“During his studies, enthusiastically narrate the official sources of the president’s biography, Putin led an active social life,” he went to construction battalions, participated in sambo competitions, fought for “labor reserves”. In the institute he started to professionally practice judo. In this time Japanese martial arts in the USSR were mostly a prerogative of the special agents. Putin became sport master of judo in 1975. Already a KGB agent, in 1976 he became Leningrad’s judo champion. After that year Putin’s sport successes come to naught. Biographers explain this circumstance by service trips.
In university, in the beginning of the fifth session Putin was recruited by state security agents. And after graduating he was directed to the KGB Moscow school where he spent a year. According to his own words Putin “accepted to work in the KGB instantly and without hesitating for patriotic reasons”. One of his friends remembered that in youth Putin himself tried to initiate his recruitment but he didn’t succeed – the KGB was suspicious of initiative takers. However they have apparently noticed the promising guy and later found him by themselves.
My acquaintance with the State Security Committee happened a couple years earlier than Putin’s. In October 1973 I fell in their vision field, apparently for many reasons at once: I was rubbing elbows with dissidents (in particularly with the famous V. Gershuni), with foreigners (with my wife I visited Venezuela’s embassy and was close with its ambassador in Moscow R. Burelli), my wife’s sister was married to a former Lebanese attachй and lived in Beirut and according to some sources was a GRU agent (with which the KGB’s external intelligence always had hostile relations). I was arrested in my apartment on Maria Ulyanova Street and later called many times to the KGB office on Dzerzhinsky Street. I categorically refused the offer to be an informer and report to the KGB about what happens in Venezuela’s embassy and among the nonconformists, artists and poets to whose circle I belonged. In response to my stubborn answer I received the proposition to leave Russia, which I did with my wife in the following 1974 year. So the KGB had taken part in my life, influenced it and my formation as a person. Because all of this took place in the West where I was expelled thanks to the KGB efforts.
Lagging behind me, following the flow while I was swimming against the flow, Putin did not manage to have the monstrously rich life experience I had. (1960-1967 – Kharkov’s factories, then from 1967 to 1974 – Moscow’s milieu of intellectuals and dissidents and then the American experience of 1974-1980 and the French one of 1980-1992.) His experience is the modest and one-sided, monotonous, typical experience of a soviet person. Such an experience does not help to understand the problems of Russian life nor the life of other countries. VVP’s modest stay (farther about this) in the German Democratic Republic did not enlarge much the worldview of the FSB director and later president. It did not enlarge much. But let us follow further the flow of Vladimir Vladimirovich’s university life.
According to the Arguments and Facts newspaper Putin was almost expelled from the institute’s second session. It is not clear for what. If we are to believe the dean N. Korpachev about the good marks, they could not have expelled him for poor progress. Arguments and Facts (issue 3, 2000) makes the supposition that there were maybe “ideological” reasons. Since the student Putin, like many others was fond of Russian variety art and also, supposedly recorded Villy Tokarev and Mikhail Shufutinski who were not officially supported then on tape.
“In the evenings Putin used to play backgammon with his comrades”, says a source. (I would not be surprised if he played backgammon with himself. This is the kind of man he is, the RF president.) Besides backgammon, Putin’s hobby became cars. His first car became a Zaporozhetz that Putin acquired in 1974. The origin of this Zaporozhetz is unclear. Supposedly it was won in a lottery. Either by VVP himself or by his father Vladimir Spiridonovich.
According to Elgam Ragimov, his university friend Putin does not like vodka (at least he did not like it then), but he loved milk. He liked to visit bookstores on Nevski Street and liked to drink beer with friends. “Also Putin liked to play jokes on his friends and acquaintances”, informs A. A. Mukhin’s investigation “Vladimir Putin’s special file”, from where I took most part of my information about the president’s biography. However it does not say how the president played jokes. There are mean jokes and there are nice ones. “He loved to argue on political subjects, defending Russians and Russia”, point out the same source. And also: “During this period Putin, who had escaped from his “tight” childhood compensated his reserved character by joyfulness. This joyfulness has accompanied him ever since”. This is one strange reminder about the supposed joyfulness of student Putin. Today he does not give the impression of a joyful person. At the same time A. A. Mukhin tells us: “It is interesting that according to Putin’s neighbors in Saint Petersburg (his communal apartment near Moscow’s station), children were always a bit scared of him”. The joyfulness is hard to believe in but not the fact that children were scared of such a man. Children, like animals have an acute sensitivity towards dangerous people. A cat will never sit in the lap of a dangerous person.
IN THE “OTSTOYNIK”
So, the university is finished. And mysteries instantly appear. What did the twenty-three years old graduate did next? Official biographies say that after spending a year in KGB’s Moscow School in 1975 he was directed to his native Leningrad as a junior commissioner investigator. Other sources affirm that already in 1975 Putin has worked about five months in the secretariat of KGB’s Leningrad’s department, “working on some files”. Finally, third sources (for instance the Versia newspaper issue 2, 2000) have spread evidence that Putin was working in West Germany, in particularly in Bonn already in 1975. It turns out that it was right after graduating from a civil university, without even studying in a KGB school. The “version's” author Petr Pryanishnikov wrote: “The official Bonn is still certain that the officer of the First Central Department of USSR KGB’s 4th section Vladimir Putin who was fluent in German coordinated the activities of the soviet secret-service net in Austria and the FRG”. Pryanishnikov writes that Putin returned to Germany (the Eastern part) in the middle of the 1980s. However, other sources indicate that Putin really was in Bonn in 1975, was arrested as a soviet agent and was then quickly extradited to the USSR. And that it is because of this arrest, a failure in fact, Putin has never worked on the FRG or any other capitalist countries’ territory again. He was noticed and thus his value as a KGB officer became low forever. He could be used only in socialist countries. I am inclined to believe the version about the arrest in 1975 in Bonn, otherwise why did Putin never work in capitalist countries after. The journalist Pryanishnikov’s “fluent in German” is of course an exaggeration. After many years we do not hear fluent German from president Putin, we hear a very approximate one.
In the official version V. V. Putin’s further career after KGB’s Moscow School looks thus: from February to July 1976 he attended preparation courses for operations staff. After these six months, before 1977 he worked in Leningrad’s KGB department, in his own words in a “counterintelligence subdivision… worked with the foreign element…” According to his colleagues Putin worked in the 5th section of Leningrad’s KGB department that was part of the Fifth Central Department system that supervised “the fight with the ideological diversions of the enemy”.