Introduction

Albert Speer, who worked closely with Adolf Hitler, later wrote about his experience – and his words apply equally to the cases of Putin, Stalin, Napoleon, Mussolini, Mao and Ataturk:

“There is a special trap for every holder of power, whether the director of a company, the head of a state, or the ruler of a dictatorship. His favour is so desirable to his subordinates that they will sue for it by every means possible. Servility becomes endemic among his entourage, who compete among themselves in their show of devotion. This in turn exercises a sway upon the ruler, who becomes corrupted in his turn. The key to the quality of the man in power is how he reacts to this situation.” 

This book starts with what we know about Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. 

General Armand de Caulaincourt, a former French Ambassador to Russia, advised Napoleon Bonaparte not to invade Russia 1812, as did Hermann Goering advise Adolf Hitler in 1941 as they thought the risks were too great. Both Caulaincourt and Goering, a famous WW1 fighter pilot and head of the German airforce, had friendly relations with their leader and considerable knowledge of military affairs.

We do not know if anyone close to Vladimir Putin advised him not to invade Ukraine in February 2022, but the hesitancy shown by several members in the televised Russian Security Council meeting only days before the invasion suggests there was a lack of enthusiasm. The most equivalent person to Caulaincourt and Goering in Putin’s official working office circle, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, had good relations with Putin but no direct significant military experience. In any case Putin’s extreme self-isolation during COVID19 suggests that he would have been largely left to consider the issue of Ukraine alone. 

Putin’s conduct at the Security Council suggests that Napoleon’s childhood friend and first secretary, Louis Bourrienne, was right when he wrote that “intoxication which is occasioned by success produces in the heads of the ambitious a sort of cerebral congestion”.  The very successful annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the total consolidation of his power inside Russia would have significantly influenced Putin’s thought processes. 

The conduct of Putin’s minions at the Security Council meeting also suggests that Albert Speer was right about the “subordinates” and their “servility”.  One liberal orientated Russian newspaper reported afterwards that during the Security Council meeting these subordinates sat “with gloomy, tense faces and afraid to look at each other, paralyzed with fear”  as they all said what they knew Putin wanted them to say.

How did such a situation arise? When Putin first came to power, he was described by some commentators as little more than an ex-KGB operative of moderate success who got lucky and had the leadership baton passed to him from Yeltsin and then benefited from a favorable international scene and rising oil prices before progressing to a dictatorship because of his historical grievances. Putin first became president of Russia in 2000, over 23 years ago. If Putin was there only by appointment and was without talent he would have been replaced in some way years ago. 

Describing Josef Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev stressed his superior ability: “He didn’t simply come with a sword and conquer our minds and bodies. No, he demonstrated his superior skill in subordinating and manipulating people.”  The Yugoslavian politician, Milovan Djilas, who had close dealings with Stalin and his lieutenants from 1944, observed that Stalin “sized up people quickly and was always particularly skillful in exploiting people’s weaknesses”.  

In the same vein, Adolf Hitler was also a man of superior ability. Albert Speer noted that Hitler “knew men’s secret vices and desires, he knew what they thought to be their virtues, he knew the hidden ambitions and motives which lay behind their loves and hates, he knew where they could be flattered, where they were gullible, where they were strong and where they were weak; he knew all this by instinct and feeling, an intuition which in such matters never led him astray.”  

While a young officer in KGB, Putin underwent further training and told one of his friends that he was “now an expert in human relations”  Whether it be by training or instinct – or, most likely a combination – Putin has talent in this area. In an interview with a journalist, Ilya Ponomarev, who was a Member of the Russian Duma until 2015 – and is now a very strong Putin critic – described Putin as a “brilliant psychologist”, the “best I know”, and “the best communicator”. “When you are talking to him like this (face to face) you feel like finally you have found somebody who truly understands you better than your wife”. 

Andrei Illarionov, chief economic policy adviser to Putin from 2000 to end 2005, has told the story of how he came to this position despite telling Putin that his military actions in Chechnya were “criminal”. “Because he is a good psychologist, not academically, but intuitively, he said: ‘Stop. In future we will not talk about Chechnya.’ For 30 or 40 seconds he remained silent, forcing himself to calm down. Maybe it lasted a minute. Then he said: ‘Let’s talk about the economy’.” Putin suggested another meeting next day, but Illarionov only agreed after several more meetings to be Putin’s “economic adviser”. Illarionov later said: “He had outsmarted me.” 

But there may be another factor in Putin’s leadership. Halide Edibe, a female Turkish political activist who generally admired Kemal Ataturk who became Turkey’s first president in 1923 after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, wrote: “Of course, one knew all the time that there were men around him who were greatly superior in intellect, and far above him in culture and education. But though he (Ataturk) excelled them in neither refinement nor originality, not one of them could possibly cope with his vitality. Whatever their qualities, they were made on a more or less normal scale. In terms of vitality he wasn’t. And it was this alone that made him the dominant figure.”

“Vitality” may be defined as a highly developed combination of mental and physical vigor.  Benito Mussolini successfully aimed to project such vitality in his Italian speeches and public appearances.  In the case of Putin, he clearly has more vitality than someone like Medvedev. 

Napoleon said that “there are two levers for moving men – interest and fear.”  As far as “interest” is concerned, the main factor in Putin’s favor is that his Russia is – for the great majority of people – better than Yeltsin’s Russia in the 1990s; and this goes for both the general population and those with strong civic and nationalist feelings. When the writer Emil Ludwig asked Stalin why “everybody” in his country feared him, Stalin responded: “Do you really believe a man could maintain his position of power for fourteen years merely by intimidation? Only by making people afraid?”  

