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The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen
Gessen is a seasoned Russian journalist and LGBT activist who left the country several years back to escape persecution. Amazingly, they published this book while still living in Russia.
It isn't exactly a biography, not least because un-doctored details about Putin's past are thin on the ground. Putin's official biography - commissioned by a member of Yeltsin's inner circle, shortly after they delivered Putin to power - is essentially a rugged shirtless photoshoot in longform. It makes a big deal of Putin's thuggish background, and boasts proudly of his temper. Various childhood friends reminisce fondly about all the fights little Vovka used to win on the streets of St Petersburg. But Gessen doesn't dismiss it as hollow propaganda - in fact, they argue, Putin has been honest since the start about his character. He's not a clever politician who uses a thuggish persona to his advantage. He's a thug who uses politics to expand the reach and impact of his bullying impulses. Many of his gaffes and errors over the years (and a depressing number of his persecutory, often lethal vendettas) are best explained by the same dismal anger management skills that had his younger self brawling on public transport over trivial provocations.
He's also been nothing but honest about his enthusiasm for power without accountability:
His ambition to join the KGB was what eventually motivated young Putin to stop brawling and start paying attention in school. He doesn't, by Gessen's account, seem to have been a particularly useful KGB agent - most of his career was spent in backwater postings. He was in Dresden during the fall of the Berlin Wall, and found the storming of Stasi headquarters a source of baffled disgust, apparently unable to see why anyone should be so upset about a perfectly legitimate state intelligence apparatus. I doubt Putin's lack of empathy is news to anyone at this point, but I was struck by how genuine and personal his rage seemed at the idea of ordinary people trying to stand up for their "rights" - in scare quotes, of course - against the state. In as much as he believes in anything, Putin seems to believe in the absolute authority of the state.
Well, that and money. Along with his temper and his establishment-mindedness, the other key trait Gessen draws out is his greed. And I mean, again, I'm sure this isn't something anyone's surprised to hear about the man whose name has become globally synonymous with kleptocracy, but Gessen draws out a very interesting point about pleonexia - by their definition, "the insatiable desire to have what rightfully belongs to others". After listing a bizarre catalogue of thefts - from government funds snatched without the barest shred of plausible deniability, to a Super Bowl ring belonging to an American businessman which he asked to see and then brazenly pocketed - Gessen says:
As well as in-depth analysis of Putin's character and public image, the book describes for a Western audience the Russian political context at the turn of the century - the bright hope that came with the collapse of the Soviet Union, followed by the bitter disappointment of Yeltsin's government - and summarises major events in Putin's rule, from the war in Chechnya to a disturbingly long list of suspected assassinations. There were times I found the narrative hard to follow, for reasons I think are probably more to do with legal limitations than Gessen's skill as a writer: many of these crimes are by nature unprovable, but there are so damn many of them that interpreting all Gessen's hints, implications and pointed questions got exhausting.
But the places I most wanted to close the book were the ones that best showcased Gessen’s skill as a writer: the accounts of the apartment bombings and terrorist sieges that Putin was accused of either instigating or intentionally escalating. The horror, the sheer senseless cruelty, the seething injustice are almost too vivid to stomach. I came to this book looking for context on how atrocities like the Mariupol hospital bombing could have happened, and I got that in spades. But I think I also found some context for the complacency of the general Russian populace. The sadistic tactics Putin’s using in Ukraine were honed domestically as much as in his other wars.
The book ends on what at the time of publication would have been a hopeful note: the 2011 Snow Revolution. Given the current situation, it read more now like one final, painful turn of the screw.
