From Volodya, With Love

Volodya is the diminutive of the Russian name Vladimir. Russian names can have several short forms. My friend and "sister" Tatiana's is Tanya. Her long time boyfriend Nickolai is Kolya or Nick. Anastasia can be Nastia, Stasia, Tasia, Nastenka, and more.

However, here I am writing about a Volodya named Vladimir Putin, the new "Tsar of all the Russias" which is currently the Russian Federation. I was mightly surprised when out picking up some things this evening to see the current issue of Time magazine with Putin's face on it. 'So Time thinks Putin should the person of the year,' I wondered. Well certainly Vladimir Putin was an unexpected choice winning out over Al Gore, J.K. Rowling, General David Petraeus and China's paramount leader Hu Jintao. After my initial mild shock, I thought it all made sense and goes right along with our times. There is a bad, cold, and calculated sort of Romanticism about Putin just like it was with Saddam Hussein.

I read Vladimir Putin's autobiography back in the late 1990s. One thing that came out was the man was a man of authority and iron conviction similar to the old Russian autocrats. Putin, I learned then, was quite disciplined, tough, and saw himself as a Christian even though he had been a member of the KGB and had grown up knowing nothing be an atheistic Soviet Russia. A warmth once existed between President Bush and Putin because the former no doubtedly saw in the latter a follower of the Good Book. Over the years both men has shown some dictatorial tendencies and a tendency to get into wars they cannot nor have the desire to extricate themselves from. Under Putin some Russians feel that Russia never had it so good with a vibrant nouveau riche and luxury stores and items that would have made the Communists and Bolsheviks puke. But the rich is getting richer in Russia and the poor are not seeing the fruits of capitalism like they had hoped. Corruption is rampant. The mafia runs plenty behind the scenes. Journalists are learning fast to not criticize and make waves against Putin's methods or accidents or bullets may happen.

So is Putin a new Tsar? If one has read the histories of some of the Russian Tsars, I would say that Putin is a throw back to them having the characteristics of a strong sense of destiny for Russia, purpose, authortarianism, and perhaps even silent feelings of his own divine right. When Putin was first elected president, I asked my Russian friend what did she think about Russia's possibilities with this man. "Putin was with the KGB," she said with concern and wariness in her voice. "We don't know about this man." Last year the director of studies at the language school I taught at in Istanbul who is a Russian citizen, said to me, "Putin looks like a rat! The man is terrible! Russia was destroyed because of people like him before. Those who ruled there during Communist times were mainly drunken soldiers and peasants. The Romanovs at least had some class. They were cultured and learned, but Putin comes from this same group that caused so much suffering in Russia."

In the prelude to Times' article "A Tsar is Born" which can be read here, it is written, that Putin is "no ordinary politician. He is charmless yet adored by his nation. He took a country in chaos and remade it in his own image: tough, aggrieved, defiant." (12/31/07-1/7/08 issue)

According to Time, Vladimir Putin has never sent an e-mail in his life.

Perhaps a new Tsar HAS been born...