Gessen, M. — The Man Without a Face The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin [2012]

Putin’s social, political, and academic standing changed when he was thirteen: as a sixthgrader, he began to apply himself academically and was rewarded not only with induction into the Young Pioneers but, immediately after, by election to the post of class chairman. The fighting continued unabated, however: Putin’s friends told his biographers a series of fighting stories, the same plot repeating itself year after year.

“We were playing a game of chase out in the street,” a grade school classmate recalled.

“Volodya was passing by, and he saw that a boy much older and bigger than me is chasing me and I am running as hard as I can. He jumped in, trying to protect me. A fight ensued.

Then we sorted it out, of course.”

“We were in eighth grade when we were standing at a tram stop, waiting,” recounted another friend. “A tram pulled up, but it was not going where we needed to go. Two huge drunken men got off and started trying to pick a fight with somebody. They were cursing and pushing people around. Vovka calmly handed his bag over to me, and then I saw that he has just sent one of the men flying into a snowbank, face-first. The second one turned around and started at Volodya, screaming, ‘What was that?’ A couple of seconds later he knew exactly what it was, because he was lying there next to his buddy. That was just when our tram pulled up. If there is anything I can say about Vovka, it’s that he never let bastards and rascals who insult people and bug them get away with it.”

As a young KGB officer, Putin reenacted his earlier fights.

“He once invited me to witness the Procession of the Cross at Easter,” recalls still another friend. “He was on duty, helping cordon off the procession. And he asked me if I wanted to come see the altar in the church. I said yes, of course: it was such a boyish thing to