From Mr Putin (Fiona Hill & Clifford Gaddy, 2015) p76-7
HISTORY FOR PUTIN IS VERY personal and immediate as well as a source of material for his own political use. More significant than the Putin family’s deep roots in Ryazan province is the fact that Vladimir Putin is the child of survivors of one of the blackest periods in Russian history during the Second World War. This personal history of survival is the third element in providing the context for Putin’s worldview. It has multiple dimensions and has produced a series of clearly identifiable personal and policy responses.
In World War II, Putin’s father, also called Vladimir, served in a so-called destruction battalion set up by the NKVD (Narodnyy komissariat vnutrennikb del) – the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, a forerunner of the KGB. The battalion was sent behind enemy lines, into Nazi-occupied territory, to carry out a scorched earth policy and destroy critical infrastructure. In this case, Vladimir Putin senior was deployed to territory that is now part of modern Estonia. He was among only 4 of 28 commandos who returned alive from one operation outside Leningrad. Severe wounds suffered early in 1942 disqualified him from further active duty. Out of the hospital, Putin senior remained in Leningrad with his wife and son. At least 670,000 of the Putins’ fellow Leningraders died during the subsequent Nazi blockade of the city from September 1941 to January 1944, from artillery barrages, bombings, starvation, or disease (some estimates put the number of casualties at 1.5 million). The Putin family’s five-year-old son, Vladimir’s older brother, was among them.
This personal story of death and survival during the siege of Leningrad fits neatly into the general context of Russia’s national historical narrative. In this narrative, Russia constantly battles for survival against a hostile outside world. Through times of troubles, frequent invasions, and wars, Russia is always put to the test by God, fate, or history. The one critical lesson from history is that Russia, the state, always survives in one form or another. Every survived calamity reaffirms the special status of Russia in history. Vladimir Putin, and almost every other Russian politician, refers to this in public presentations. Just as Russia is put to the test, so are the Russian people, individually and collectively. Some individuals and their families perish, while others survive against the odds – without much protection from the state, but for the sake of the state. Those individuals who make it through are survivors. Their collective experience has turned the Russian population into survivalists, people who constantly think of and prepare for the worst.
The Survivalist as a mentality, or mindset, may be the one that is the most widespread among Russians of nearly all backgrounds and ages, given their shared experiences of war and privation. It is reflected even today, in possibly the most prosperous period in Russian history, in the overwhelming prevalence of the potato and other staple crops grown on private dacha plots. Leningraders or St. Petersburgers like Putin demonstrate this trait more than most. Every Leningrad family was deeply scarred by that terrible time. Vladimir Putin, born soon after the war, knew everything about the sufferings of his family and their fellow citizens, including his older brother who did not survive the blockade. Putin understood that had there been enough food in the city, his brother and others might have survived in spite of the Nazi onslaught. As a child and young man, Putin was aware of the dangers that food shortages can pose and of the ultimate vulnerability of cities. Thus, for Putin, his family, and for all Leningraders, the notion of food security became an essential element in the functioning of their native city. Indeed, in a June 2003 Kremlin press conference, Putin even made reference to the fact that he had his own personal experience of growing his family’s food to ensure their basic security. Putin noted, “My own parents in their time worked hard keeping up their garden, labored away from morning till night and made me do the same. So I know very well what it’s all about.”*
* Putin press conference with Russian and foreign media, June 20, 2003. Putin continued: “90 percent of the potatoes grown in the country are grown in these little private gardens. 90 percent! And these gardens produce 80 percent of the vegetables and 60 percent of the fruit.” These percentages were only slightly less as late as 2011. That year Russian families privately grew one-third more potatoes than the entire US. farm sector. The Russian total of “personal” potatoes amounted to over 1,200 pounds per household. Authors’ calculations from data from the Russian Federal State Statistics Service, Statistical Yearbook for 2011. Putin’s comment about working on the family plot is cited in Ries (2009), p. 202. In her article, Ries talks about the potato’s centrality to mechanisms of everyday survival and basic subsistence in Russia and how the humble vegetable also functions as a “complex system of knowledge embedded in historical memory.” The full source for the press conference document is “Stenograficheskiy otchet o press-konferentsii dlya rossiyskikh i inostrannykh zhurnalistov” [Press conference With Russian and foreign media], June 20, 2003, at … The English version is at …
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