Word: vladimir
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...Vladimir Putin is a man possessed. He wants to rebuild a strong Russia with a powerful presidency and a flourishing economy. He is determined to crush separatism in Chechnya or anywhere else within Russia's borders. But first and foremost, he wants to end a decade of deep Russian despair. These are dramatic and ambitious goals but they are not new. Since Peter the Great, Russia's leaders have come to power dreaming of sweeping reforms. Most have ended up disappointed, thwarted by the country's unwieldiness and its bureaucrats' subtle sabotage. Despite Putin's refusal to offer explicit policies...
...Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has been catapulted from the shadows into the most public of positions: President of all Russia. He is about to inherit constitutional powers akin to a Czar's in what is called an election but amounts to a coronation. But make no mistake: this was not a fair fight. Putin was handpicked for this handover by a tiny cabal in the Kremlin, little different from the ways of the old Soviet Central Committee. Boris Yeltsin and his cronies needed a successor loyal enough to give them the guarantee they craved of immunity from prosecution and strong enough...
...VLADIMIR WHO? THE RISE OF A DISCIPLINED ROMANTIC...
Many politicians come to high office relatively unknown: look at the long history of surprising American Presidents in this century alone, from Truman to Clinton. And biography is not necessarily destiny. But bits and pieces of biography are almost all we have to assess Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin...
...siege of Leningrad and a faithful Communist Party father invalided out of the army with multiple shrapnel wounds. He was a late 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...