In 2020, journalist Masha Lipman said: “The Putin of 2013 or Putin of 2012, when he started his third term after a four-year break, when Dmitry Medvedev had been President, was a different leader from the one that he was at the beginning of his Presidential career, in the two-thousands.”  “Anybody who’s been in power for twenty years changes. So think of the experience that he has gained over time. During the twenty years that he has been in power, Russia went through terrorist attacks, the war in Chechnya, natural calamities, technological catastrophes, mass protests, and he coped with all those.”  “I would say even somebody who does not approve of his policies cannot help marvelling at how he’s been in power for twenty years and enjoys an approval rating of about seventy per cent, and this without keeping his nation at large in fear.” 

However, it is also the case that Putin displayed a ruthless and nasty side to his character right from the beginning of his time in power, and the promotion of fear has become a more important lever with time – and particularly after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine! 

Ironically, the long-lasting dictator is himself fearful. As Albert Speer put it: “To the imagination of the outsider Hitler was a keen, quick, brutally governing dictator. It is difficult to believe that in reality he edged along hesitantly, almost fearfully. But that was the case.”  

Some analysts of Russian affairs such as Mark Galeotti have claimed that Putin is “not a risk taker”  and can be slow to make decisions. But he has also written that Putin can initially “panic” when faced with an unexpected and threatening situation. Putin biographer Philip Short has pointed out that one of Putin’s KGB recruiters thought Putin had a “lowered sense of danger”  and Short thinks that Putin “knows he is prone to taking risks” and has thus “become very cautious – almost to the point of indecision”.  Short says there is a “contrast between someone who is very incremental and takes a long-time to decide and someone who will in certain cases jump in and take a big gamble”.  As will become clear later in this text, the same might also be said, to some degree, of Hitler.

So, what drives Putin? What does he really want? All successful – that is, long lived – dictators are very self-centered. A British Ambassador wrote about the Italian dictator: “His first consideration is Mussolini, his second is the fascist regime, his third Italy”. 

Yeltsin later wrote of his decision to make Putin prime minister (and possible presidential successor): “Putin had the will and the resolve.”  As became clear, Putin’s first steps after becoming president in 2000 demonstrated will and resolve – and vitality – and were all about restoring order inside Russia and then restoring what he perceived as Russia’s historically important place in the world. 

Putin may have initially seen himself in a similar way to Kemal Ataturk who in 1937 explained his position in these terms: “Man, as an individual, is condemned to death. To work, not for oneself but for those who will come after, is the first condition of happiness that any individual can reach in life. Each person has his own preferences. Some people like gardening and growing flowers. Others prefer to train men. Does the man who grows flowers expect anything from them? He who trains men ought to work like a man who grows flowers.”  

Milovan Djilas, the Yugoslav politician who spent time with Stalin and his lieutenants, noted that even in Stalin, “certain great and final ideals lay hidden – his ideals, which he could approach by molding and twisting the reality and the living men who comprised it”.  In a similar vein, Mao Zedong’s personal doctor for over twenty years, Li Zhisui, wrote that Mao insisted “on policies that no one else had ever imagined, dangerous, risky policies like the Great Leap Forward (to promote rapid industrialization), the people’s communes, and the Cultural Revolution (attacking “those in authority pursuing the capitalist road”), all of which were designed to transform China”.  

Putin has long been developing a fanatical side related to his reading of Russian history and, like Mussolini, is increasingly thinking of self and equating himself with an ideal of Russian greatness. I wrote about this in 2011  and there was probably accelerated reading during his COVID19 isolation periods. This has resulted in Putin’s ruthlessness becoming increasing cruel to achieve his aims. After the outbreak of war with Ukraine, when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was asked whether Putin consulted with him, he replied, “Putin has three advisers — Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great.” 

Some close observers of Putin, such as Philip Short  and Mark Galeotti  have suggested that Putin “does not want to die in office”. Mussolini’s son-in-law and Italian Foreign Minister, Galeazzo Ciano, noted in his diary in 1941 that the aging dictator can be somewhat sensitive about this: “The Duce (Mussolini) is exasperated by the publication in the magazine Minerva, published in Turin, of a motto by some Greek philosopher or other.” The motto read: “No greater misfortune can befall a country than to be governed by an old tyrant.” 

History is likely to record that Putin initially did good things for Russia but by the end the situation had radically reversed. Chen Yuan, an early colleague of Mao, got the direction of change right when he said: “Had Mao died in 1956, his achievements would have been immortal. Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say?” 

While not wanting to be remembered like Mao, Philip Short (as well as Galeotti and others) has suggested that Putin saw the February 2022 “special military operation” as the “last opportunity to bring Ukraine to heal” and that “bringing Ukraine back into the fold would have been the crowning achievement of his career”.  Putin also probably thought that he was the only person who could do this.

In August 1939, Hitler spoke to his generals to convince them it was time to take military action against Poland, saying: “Essentially all depends on me, on my existence, because of my political talents. But I can be eliminated at any time by a criminal or a lunatic.”  Therefore, according to Hitler, Poland had to be taken quickly! Several months later, with Poland under the belt and Germany consequently at war with Britain and its allies in the west, but still at peace with Russia in the east, Hitler told senior military officers that the time was propitious for a war on two fronts because of “my own person. Neither a military person nor a civil person could replace me. I am convinced of my powers of intellect and decision. Now there is a relationship of forces which can never be more propitious”.  

Finally, a pithy description of what this book is about from beginning to end might be the words that Anatoly Sobchak, Putin’s mentor in St. Petersburg, before Putin moved to Moscow. According to journalist Andrei Kalitin who interviewed him for his program “Top Secret” in 1999, Sobchak later said to him: “I understand why Yeltsin chose Putin as his successor — he would never betray you. But I also understand that once he has power, Putin will never give it back to anyone.”