I also carefully listen to his talks, how he is speaking, if he stumbles or speaks smoothly. He speaks evenly, mainly without an intonation. Only sometimes Putin allows himself to puts himself out in a sucessfuly-repressed access of agitation. This is when he is angry. Then his muscles show on his cheekbones.
By all the enumerated signs, he gives the impression of a bad person who carefully hides his bad character under an indifferent business-like mumbling and turning his eyes away from us. Since the president is short, possibly he has always problems with appearing significant and for this goal he developed a sum of tricks. A business-like, rapid and cold speech creates the effect of distancing from others, isolates him. Not closing his eyes also serves the same goal. By isolating himself he elevates himself. From him we do not have to expect drunken scandals humiliating for Russia, which characterized his predecessor Yeltsin; we do not have to expect open hot anger in public. Maybe it is not bad that he does not behave like Ivan the Terrible in front of the TV cameras, but on the other hand it is worse if he has a revengeful character and he settles his scores with people behind the scenes. Not by himself. But with the help of efficient faithful servants. For example the Prosecutor General, for example the Federal Security Service, for example, with the help of the justice ministry, the Prisons Department, for example with the help of the central electoral commission…
Sometimes president Putin’s impassivity and inhumanity work against him, like in the case with the Kursk submarine. Then, you remember, he stayed in the hot Sochi, on the shore of the south sea, while only by his duty as president he must have urgently left to the shores of the Barents Sea. And there lead the rescue of the sailors, at least a bold attempt of rescue. He must have immediately go into the water on the shore, in boots and hasten the rescuers. In rubber boots. He must have used all proposals that came from foreign States, to use any help. And when, a few days later, nothing could be done anymore, he, exhausted, with the trace of sleepless nights, must have stood on the background of this cold sea that became the grave of one hundred eighteen Russian sailors and told to the camera: “Country citizens, Russian people, I did all I could, I couldn’t do anything else!” However he did not do this and we saw him tanned and calm on the shore of the south sea, in a polo shirt. He proved to be inhuman for the first time then. He proved to be indifferent. And then followed his historical cold answer to Larry King’s question: “What happened with your Kursk submarine? “It sunk”, simply informed the president, with a meek and calm expression on his face. He did not even have the idea to declare a national mourning. Already then it became clear to what level he is indifferent to his compatriots. The president’s face is brightened with sincere smiles, cordiality and sympathy only when we see him meeting big western leaders, his friends: Bush, Berlusconi, and Schroeder. Here his charm is lightening up. A question: why isn’t he the same with us, with the Russian citizens? He thinks that we need to be treated with severity or at least impassionately?
We mostly see him on television on the background of the old fashioned, “a la tsar” Kremlin furniture. He is sitting on small couches embroidered with brocade with carved and curved legs and on similar chairs. The wallpaper and the curtains, on the background of which we see him have necessarily the drawing of two-headed eagles. With a hint or an eloquent statement: here are the tsarist attributes of the president’s power. But we have a republic since the times of the February revolution of 1917! Or do I misunderstand the two-headed eagles? Since I have lived in France for a long time I remember that Francois Mitterand has sat on similar furniture, on couches with curved legs for two presidential terms. But I still did not see royal lilies and crowns there, in the Elysee Palace, on television. Pavel Pavlovich Borodin, the restaurateur of the president’s Kremlin palace apparently followed the models of the French presidents’ Elysee Palace because the furniture in the American president’s White House is less curved, the couches there are more linear and simple. My opinion is that the president of Russia, a country where from one third to half of the population are poor should not appear surrounded by such bad furniture of old fashioned wealth. My opinion is that Putin’s daily-televised meetings with the ministers around the same small table showed to the entire country is only an akward performance. That this little table was initially intended by its creators to play cards almost. There is no evidence that this table serves the president for work: there are no spread papers, no folders or files, no computer. Why cheat the population in such a vulgar manner? Imitate work. Here he is, Putin, in the business-like monotonous voice of a firm president (hiding his eyes) asks questions to a minister: “Why didn’t you do so and so?” The minister, holding a folder and coughing, affirms: “so and so is already done and this and that will be done in a week.” The citizen must be happy. The president is sober, the work is advancing. The minister is caughing; the affairs are in the folder. Or maybe these are old newspapers?
I am very interested to know what is our president’s ideal leader image? It is clear that it is not a worker in a darned jacket with folders occupying the entire table and that have migrated to the little sofas and broken them. Or whose personal computer is straining itself with all its megabytes and cannot hold all the presidential documentation. It is clear that Putin’s ideal is not Lenin who burned his brain with work, dictating to three typists at once in the puffs of smoke emitted by the workers and soldier deputies. Many important KPSS members renounced Lenin in 1990-91, entire battalions and regiments of party functionaries slammed their party cards against the table! From 1990 the retired KGB lieutenant colonel worked with his former Leningrad State University teacher Sobchak, sharing his views, so it is not Lenin, Sobchak would not have admitted a man with such ideals. One can understand the president’s political ideal with the help of his personal esthetic tastes that have particularly showed during his two inaugurations. I have already described the inaugurations in detail in the chapter “You seem to think you are a tsar”. He imitates Russian autocracy, our country’s ideology until 1917. Mister president of the Russian Federation has turned to autocracy as a model. Both consciously and unconsciously. More unconsciously, so to speak, the call of the blood, the traditions, since in our country every policeman racketeering stalls near the metro behaves like an autocrat… I will return to autocracy later; I only ask to understand and to accept my observations over Russia’s leader. This is important.
I will cite the New York Times. The newspaper tells its readers about the press conference of Russia’s president. “Even when Putin was speaking calmly and even softly his declarations were visibly harsh… When he was talking with someone his body behaved like during a duel. When he was asked questions he often leaned back against the chair, moving his shoulders or stretching his back like an athlete between approaches… When the question was asked he leaned forward, transferring his weight to his forearms and giving detailed answers… His declarations recalled the style of an active micromanager.” This is how the Washington Post characterized the same press conference: “The Russian leader spoke for three hours, bursting in anger outbreaks and attacking the critics of Russian politics with a grimacing face.”
“ Irritated, angry, with grimaces.” Nobody from the foreign journalists saw the president kind. I have never seen him kind. Either he cannot be kind by his nature, or he thinks that his functions – Russia’s president – obligate him to stay wicked. Most probably he is unkind by his nature and thinks that a tsar must be harsh and wicked. In Russian history the people ingratiatingly called their tsar “little father”. The word “tsar – little father” supposes some touch of kindness; the people hoped for the tsar’s kindness. And they also said “tsar-sovereign”; mostly this address is seen in popular prints about Peter the Great. Peter the Great was clearly not a little father for the people; he was a bad, mustached, bearded cruel father. President Putin is also behaving like our father, wicked, demanding, grimaces, hiding his eyes. He beats up his family, don’t expect a smile from him, does not give gifts. And he did not built Saint Petersburg, gives up lands. And demands that we readily go to the war he has invented and sacrifice ourselves for the terrorists in our cities. The Chechens do not want to live in his family but he is keeping them by force, by beatings. Vladimir Vladimirovich, mister President, do you firmly believe that you can force your family to live together with you with beatings? Without love, with beatings? No, you don’t, I suppose. Then why are you forcing the entire country to suffer you?