Man without a face: Book shows how Putin found his way to power

One of the numerous memes that flew about on social media when Russia invaded Ukraine early this year was that of President Vladimir Putin poring over a map on the table and poking his menacing finger into it as he demanded from some military Generals, “This is Kenya, right? Show me Bartabwa.”

Bartabwa is a civic unit in the northern recesses of Baringo County that extends into the volatile Kerio valley.

You might think, or even fear, that Putin was actually planning to pulverize the remote village. Not really! But then, again, you never know.

The man asking about it in the meme, though thousands of miles away, is one who has been widely characterised or has partly characterised himself as highly temperamental and pitiably prone to punching whoever dares to cross his path.

And here, a vociferous member of the county assembly had fired a verbal missile on Vladimir via video clip.

As President Putin put his army on the road to storm Ukraine on February 24, and with the United States of America and Nato members wringing their hands in helplessness, the world cringed and gasped in horror.

Netizens from around the world took to their phones to pummel Putin with social media jabs and jibes. One of them was the MCA referred to above.

The creators of the meme may have been using it to warn the Bartabwa civic leader that he was dealing with a prickly pugilist who could send a nuke to neutralize an entire village.

It could also symbolise the trepidation and the terrifying mysticism with which many people have come to regard the ruthless Russian ruler. 

Masha Gessen, a Russian-American journalist and activist, wrote in the book The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, that Putin’s life and style are so shrouded in mystery and self-perpetuated mythology that even children live in mortal fear of him.

“When my kids were little,” Gessen says, “they made Putin into a sort of household villain, the bogeyman who could come get you if you did not mind your table manners.”

The investigative journalist who now works for the New York Times newspaper is a virulent critic of Putin and has written many books and articles about Putin’s repressive regime.

Unmasking Putin

The Man Without a Face seeks to unmask the lowly KGB officer who rose from obscurity to a dreaded powerful leader of the former superpower and the world’s largest land mass.

The book seems to ask the ubiquitous question, Who is Putin? And attempts to answer it through interviews with people who (should) know him and reviews of other books and texts about Putin.

In the end, it appears that pretty little is known of the “small” man who has dominated the former Soviet Union for much of the post-cold war era.

In the last 22 years, Putin has become President of Russia, Prime Minister and back to President again and, despite growing pro-democracy voices, there is little sign that he could be letting up any time soon.

According to the author, Putin, a self-professed ghetto thug, was accidentally thrown into the presidential path in the late 1990s by a coterie of President Boris Yeltsin’s allies desperately looking for his successor.

The President was ageing, ailing and heading for retirement. His close associates and family members scouted around for a malleable and disciplined person who would not haunt the retiring president and his “family” with possible corruption charges. 

Thus, out of the blue, someone mentioned Putin’s name, a hitherto unknown KGB (now FSB) operative who had also served as deputy Mayor of Leningrad (St. Petersburg).

Though he had worked in other public offices such as the University of Leningrad (as registrar) and the St. Petersburg city council, his roles aren’t clear.

When he was introduced to Boris Yeltsin as a possible successor, the President’s first impression of the self-effacing spy was “… he seems alright, but he is kind of small.”

Nonetheless, President Yeltsin promptly appointed Putin Prime Minister in August 1999, just six months before the March 2000 presidential election.

Then, surprisingly, Yeltsin resigned on New Year’s Eve and handed over power to Putin as acting President three months before the election. 

In his final speech, Yeltsin said “Russia should enter the new millennium with new politicians, new faces, new, smart, strong, energetic people…Why should I hold on to my seat for six more months when the country has a strong person who deserves to become President and to whom every Russian has linked his hopes for the future?”

“Who is Mr Putin?” The mystery of Putin’s personality even as he was steamrolled into power was not only difficult to explain, but also unsettling, as happened at an Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland when the question from the panel drew instant fidgets, awkward silence and blank stares from Russia’s delegation of top business and political elites.

Gessen tut-tuts in the book that “the world’s largest landmass, a land of oil, gas and nuclear arms, had a new leader, and its business and political elites had no idea who he was. Very funny.”

The Man Without a Face paints a vengeful picture of Putin as one who pursues and persecutes his enemies wherever they hide in and outside Russia.

The author attributes nearly all deaths of his critics and other atrocities on the general public to Putin.

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