Behind the Scenes: Putin, The Rise to Power.

It’s come again: release day for another mammoth deep-dive video on my YouTube channel. This time it’s “Putin: The Rise to Power,” which is a chronicle of the early life, career and rise to the Presidency of Russia of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, a man I’ve come to know much better than I ever wanted to, and who has dominated the last six weeks of my life as I’ve been putting together this video on him. This article is the usual postmortem/thoughts piece on video release day. If you’re a fan of my channel you’ll probably see the video soon enough, but it is embedded below if you need easy access or would like to save the link for later.

Many people have opinions on Putin. But, as I say early in the video, it’s been my experience that very few of those opinions are based on any deep study of the man, his background or the facts of his life. The fact about Putin before 1999 that is more well-known than any other is that he used to be an agent for the Soviet Union’s spy agency, the KGB. But even that fact is usually used as shorthand for some kind of imperfect conception, or outright misunderstanding, of what that’s supposed to mean. This video is intended to put some flesh on the very meager bones of most people’s knowledge of Putin’s past and his identity. It’s an antidote to the claim I’ve heard distressingly often, from politicians, pundits or people on social media, “All you need to know about Putin is…” It doesn’t matter what follows the ellipsis. Whatever it is, it’s a complete rejection of both history and rationality. Putin is far more complicated than just one simple idea.

Vladimir Putin was born poor, the son of a factory foreman from Leningrad who had previously worked for the NKVD during World War II. Vladimir’s older brother died in 1942 during the horrific Siege of Leningrad, an experience that seared his family and was part of the massive collective trauma inflicted on the people of that city by the German attack. Putin was a scrappy, aggressive, pugnacious and unpleasant child, brawling in the streets and trash-filled courtyards in the slums of Leningrad, until he made a deliberate choice to try to get on a different track in life. He was, above all things, a cunning and insightful opportunist. Contrary to what many people may think, it was not the KGB that put him within reach of power in the 1990s, but his service in the city government of St. Petersburg. This video chronicles it all, up until the fateful moment on New Year’s Eve, 1999, when he finally assumed power as Russia’s President—despite never having won, nor even participated in, a single popular election.