Word: russian
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...being transformed by Russia. Putin can cut Berezovsky down to size. He can jail oligarchs, scare governors and level Chechen villages. But actually transforming Russia will take more than just political will and cunning. It will also require the kind of good fortune and luck that no modern Russian leader has yet possessed...
Everyone agrees on some other things about Putin. He is polite, meticulous, efficient. He is focused, intense, decisive. He likes systems; he loves order. The universal applied adjective is pragmatic. He is very smart and very, very disciplined. Russian citizens have embraced him as the anti-Yeltsin: tough, sober, sensible. Being an unknown gave him an advantage; he has tailored his appeal to be all things to all people. The Russian longing for a strong hand is perfectly matched by Putin's willingness to wield...
...child, born when his mother was 41 years old. His two brothers died young, one shortly after birth, the other of diphtheria during World War II. Although Vladimir Sr. was party secretary at the train-car factory where he worked, Volodya's mother had him secretly baptized in the Russian Orthodox faith. He grew up in one of the Soviet Union's cramped communal apartments, with no hot water, a frigid common toilet, plenty of kitchen quarrels and the occasional...
Putin was always diminutive--today he is only 5 ft. 9 in.--a small, diligent boy who compensated for his size by learning martial arts. He quickly mastered sambo, a Russian style of self-defense, and later switched to judo, which he practices at black-belt status. "It's not just a sport, you know," he told interviewers in the official biography that appeared in Russia last week. "It's a philosophy. It's respect for your elders, for your opponent; there are no weak ones there." And something else: "You must hit first and hit so hard that your...
...Russians initially regarded the heir apparent with a mixture of derision and dismay, rating his popularity at a measly 2%. Most considered Yeltsin's blessing the kiss of death for any would-be President. But Putin coolly exploited the greatest opportunity he was ever handed. He says he expected his decision to go to war in Chechnya, made virtually that August day, would ruin his political career. But his cold-blooded prosecution of the war to stamp out Chechen "terrorism" and bring the recalcitrant republic back under Russian control struck a chord among the country's dispirited electorate...