Vladimir Putin: The Biography

Vladimir Putin: The Biography

Vladimir Putin has a long history of working for the good of the Motherland, Russia. At least that’s the way it has appeared on the surface. When he entered political office, it was during a time when his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, had made attempts to bring the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) into the capitalist marketplace. Yeltsin had privatized businesses, inadvertently allowing much of the national property and wealth to fall into the hands of a small group of oligarchs who would come to have a monopoly on Russian markets. Corruption flourished and inflation grew. As his popularity waned, Yeltsin resigned under the pressure of a depressed economy and, as his successor, Yeltsin chose his reigning prime minister, Vladimir Putin.

As president, Putin’s goal was, and still is, to reinvent Russia the way he sees it. As a man who has held the presidency for two 4-year terms and one 6-year term, and the position of Prime Minister for two terms under former presidents Boris Yeltsin and Dmitry Medvedev, he will step down in 2018 and ostensibly resume his former position as Prime Minister of Russia. That is, unless he decides to run for another six-year term, which would make him the longest-reigning president in Russian history, after Josef Stalin.

In the eyes of Vladimir Putin, Russia will be an independent nation which bows to no country, whether it’s her shadow nation, the United States, the Mongol lords of China or the gathering storm of the Middle East. Putin has successfully brought Russia out of the chaos created during the Boris Yeltsin years, but he continues to use bullying techniques that are reminiscent of the former KGB as a means to control the press and silence the critics who speak out against him or the Russian government.

Vladimir Putin is unpopular in the Western world and in many of the former Soviet satellite states, but he was named “Person of the Year” by Time Magazine, an endorsement that recognizes him as one of the most powerful people ever to shape the modern world. One things is certain: Vladimir Putin is a leader with vision and, for better or worse, this is what defines him.

Putin is passionate about many things, but for him, the most important thing is the stability of Russia. He is not interested in freedom of speech, freedom of choice or freedom of the press, only in stability and order, something Russia had not seen for decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He has put Russia back into the realm of world powers and, although it may have appeared to be a fading star for quite some time, he alone is responsible for steering his nation away from the terrors brought by Josef Stalin and out of the chaos of Yeltsin’s depressed state.

How did this child of destiny become the powerful leader he is today? It started with humble beginnings in a nation ripe with history and with his own boyhood desire to become a spy, a yearning to be the best he could be, and to prove to himself, to the Russian people, and to the world that Russia was the greatest of nations.

Vladimir Putin: The Biography