(Host) Commentator Olin Robison reflects on the Russian President and the road to modernization.
(Robison) On June 16, 2001, President Bush and President Vladimir Putin of Russia met for the first time at a castle in Slovenia. This was of course quite early in the Bush presidency.
After their one-on-one conversations they held a joint press conference. One of the reporters asked the question, “…is this a man that Americans can trust?” President Bush’s response became the headline. He said, “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy…. I was able to get a sense of his soul…” and later the President added, “I wouldn’t have invited him to my ranch if I didn’t trust him.”
I was quite frankly astonished. If Bill Clinton had made such a statement papers like the Wall Street Journal would have been all over him. But the press generally simply reported the President’s remarks without much comment. Some of my Russian friends were openly amused. In fact, they laughed. President Putin is, if anything, inscrutable. If President Bush was able, in so short a time, to “get a sense of his soul,” then he was one of the few who have.
Vladimir Putin is president of Russia largely because Boris Yeltsin picked him to be his successor and Putin, in turn, has sheltered and protected Yeltsin and his family from prosecution or harassment.
During the 1980’s, the young Vladimir Putin was a junior to mid-level KGB agent posted to East Germany. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union he returned to his home town Leningrad soon to become, once again, St. Petersburg and worked there for the mayor who was one of the most progressive figures in Russian politics. That became the platform which enabled Putin to come to Yeltsin’s attention and set the stage for Putin’s astonishingly rapid rise to power.
Putin is a very intelligent, politically astute, smart man. He believes in strong state control and in doing whatever is necessary to keep control at the center. He is especially talented at isolating and marginalizing any potential opposition.
It is highly doubtful that George Bush got any sense of Vladimir Putin’s “soul.” If anything, it is more likely that it was the other way around.
After the horrors we now refer to simply as 9/11, Putin was quick to offer his support to President Bush. In the trauma of that moment and its aftermath, Putin did something dramatic and far-reaching: he firmly and publicly cast Russia’s lot with the West generally and the United States in particular.
There followed, in short order, Russian acceptance of U.S. troops in the Central Asian republics that had formerly been part of the Soviet Union. It was a major strategic shift on the part of Russia. It was evidence of Putin’s sense of the moment as well as his confidence in his own authority.
Much of the apparatus that allows Putin to exercise such authority is a direct carry over from the Soviet past. A Russian friend recently said to me that Putin is, “what you Americans call a tough cookie.”
There certainly remains in Russia what some refer to as a “democracy deficit.” But the country is nonetheless changing under Putin. And modernizing. A short time ago I was waiting in a departure lounge at Moscow’s international airport looking out at a fleet of Russian planes with the label ‘Aeroflot’ in giant letters on their sides. One of those planes, to my amazement, was a Boeing 777. Really. Wow! Yes, times are changing in Russia, even if Putin isn’t the most democratic fellow around.
This is Olin Robison.