Kremlin Wife

The first time Russians saw their new First Lady was on TV— on New Year’s Eve 2000. She was hardly dressed up for the holiday—wearing instead simply pants and a vest Russians call an “alyaska.” She was accompanying her husband on a flight to Chechnya to wish Russian soldiers there a Happy New Year and to raise a glass of champagne.

A few hours before this, Lyudmila Putina was crying as she listened to the resignation speech of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, which propelled her husband, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, into the presidency. Lyudmila saw her husband’s new appointment as a personal disaster. She did not want the limelight, nor did she wish for her husband and family the immense burdens of power.

Today, after two years as Russia’s First Lady, Lyudmila Alexandrovna Putina is following the path she set from her first day in office: keeping a low profile and staying out of politics. She does not use the special apartment/office provided for the president’s wife in the Kremlin. And she is not averse to breaking the rules of protocol, often refusing to attend a reception or accompany her husband on a foreign trip.

Initially, such behavior churned the gossip mill “within the Garden Ring,” to the effect that all was not well in the Putin household. But, gradually, people got used to the fact that the first lady simply does not like the glamorous, public life. Taking good care of her home, her husband and her two daughters seems to be much more important to Lyudmila Putina than high-profile political events.

While Putina once said that, in her conversations with her husband, she never holds back her opinions of events, she has also said that she likes best the evenings when her family gathers together around the fireplace at home. Home now is the state dacha in Novo-Ogarevo – one of the most beautiful places near the city of Moscow, where Russia’s political and business elite have their mansions.

Often Putina succeeds in talking her husband into going out at night, to the theater or the conservatory. These “sorties” are usually kept secret from journalists, as the first lady hates any interference in her family’s private life and desperately tries to avoid TV cameras. In fact, the only way to tell for sure that the Putins are stepping out at night is if a cordon of militia appears at a theater performance or concert. In the summer, Putina usually spends time with her daughters at the presidential residence in Bocharov Ruchey (“Bocharov trickle”), near Sochi on the Black Sea.

Numerous Russian charities of all stripes have sought the patronage of Russia’s first lady, but all have received a very resolute “no.” The Kremlin apparatchiks, firm in their belief that the president’s wife must be identified with a public cause, finally settled on promotion and support of the Russian language. Now Lyudmila Alexandrovna, a trained linguist, is a regular guest at language  conferences and has offices at the recently established Center for the Russian Language, in the exotic mansion on Novy Arbat which once harbored the House of Peoples’ Friendship.

Putina has also publicly visited juvenile prisons for women, delivering books and knitting materials. But, despite the difficult conditions there, and unlike her publicly emotional predecessor, Naina Yeltsina, Putina is always very reserved and austere in front of the cameras.

A life test

In a rare interview, Lyudmila Alexandrovna was uncharacteristically open, stating that she wears around her neck a little golden cross that her husband bought for her in Jerusalem. Putina also goes to church at least once a month. Last year, on her birthday, she made a pilgrimage to Solovetsky monastery.

Many attribute Putina’s religious devotion to a dreadful car accident in 1994, from which she narrowly escaped with her life. The Lada she was driving was hit by another vehicle that was traveling at a very high speed. She suffered a fracture in her spine and at the base of her skull. The doctors’ prognosis was not good. Even if she survived, they said, she would most likely be disabled.

But Lyudmila did not accept the prognosis. It took her three years, but she learned how to walk and move again. Overcoming terrible pain, she forced herself to work through special exercises and drills. St. Petersburg surgeon Yuri Shevchenko, who carried out a series of very complex surgeries and virtually “pulled her from that other world” as Russians say, is now the head of Russia’s Health Ministry.

Putina is said to have chronic pain from her crash injuries, but that has not stopped her from being active. Following in her husband’s footsteps, she learned Alpine skiing and reportedly does it quite well.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Putina’s friends consider her a very strong person. She only lets her guard down for a few intimate friends, including an unnamed nun and spiritual advisor.

