Person Of The Year is Exposed! December 28, 2007
Posted by Reginald Johnson in Culture, Humor, International, Life, Politics.add a comment
It should not have been a surprise to me. I should have known…or at least put the pieces together. As I mentioned before, I attended the Time Magazine’s Person of the Year breakfast here in Washington earlier in the month. While attending, a panel spoke of whom they consider as Person/Thing/Idea of the Year. The moderator of the event, James Carey [Time Magazine’s Washington Bureau Chief], said something interesting. He said, “I’m just a moderator here, so I won’t put my two cents in; but I will say that Putin needs to be looked at.”
On into the breakfast, a person in the audience also mentioned the Russian president’s name. Mr. Carey finally mentioned that he had lived in Russia for three years working in Time Magazine’s Moscow office. He then went to great detail about Putin’s success and what changes he had brought to Russia.
It didn’t hit me at that moment. I was too busy thinking about the oddity of Sen. Brownback wanting to nominate the ‘immigrant’ as person of the year. It’s an oddity because Brownback and his GOP supporters are the main opposition to immigrants in the United States. They want to limit those that come and make it harder for those that do come to become U.S. citizens (All of this is another story for another day).
Back to the Person of the Year: I would have never guessed Putin would have been selected. Granted, he has changed the landscape of Russia; but I would have thought Time would have gone for someone from the West.
Putin is a good choice. Some believe that the Russian President is devoid of emotion. They say that the strict government doctrine of the former Soviet Union flows coarsely through his veins. They also say that he clearly understands that power might be achieved by the suppression of ordinary needs.
Putin has very little visible security at his dacha, Novo-Ogarevo, the grand Russian presidential retreat west of Moscow. The 25-minute drive there takes you through the soul of modern Russia, past decrepit Soviet-era apartment blocks, the mashed-up French Tudor-villa McMansions of the new oligarchs and a shopping mall that boasts not just the routine spoils of affluence like Prada and Gucci but Lamborghinis and Ferraris too.
President Vladimir Putin stands at 5 ft. 6 in. He seems like a small guy, but has spent years as a black-belt judo expert and spends his early mornings swimming for an hour or more. Putin is unmistakably Russian. He has those historic Russian chiseled facial features and cold heartless penetrating eyes. Putin does tell reporters that he listens to classical composers like Brahms, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky. He shockingly reveals that he has never sent an e-mail in his life and often reads from a Bible.
He clearly preaches about Russia’s role in the world, “The dissolution of the Soviet Union was a tragedy; particularly since overnight it stranded 25 million ethnic Russians in ‘foreign’ lands”. He admits that he has no intention of trying to rebuild the U.S.S.R.
He often likes to explain that he does not desire to win over the West. Putin has an interest to restore to Russians a sense of their nation’s greatness. When historians talk about Putin’s place in Russian history, they draw parallels with Stalin or the Tsars. Putin, one can’t stress enough, is not a Stalin. There are no mass purges in Russia today, no broad climate of terror. But Putin is reconstituting a strong state, and anyone who stands in his way will pay for it. Putin has returned to the mechanism of one-man rule.
The problem with Putin is that anything he has worked hard for could go wrong. The depth of corruption, the pockets of militant unrest, and the ever present vulnerability of the economy to swings in commodity prices—all this threatens to unravel the gains that have been made. But Putin has played his own hand well. As Prime Minister, he is set to see out the rest of the drama of Russia’s re-emergence.