It isn't exactly a biography, not least because un-doctored details about Putin's past are thin on the ground. Putin's official biography - commissioned by a member of Yeltsin's inner circle, shortly after they delivered Putin to power - is essentially a rugged shirtless photoshoot in longform. It makes a big deal of Putin's thuggish background, and boasts proudly of his temper. Various childhood friends reminisce fondly about all the fights little Vovka used to win on the streets of St Petersburg. But Gessen doesn't dismiss it as hollow propaganda - in fact, they argue, Putin has been honest since the start about his character. He's not a clever politician who uses a thuggish persona to his advantage. He's a thug who uses politics to expand the reach and impact of his bullying impulses. Many of his gaffes and errors over the years (and a depressing number of his persecutory, often lethal vendettas) are best explained by the same dismal anger management skills that had his younger self brawling on public transport over trivial provocations.
He's also been nothing but honest about his enthusiasm for power without accountability:
“I was most amazed by how a small force, a single person, really, can accomplish something an entire army cannot,” he told his biographers. “A single intelligence officer could rule over the fates of thousands of people. At least, that’s how I saw it.”
His ambition to join the KGB was what eventually motivated young Putin to stop brawling and start paying attention in school. He doesn't, by Gessen's account, seem to have been a particularly useful KGB agent - most of his career was spent in backwater postings. He was in Dresden during the fall of the Berlin Wall, and found the storming of Stasi headquarters a source of baffled disgust, apparently unable to see why anyone should be so upset about a perfectly legitimate state intelligence apparatus. I doubt Putin's lack of empathy is news to anyone at this point, but I was struck by how genuine and personal his rage seemed at the idea of ordinary people trying to stand up for their "rights" - in scare quotes, of course - against the state. In as much as he believes in anything, Putin seems to believe in the absolute authority of the state.
Well, that and money. Along with his temper and his establishment-mindedness, the other key trait Gessen draws out is his greed. And I mean, again, I'm sure this isn't something anyone's surprised to hear about the man whose name has become globally synonymous with kleptocracy, but Gessen draws out a very interesting point about pleonexia - by their definition, "the insatiable desire to have what rightfully belongs to others". After listing a bizarre catalogue of thefts - from government funds snatched without the barest shred of plausible deniability, to a Super Bowl ring belonging to an American businessman which he asked to see and then brazenly pocketed - Gessen says:
Putin's extraordinary relationship to material wealth was evident when he was a college student, if not earlier. When he accepted the car his parents won in a lottery, though the prize could have been used to greatly improve the family's living conditions, or when he spent almost all the money he made over the summer to buy himself an outrageously expensive coat - and bought a cake for his mother - he was acting in ways highly unusual and borderline unacceptable for a young man of his generation and social group. Ostentatious displays of wealth could easily have derailed his plans for a KGB career, and he knew this. The story told by the former West German radical - of Putin demanding gifts while in Dresden - completes the picture. For a man who has staked most of his social capital on conforming to the norm, this was particularly remarkable behavior: it seems he really could not help himself.
As well as in-depth analysis of Putin's character and public image, the book describes for a Western audience the Russian political context at the turn of the century - the bright hope that came with the collapse of the Soviet Union, followed by the bitter disappointment of Yeltsin's government - and summarises major events in Putin's rule, from the war in Chechnya to a disturbingly long list of suspected assassinations. There were times I found the narrative hard to follow, for reasons I think are probably more to do with legal limitations than Gessen's skill as a writer: many of these crimes are by nature unprovable, but there are so damn many of them that interpreting all Gessen's hints, implications and pointed questions got exhausting.
But the places I most wanted to close the book were the ones that best showcased Gessen’s skill as a writer: the accounts of the apartment bombings and terrorist sieges that Putin was accused of either instigating or intentionally escalating. The horror, the sheer senseless cruelty, the seething injustice are almost too vivid to stomach. I came to this book looking for context on how atrocities like the Mariupol hospital bombing could have happened, and I got that in spades. But I think I also found some context for the complacency of the general Russian populace. The sadistic tactics Putin’s using in Ukraine were honed domestically as much as in his other wars.
The book ends on what at the time of publication would have been a hopeful note: the 2011 Snow Revolution. Given the current situation, it read more now like one final, painful turn of the screw.