An excellent article about a part of Russian president Vladimir Putin's life as a KGB agent in Germany in 1989. I will excerpt only a small portion here:
Kohl praised Gorbachev, the man in Moscow who'd refused to send in the tanks, and he used patriotic language - words like Vaterland, or fatherland - that had been largely taboo in Germany since the war. Now they prompted an ecstatic response.
It's not known whether Putin was in that crowd - but as a KGB agent in Dresden he'd certainly have known all about it.
The implosion of East Germany in the following months marked a huge rupture in his and his family's life.
"We had the horrible feeling that the country that had almost become our home would no longer exist," said his wife Ludmila.
"My neighbour, who was my friend, cried for a week. It was the collapse of everything - their lives, their careers."
One of Putin's key Stasi contacts, Maj Gen Horst Boehm - the man who had helped him install that precious telephone line for an informer - was humiliated by the demonstrating crowds, and committed suicide early in 1990.
This warning about what can happen when people power becomes dominant was one Putin could now ponder on the long journey home. |