Glowing Putin Book Rings Propaganda Bells

From its family tree covering seven generations to its accounts of precocious athletic prowess, the new biography “Vladimir Putin: A Life History” is raising eyebrows here for appearing to bring back the Soviet tradition of writing paeans to the nation’s leader.

“I have not read anything like that about anyone since I read about Vladimir Lenin in school,” said a thirtysomething professional, adding that in the book Russia’s current president is “treated like God, basically.”

“The Putin book and the ones about Lenin are identical,” said Yuri P. Shchekochikhin, a deputy in the lower house of parliament, “in that they create an image of a person totally devoid of all human shortcomings, who is never afraid and who impresses those around them--from the time they are in the crib.”

The biography, written by Oleg Blotsky, a trained propagandist and former military journalist, makes the case that Putin was heroic leadership material from his youth in a cramped communal apartment in St. Petersburg, then known as Leningrad. Putin, an only child, grew up virtuous, disciplined and tough enough to take down opponents bigger than himself.

But despite the 309-page volume’s fawning praise and saccharine reminiscences, something of a more human Putin peeks through.

Russia’s future president comes across in its pages as a bit of a loner, who rarely joined the crowd or stood out in the classroom and for some reason was not invited to join the Communist Party’s equivalent of the Boy Scouts, the Young Pioneers. In fact, the skinny youth born in 1952 seems more like James Dean, fighting his way up from the mean concrete “jungles.”

Chechen rebels and wayward oligarchs take note: During boyhood, Putin often found himself in schoolyard brawls, and everyone seems to recall that he was good with his fists.

According to Blotsky’s sources, Putin was so adept at fighting that, though small in stature, he once decked two loudmouthed drunks minutes after they stepped from a tram. Another time he attacked someone playing tag because the larger kid was chasing Putin’s friend. And his judo coach compares the Russian president’s moves to those of a snow leopard.

“Vovka has never allowed any scumbag or cheeky fellow to bully and pick on people and get away with it,” childhood friend Nikolay Alekhov recalls in the book, using Putin’s nickname in those days.

Putin acknowledged being unruly in his early years.

“I was brought up in the yard [outside housing complexes]. Living in the yard was like living in the jungle. Very similar!” he recalled. “School is some kind of a structured society where clear-cut norms of behavior exist. But when a person is brought up in the jungle, then for a while one continues to live by the law of the jungle.”

He fought frequently, he admitted in an interview with the author, and his schoolyard battles taught him two lessons important in later life: “You must be ready to retaliate immediately for any offense against you” and “to win any fight you must go to the end, and fight as if it is your last, decisive battle.”

Blotsky’s book is the first major biography of Russia’s enigmatic leader, and it reads at times like a parody of propaganda from another era. At least that is what critics hope it is--and not a sign that the bad old days are coming back.

“If I were the president, I would never allow such a book to be published,” said Pavel I. Voshchanov, a onetime spokesman for former President Boris N. Yeltsin who is now a newspaper commentator. “This is a typical Soviet throwback--neither a novel nor a biography but some kind of a servile panegyric done in the worst Soviet traditions.”

Blotsky, who has covered the fighting in Chechnya for the Moscow daily Izvestia, said he gained access to Putin through presidential aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the spokesman for Russia’s military campaign in the separatist republic. Blotsky is a graduate in special propaganda from the Moscow Military Foreign Languages Institute and has worked for several newspapers.

Blotsky says the book was his idea, driven by how little was known about Putin when he became president two years ago.

At a news conference last month, Blotsky said that the book will be the first of three parts and that he is planning to start work on the second volume, which will be titled “The Road to Power.” He is hoping that Yeltsin will cooperate in describing how he made Putin his protege and successor.

Blotsky denies any suggestion that the Kremlin ordered him to write a flattering biography. He also said it was only because of his passing acquaintance with Yastrzhembsky that he was able to get the first of “five or six” interviews with Putin--plus meetings with Putin’s wife, Ludmila. Blotsky said he once talked with the first lady for eight hours straight.

Voshchanov, for one, was skeptical of Blotsky’s claim that the book was not the Kremlin’s idea. “I don’t see how this book could appear without the consent of the president,” Voshchanov said.

But Alexander Gavrilov, editor of the weekly Knizhnoye Obozreniye, or Book Review, said he found merit in the work, though he did not believe everything in it.

“It is a good biography written by an honest journalist who likes President Putin and doesn’t conceal it. Some critics may say that it is too servile, but I won’t agree,” Gavrilov said. “But the problem is that if you ask a school principal about Putin’s school performance and his conduct, how can you expect him to say that Putin got bad grades and was a hooligan? Of course the principal will say that he was the conscience of the school and only beat up the bad kids.”

The book is divided into 35 “stories,” most of them recollections about Putin and influential people in his life, written in simple, credulous language.

Putin does seem to have been highly disciplined. After having received average grades at a high school specializing in chemistry, he earned entry into the elite St. Petersburg University knowing that a law degree would make him attractive to his future employer, the KGB. In the entrance exams, Blotsky reports, Putin earned a B in literary composition and an A in all other subjects.

The book also sheds light on how joining the spy agency became Putin’s ambition when he was still a teenager. Blotsky suggests that Putin was under the spell of a popular 1965 novel, “Shield and Sword,” glamorizing a fictional KGB agent, Alexander Belov. Like Belov, Putin would study chemistry and German, and stand out as methodical, athletic and a paragon of self-control.

Even though he admired the book, Gavrilov said parts of it defy credibility, such as the incident in which an anonymous student pops up and recalls in detail what happened when Putin received a birthday present from the teacher four decades ago.

“When you read such episodes, you just can’t help feeling that they have been made up,” Gavrilov concluded.

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Sergei L. Loiko and Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.