12/27/2022 0 Comments Putin man of the year![]() In August 1988, a high-ranking official from Moscow arrived in East Berlin and began recruiting German sleeper agents, who continued to work with the KGB, or rather the institutions that replaced the KGB, even after the reunification of Germany and the fall of the Soviet Union itself. On the contrary, some of them had been preparing already. And many of them were not, in fact, entirely shocked by the events of 1989. As the title indicates, Belton’s book is not a biography of the Russian dictator, but a portrait of this generation of security agents. As Catherine Belton demonstrates in Putin’s People, large chunks are missing from his story and from the stories of his KGB colleagues-the other members of what would become, two decades later, Russia’s ruling class. Like Scarlett O’Hara shaking her fist at a blood-red sky, Putin swore, it seems, to dedicate his life to restoring his country’s glory.įrom the January/February 2018 issue: Julia Ioffe on what Putin really wantsīut Putin’s cinematic depiction of his last days in Dresden captures only part of what happened. In interviews, Putin has returned to that moment-the moment when reinforcements did not come-always describing it as a turning point in his own life. But for the KGB officers stationed in Dresden, the political revolutions of 1989 marked the end of their empire and the beginning of an era of humiliation. And it had a terminal disease without a cure-a paralysis of power.” The shock was total, and he never forgot it.įor hundreds of millions of people, the fall of the Berlin Wall was a great triumph: The moment marked the end of hated dictatorships and the beginning of a better era. That it had disappeared,” Putin told an interviewer years later. “I got the feeling then that the country no longer existed. Panicked, Putin called the Soviet military command in Dresden and asked for reinforcements. Toward evening, a group of protesters broke away from the Stasi building and started marching toward the KGB villa. “All our communications, our lists of contacts and our agents’ networks … We burned so much stuff that the furnace burst.” “We destroyed everything,” remembered one of those officers, Vladimir Putin. ![]() Nearby, frantic KGB officers-the Soviet advisers whom the Stasi had long referred to as “the friends”-were barricaded inside their villa, burning papers. I t was December 1989, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and in Dresden, crowds were gathering outside the headquarters of the Stasi, the East German secret police, shouting insults and demanding access. Illustration by Celina Pereira BStU Ulrich Hässler / Ullstein Bild / Getty
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |