The New Tsar (85 page)

Authors: Steven Lee Myers

BOOK: The New Tsar

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25
. Bortsov, p. 80.

26
. Lyudmila Putina provides lengthy accounts of her experiences and courtship with Putin in Blotsky,
Vladimir Putin: Doroga k Vlasti
, p. 35.

27
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 58.

28
. Blotsky,
Vladimir Putin: Doroga k Vlasti
, p. 57.

29
. Ibid., pp. 57–58.

30
. Ibid., pp. 58–60.

31
. Ibid., pp. 59–60.

32
. Ibid., pp. 43–44.

33
. Gevorkyan et al., pp. 59–60.

34
. Blotsky,
Vladimir Putin: Doroga k Vlasti
, p. 53.

35
.
New York Times
, February 20, 2000.

36
. Andrew and Gordievsky, p. 612.

37
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 68.

38
. Andrew and Gordievsky, p. 613.

39
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 53.

40
.
Andrew and Mitrokhin, p. 416.

41
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 63.

42
. Andrew and Gordievsky, p. 614.

43
. Author interview with Sergei Roldugin, September 2014.

44
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 55.

CHAPTER 3: THE DEVOTED OFFICER OF A DYING EMPIRE

1
. Gary Bruce,
The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 12.

2
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 73

3
. Andrew and Mitrokhin,
The Sword and the Shield
, pp. 271–72.

4
. Author interview with Herbert Wagner, former mayor of Dresden and director of the Stasi museum, December 2012.

5
. Usoltsev, p. 50. “Why are you tempted by the West?” Usoltsev recalled saying to the Germans. “You already have a complete paradise here.”

6
. Ibid., p. 123.

7
. Ibid., p. 105; Andrew and Gordievsky say the pressure from the KGB headquarters was so great that “in reports on particular topics they would commonly attribute to unnamed agents information obtained from the media or even invent details that they thought would please the Center” (p. 618).

8
. Usoltsev, p. 68.

9
. Ibid., p. 49.

10
. Blotsky,
Vladimir Putin: Doroga k Vlasti
, pp. 234, 238.

11
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 75.

12
. Usoltsev, p. 64.

13
. Author interview with Horst Jehmlich, Dresden, January 2013.

14
. Usoltsev, pp. 124, 228.

15
. Blotsky,
Vladimir Putin: Doroga k Vlasti
, pp. 251, 49.

16
. Ibid., pp. 86, 256.

17
. The report about the spy BALCONY was published by Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, a journalist who wrote extensively about the BND and Stasi, in
Berliner Zeitung
on Oct. 31, 2011, many years into Putin’s presidency. A longer report on Putin’s activities in Germany is available in German at
http://www.geheimdienste.info/texte/beutezug.pdf
. The authenticity of the account, based on access to highly classified reports, has never been verified.

18
. Usoltsev, p. 110.

19
. Correspondence with Uwe Müller, a former Stasi officer turned analyst.

20
. Author interview with Siegfried Dannath, Dresden, November 2012.

21
. Blotsky’s
Doroga k Vlasti
includes a group photograph of the German and Russian intelligence officers in Dresden. Matveyev sits in the center, Putin far to his right. See photo insert.

22
.
Usoltsev made the comment in an interview with
Der Spiegel
, Oct. 20, 2003, before the publication of his memoir.

23
. Usoltsev, p. 130.

24
. Ibid., p. 211.

25
. Ibid., p. 185.

26
. Bortsov, p. 83.

27
. Andrew and Gordievsky, p. 535.

28
. Blotsky,
Vladimir Putin: Doroga k Vlasti
, p. 251.

29
.
New York Times
, Oct. 7, 1989.

30
. Gevorkyan et al., pp. 77, 85.

31
. Blotsky,
Vladimir Putin: Doroga k Vlasti
, pp. 260–61.

32
. Ibid., p. 260; Gevorkyan et al., p. 79.

33
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 79, though the translation is slightly off.

34
. Blotsky,
Vladimir Putin: Doroga k Vlasti
, pp. 261–63.

35
. Author interview with Siegfried Dannath.

