From Russia, With Love and Responsibility

Sure, President Bush and his Kremlin counterpart talked about chemical weapons and terrorism during Bush’s Russian trip. They signed a promise to cut their deployed nuclear arsenals by two-thirds, established a new bilateral strategic relationship and issued serious declarations about half a dozen other important matters. That was on Friday in Moscow.

But on Saturday, they talked of love.

What, a student at St. Petersburg State University asked Bush and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, are the qualities of a successful manager?

Two, Putin replied: “You have to have a sense of responsibility, and you have to have a sense of love.”

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Bush and Putin have met five times in the last year, each time talking about how they have broken down decades of mistrust between Washington and Moscow by developing a personal relationship.

On Saturday, they demonstrated it.

They flew separately to St. Petersburg, Putin’s native city, but then spent most of the day together--and not in activities at which Bush spends much time at home.

With their wives, they passed two hours at the Hermitage museum. Part of the time was spent at lunch, part talking with reporters. Still, they did a power walk through a history of Western art.

Entering the room in which Titian’s “Venus With a Mirror” is being displayed--and where reporters and photographers were stationed nearby--Bush focused intently elsewhere. He regarded Putin. He made small talk with reporters. But he made no eye contact with the partially nude Venus.

Later, in a city that is home to one of the world’s most famed ballet companies, the two couples saw a new production of “The Nutcracker” by the company known here as the Maryinsky and in the West as the Kirov. And, taking advantage of the dusky light late in the northern evening as the summer solstice nears, they went for a cruise on the Neva River after the performance.

At one point, Bush caught himself appearing too informal as he and Putin spoke with the students at the university, which is the alma mater of the Putins and Lenin.

The question dealt with how to prevent Russia’s best and brightest from heading to the United States.

“I tell Vladimir all the time--I mean, Mr. President all the time--that Russia’s most precious resource is the brainpower of the country. And you’ve got a lot of it. It’s going to take a lot of brains in Russia to create a drain,” Bush said.

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The two presidents began their visit at the Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery north of the city. It is situated in a community of dreary apartment blocks and an occasional factory.

Buried there in 186 mass graves are the remains of 490,000 people, all victims of the 900-day Nazi siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1944.

At a measured pace, Bush and Putin followed two Russian soldiers who marched with precise, synchronized and painfully slow goose steps past the burial mounds down a path the length of three football fields, to jointly present in silence a single wreath at a statue of heroic proportions representing the Russian Motherland.

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There are all sorts of changes in Russia, of course, and not just in relations with the United States.

In stores retailing to Moscow’s upscale consumers, $5,000 watches are routine. Along the heavily traveled roads to a suburb on the city’s west side, a portrait of the Sphinx in gold advertises the latest-model Lexus. And in and around the Kremlin, security agents demonstrate their skills at manhandling and surreptitious searches.

Some things never change.

Consider the moment Friday when Bush and Putin plunged into a crowd of about 100 tourists and students at Cathedral Square, within the Kremlin.

Russian security agents took that as a signal of sorts to plunge themselves into American television camera crews, jostling some, whirling others and turning the pack into the equivalent of a rugby scrum. The Russian crews were ignored.

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Putin has made his residence at Novo-Ogarevo, a government-owned compound west of Moscow. It is just beyond a ghetto of sprouting McMansions, imposing two- and three-story brick structures satisfying the dacha-needs of Moscow’s successful entrepreneurs.

To reach the dwelling on the Moscow River, a visitor passes through two sets of large gates in a stone wall perhaps 20 feet high and drives up a roadway that cuts through a forest of birch and pine.

The home is a two-story structure of yellow stucco, set off by four white columns in the front and natural wood trim around the windows. Think rustic Camp David gone upmarket.

Russian reporters say a sports pavilion on the property includes an indoor swimming pool and a gym.

The Bushes and the Putins had dinner there Friday night; afterward, the Bushes spent the night at the compound, just as the Putins had overnighted at the Bush ranch in Texas in November.

“We talked about our families, we talked about our passions, we talked about matters of life that friends would talk about,” Bush said Saturday. “But the thing that impressed me the most about the president and his wife was how much they loved their daughters.”

Again, love.

“That’s a universal value,” Bush said.