surprisingly became the most powerful man in Russia — which, 12 years later, he remains.

His years in the KGB taught him secrecy. And when he was ‘catapulted to power from obscurity’, as Gessen puts it, he was able to use that experience to control information about himself and create his own myth. Gessen’s initial task was to unearth Putin’s past deeds from the darkness that enveloped them. Then her job became even more difficult, for as a public figure he had that much more to hide.

She is able to shed some light on his activities as deputy mayor of Petersburg, thanks to a detailed interview with Marina Salye, a former city councillor, who in 1992 launched an investigation into the notorious ‘raw materials in exchange for food’ scheme which never provided any food for the city. Her report concluded that in his capacity as Head of the Committee for Foreign Relations Putin had entered into contracts of questionable legality and pocketed all the profits from the sale of public resources. Mayor Sobchak’s support of his deputy ensured that the report did not go far.