Native son Putin is the talk of St. Petersburg
Everyone's got a story to sell
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ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (CNN) -- In St. Petersburg today people do not talk about pets or the weather, they ask each other, "Will HE be elected on the 26th of March?"
No one asks whom they are talking about. Everyone knows.
He is Vladimir Putin, a man whose name most Russians had never heard before August 9, 1999, when he replaced Sergei Stepashin as Russia's prime minister.
"He's crazy!" said an inebriated man in a local pub. He was referring to Boris Yeltsin, then Russia's president, who appointed Putin. "Now he gives us some Ras-Putin trying to save his own ---!"
For the first few months, everyone from barflies to serious political analysts talked about Putin's dependence on the so-called "family," calling him a puppet in the hands of Yeltsin's inner circle.
Today, most people feel he has outgrown that role and judge him more by what he has done in the last few months.
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One effect of Putin's newfound fame is that hundreds of reporters from Moscow and abroad now regularly turn up in St. Petersburg looking for the "hometown angle" -- any information about a man who is often called "a white sheet of paper."
Putin grew up here, attended the university here, joined the KGB here and came back here after a few mysterious years in Germany. He also started his political career here.
'No more Putin memoirs!'
With so many reporters in town and with our economic hardships, many people are trying to cash in with "I knew him when" stories. The media are awash with individuals who went fishing with Putin 20 years ago, or who once rode up three floors in an elevator with him.
Teachers from two Petersburg schools argued on a local TV show over which school educated such a wonderful child. (Putin changed schools when he was about 15.)
A few days ago, after the last of a long string of would-be authors demanded that our newspaper publish a story about how he and Putin were eaten by mosquitoes at a student camp in 1973, I put a sign on my door that said, "NO MORE PUTIN MEMOIRS!"
While plenty of people are eager to give us such details, paradoxically those who might really have something to say are not eager to meet with journalists. Putin's past as a KGB spy and the power inherent in his present position make them fearful that what they say might come back to haunt them.
For example, when Putin came here to announce his candidacy for president, he met with the city administration at city hall. It was a dramatic day for those who worked there, many of them bureaucrats who were there when Putin was the vice-mayor.
After the meeting, many of them crowded around Putin eager to shake hands with the new "Big Man." In their eyes and in the air around them were questions: "Do you remember us? Do you recognize us? Don't forget us -- we are so faithful ...."
'The Gray Cardinal'
Often called "The Gray Cardinal," Putin worked at city hall during the administration of Anatoly Sobchak. It was a period of political and economic scandals, a novelty for Russians, and extremely painful. But only twice were Putin's activities brought into question.
The first time was in 1990 when Putin, newly appointed as Sobchak's adviser, was accused by local deputies of licensing the export of raw materials in exchange for food. The raw materials left the country, but the food never arrived.
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The deputies recommended that the mayor fire Putin, but Sobchak refused. The city prosecutor's office investigated but, citing a lack of evidence, declined to press charges.
Before the mayoral election in 1996 candidate Alexander Belayev accused Putin of buying real estate on the Atlantic coast of France. In one of the many heated exchanges between Putin and Belayev, Putin said, "I don't even know where this Atlantic coast is!"
Unable to prove his contention, Belayev was forced to apologize.
Great city, provincial fate
Putin also achieved a degree of notoriety by botching two local election campaigns.
In autumn 1995 he was blamed for the humiliating defeat in St. Petersburg of the NDR ("Our Home -- Russia") movement in the State Duma election. Thousands of expensive posters of Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, leader of the NDR, were put up all over town and the economically distressed population grew sick of them.
"What could we do?" said Putin with a shrug. "Moscow sent too many portraits. We couldn't just waste them."
Less than a year later Putin managed Sobchak's re-election campaign, which lost to Vladimir Yakovlev, who is still mayor.
It is difficult to predict the outcome of the coming presidential election from opinions in St. Petersburg. Voters here tend to be generous with Putin because he is from St. Petersburg, and because they think the city will somehow benefit if he is president.
Many here are tired of living in a place that is, as one writer put it, a "great city with a provincial fate."
People here are usually better educated and more informed than the general Russian population. Famous for its poets and dissidents, the city is generally considered the cultural capital of Russia, and residents are especially sensitive to any violation of someone's rights.
'Stupid locals'
Recent polls found that the arrest in Chechnya of Radio Liberty correspondent Andrei Babitsky by federal troops and his subsequent exchange for POWs have damaged Putin's local support and almost doubled the number of those who will vote for one of his opponents.
Unfortunately not everyone in the Putin machine seems to have received the message.
In mid-February, when the fighting in Chechnya was particularly intense and the situation with Babitsky arose, State Duma deputy Aleksey Aleksandrov -- a Putin supporter -- and local bureaucrats held a press conference at which they claimed the local media were being paid $1.5 billion by international terrorists to discredit Putin.
No sources were cited and no proof was offered to a group of angry journalists. It was reminiscent of similar meetings during Joseph Stalin's regime when people said, "We didn't read Pasternak, but we hate his writing." It also put Putin's KGB past in a new light.
A few days later Moscow officials tried to blame the incident on "stupid locals," but the explanation did little to convince anyone it was not the work of the Federal Security Bureau. The FSB is the KGB's successor, and Putin was its head before he became prime minister.
There are still people in St. Petersburg who remember that in 1937 thousands of people were arrested in the middle of the night. Everyone was sure that his case was the mistake of "stupid locals" in the GPU, KGB's predecessor. It didn't occur to them that it was Stalin who had ruined their lives.
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