Russia's Leader: Smart,
Modest -- and an Enigma
By KAREN ELLIOTT HOUSE
MOSCOW -- Last week a colleague and I spent two hours in the Kremlin with Vladimir Putin. During the course of our interview, I gained a strong impression of how he has been able to maneuver so deftly on so many issues, ranging from terrorism (he's with the U.S. but against unilateral U.S. action against Iraq) to missile defense and the expansion of NATO (he's opposed to both but won't waste a lot of political capital in a losing effort).
His leadership is defined by five traits, the most obvious being intelligence. This is a man who has mastered world issues and also the mental equivalent of the martial arts in which he has trained -- not wasting energy on resisting overwhelming force but rather using an opponent's power to his own purpose. His intelligence shouldn't be surprising, as he was one of the young stars of the KGB, which in his generation still attracted the Soviet Union's best and brightest.
A second visible trait is his efficiency. There is absolutely nothing exaggerated about Mr. Putin. No over-the-top rhetoric. No expansive physical motions. No excesses of manner. There is an economy about everything he says and does. Yet this is no robot. Rather, Mr. Putin seems like a well-honed athlete expending exactly the right amount of energy for the ends he seeks.
The third trait that impresses a visitor, particularly one who has interviewed a variety of world leaders, is the remarkable absence of visible ego. He arrives for the interview 20 minutes after the appointed hour, shakes hands, smiles warmly but not effusively, and then seats himself on one side of a large oval table in a newly refurbished Kremlin meeting room. The grandeur of the setting is in sharp contrast to his simple style. A butler appears with tea and cookies, but Mr. Putin has no staff retinue. He wastes no time in small talk. He is businesslike, but not brusque. He sits, looks expectantly across the table with penetrating blue eyes made more vivid by a blue shirt and tie, and awaits the first question.
Most world leaders have high quotients of self-importance. Saddam Hussein sought to convince a visitor he was the meanest man one would ever meet, while Bill Clinton worked to ensure visitors considered him the most charming. Even George W. Bush, a man who projects modesty, seems self-conscious about his need to display gravitas. By contrast, Mr. Putin projects an enormous earnestness -- even intensity -- about Russia as a major power. But he doesn't seek to project himself as the embodiment of Russia. He appears self-confident without being self-centered.
Fourth, Mr. Putin clearly seems to enjoy being an enigma. Take the issue of his religious faith: What's known is that Mr. Putin's mother baptized him at birth without his communist father's knowledge. In 1993 Mr. Putin's mother gave him his baptismal cross as he was going on an official visit to Israel and told him to have it blessed at Christ's tomb, which he did. He says he has worn the cross ever since. A visitor, noting that he had recently shown the cross to President Bush, himself religious, asks, are you a religious man?
For the first time in the interview, Mr. Putin pauses awkwardly. He shifts in his chair and his soft voice drops further. "In every person there should be a moral or spiritual basis. . . . If there is a God it must be in the heart of a person. Philosophy of religion is very important for a country like Russia, because after the dominant ideology -- communist ideology, which essentially took the place of religion in our country -- ceased to exist as a state religion, nothing can replace universal human values in a human soul as effectively as religion can. Religion makes a person spiritually richer."
Mr. Putin pauses again. "I'd like to leave it at that. I don't want to go into details on this as I consider this to be something very personal. And I don't think that this is a sphere which should be . . . used to some political ends."
So Mr. Putin clearly has thought deeply about religion, and has now spoken at some length about it. But is he, in fact, a religious man? The enigma remains.
In the end, one comes to realism as the clearest characteristic of this man. Asked what political leaders he admires, he lists three: Charles de Gaulle, Ludwig Erhard and Franklin Roosevelt. The connection he makes among them is they each had to reconstruct a nation -- from the devastation of war in the case of de Gaulle and Erhard, and from economic depression in the instance of Roosevelt. "The common element," he says, "is what is the best way to rehabilitate a country."
Roosevelt's genius, he adds, was that he "understood his people and did what was needed. The most important in my view is that people have confidence and trust in their political leadership. Only then can you carry out political and economic reform."
The clear message here is that Mr. Putin, for all his diplomatic dexterity, is focused above all on reconstructing his own country. He is unlikely to expend unnecessary energy in conflicts with the U.S. At the same time, he doesn't want his country to be dependent on others for the long-term. The ultimate enigma is what Mr. Putin will do if, like de Gaulle, Erhard and Roosevelt, he succeeds in reconstruction. Would he then seek to revive a Greater Russia, autocratic and expansionist, or write a new chapter in Russian history?
Mr. Putin, with eminent realism and skill, makes the best of his currently weak hand. But one has the overriding sense that he is playing this game over the long-term not to minimize losses but to win.
Ms. House is president, international, of Dow Jones, publisher of this newspaper. |