CHAPTER 4: DEMOCRACY FACES A HUNGRY WINTER

1
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 80.

2
. Ibid., p. 79.

3
. Markus Wolf with Anne McElvoy,
The Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism’s Greatest Spy Master
(New York: Times Books, 1997), pp. 5, 224.

4
. John O. Koehler,
Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), p. 23. He gives the location of Böhm’s death as his office, while news accounts put it in his apartment.

5
. Author interview with Horst Jehmlich, Dresden, January 2013.

6
. Interviewed in
Voyenno-Promishlenny Kuryur
, Feb. 14, 2005,
vpk-news.ru/articles/3728
. Putin in his own recollection of the destruction of the files refers to the furnace bursting; it is not clear if he was remembering the same incident or merely echoing the tales—perhaps exaggerated—that he had heard.

7
. Zuchold, interviewed by Mark Franchetti in
The Sunday Times
, March 19, 2000. Aspects of news reports on Putin’s last recruiting efforts in Dresden have been disputed, while other accounts confuse myth and fact, but Zuchold’s own account has not been disputed.

8
. Adam Tanner, Reuters, May 26, 2000,
http://www.russialist.org/archives/4327.html#2
.

9
. Author interview with Sergei Roldugin, September 2014.

10
. Author interview with Jörg Hoffman in Dresden in November 2012.

11
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 87.

12
. Blotsky,
Vladimir Putin: Doroga k Vlasti
, p. 271.

13
.
Gevorkyan et al., p. 86.

14
. Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy,
Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2013), pp. 123–27. The authors argue that Putin’s service in East Germany rendered him an outsider who did not absorb the changes in society into his DNA during those critical years. At the same time, they overstate his intellectual isolation in Dresden, and many Russians who did experience the changes firsthand ended up with views very much like his.

15
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 89.

16
. Blotsky,
Vladimir Putin: Doroga k Vlasti
, pp. 281–86.

17
. Oleg Kalugin,
Spymaster: My Thirty-Two Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West
(New York: Basic Books, 2009), p. 336.

18
. Olga B. Bain,
University Autonomy in the Russian Federation Since Perestroika
(New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003), pp. 139, 40.

19
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 85.

20
.
New York Times
, March 30, 1989.

21
. Anatoly Sobchak,
For a New Russia: The Mayor of St. Petersburg’s Own Story of the Struggle for Justice and Democracy
(New York: Free Press, 1992), p. 10.

22
. Ibid., p. 13.

23
. Ibid., chapter 5, “The Tbilisi Syndrome.”

24
. Robert W. Orttung,
From Leningrad to St. Petersburg
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), p. 130. Orttung provides a thorough history of the political transition in the city before and after 1991; Putin, although an aide to Sobchak, does not appear in the book, an indication of his marginal role early on.

25
. Author interview with Oleg Kalugin, October 2012.

26
. Gevorkyan et al., pp. 88–89. The translation incorrectly refers to Merkuriev as president, instead of rector, as in the original, and makes the obscenity appropriate for a gentler audience.

27
. Author interview with Carl M. Kuttler Jr., January 2013.

28
. Sobchak, p. 10.

29
. Kuttler interview.

30
. Sobchak, pp. 158–59.

31
. Leshchev quoted in Blotsky,
Vladimir Putin: Doroga k Vlasti
, pp. 310–11.

32
. Associated Press, Nov. 13, 1990; also
Chicago Tribune
, Nov. 23, 1990.

33
. Lisa A. Kirschenbaum,
The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 268–69.

34
. Orttung, p. 137.

35
. Andrei Piontovsky, “Stasi for President,”
Russian Journal
, Jan. 17–23, 2000, quoting a television interview with Sergei Stepashin, a general in the Interior Ministry in Leningrad and future prime minister of Russia.

36
.
Gevorkyan et al., p. 91.

37
. Blotsky,
Vladimir Putin: Doroga k Vlasti
, p. 319.

38
. Sobchak, p. 178. David Remnick,
Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
(New York: Random House, 1993), recounts the coup as farce and includes details of Sobchak’s role, pp. 462–63 and 468–69.