But, then, over the years, Putina, who is attached to St. Petersburg just like her husband, has not really made friends among the Moscow elite, though many have sought her friendship. Only her husband’s former secretary from the mayor’s office in St. Petersburg, Marina Yentaltseva, who now works in the Kremlin’s protocol team, visits the presidential home as a trusted companion. The first lady has also established good relations with the only woman in the top echelons of the Russian government, Vice-Premier for Social Issues Valentina Matvienko. The two found a common language when they ventured together to visit juvenile penitentiaries. At the beginning, Naina Yeltsin attempted to make friends with Lyudmila, but was disappointed by her “polite coolness.”

For Putina always keeps one at a distance. Some explain her reserve by way of her background; for many years Putina played the role of an intelligence operative’s wife. Others attribute it to the “Nordic character” of St. Petersburgers.

Yet, Putina’s cold royal mask comes off when she meets with old friends. Once, while visiting her former secondary school in Kaliningrad, the children told her that a former classmate of hers was teaching classes in the room next door. Lyudmila reportedly flushed with joy, though she quickly regained her composure. Casting aside protocol and forgetting about her security guards, she pulled her old classmate into the office of the school’s director and “debriefed” him at length about their common friends from childhood.

A romance in the sky

Lyudmila’s mother, Yekaterina Tikhonovna, and younger sister, Olga, still live in Kaliningrad. Her father died a few years ago. Teachers and classmates recall how, as a girl, Lyudmila (birth name Shkrebneva) dreamed of becoming an actress. A pretty blonde girl, she played the piano and could recite from memory lengthy passages from the plays of Nikolai Ostrovsky, Ivan Turgenev and Anton Chekhov. When asked about her plans upon graduation from high school, the decisive and resolute Lyuda said without hesitation: “Of course, I will take exams to enter a theater school.”

Yet, Lyudmila’s  parents were blue-collar workers. Her mother worked for nearly 40 years as a bus ticket controller; her father worked in the city’s repair workshop. They insisted that their daughter pursue a more “down to earth” profession. Ironically, she landed a job literally “up in the sky” instead. After she enrolled in the Kaliningrad Technical Institute, Lyudmila refused to become an engineer, and quit the institute in her third year to become a stewardess, after passing a very competitive selection process. Of course, the white jet airliners could not be compared to the beaming white lights of the theater and the raucous applause of a live audience. Yet Lyudmila fit perfectly into the image of the smiling and helpful air hostess. As to the theater, it did end up playing a crucial role in her life: she met her future husband Vladimir near the ticket counter at the Leningrad Raykin Theater. Three years later, they were married.

Before the wedding, Vladimir and Lyudmila’s romance unfolded literally “between heaven and earth.” Lyudmila continued to fly back and forth across the country, catering to the needs of Aeroflot passengers. Meanwhile, Vladimir was making for himself a career as a KGB operative. At first, Lyudmila firmly believed Vladimir’s “legend” that he was serving in an anti-criminal brigade. Only later would Lyudmila learn that her husband was what Russians call a “knight of cloak and dagger.”

After their marriage, Vladimir talked his wife into going back to school, to enrolling in the philological faculty of Leningrad University. He also suggested she choose the study of Germanic languages, yet Lyudmila, because of a number of circumstances, had to take up Spanish.

She would get a chance to learn German first hand when, three years after their wedding, her husband was assigned to the German Democratic Republic as intelligence officer charged with gathering political intelligence from East Germany. Later, in the book In the First Person, Lyudmila Putina recalled: “We arrived in Dresden in 1986. By that time, I had graduated from the university. Masha was already one year old. We were expecting our second child. Katya was born in Dresden. I knew German only at the level of secondary school, no better … Our people worked in the GDR quite legally. We lived in the house of the German state security, Stasi. The neighbors knew where we worked, and we knew where they worked. Interestingly enough, we arrived when perestroika was already underway in the USSR. And they still seriously believed in the bright future of communism.”

Today, Masha is 16 and Katya is 15. Both study at home in the same school program. They like computers, play violin, are mastering horseback riding and even, their father admitted in a TV interview, have taken judo lessons. In First Person Putina explained that she has often had to take the “tougher” parental role: Vladimir was “always the one pampering, and I was the one who had to bring them up.”

She is the way she is

Notwithstanding her high status, Lyudmila Putina does not employ a fashion designer. Famous designer Igor Chapurin (see Russian Life, Jan/Feb 2001) occasionally creates dresses for her, but most typically Putina picks the design of her dresses and suits herself, ordering made to measure outfits from the Kremlin tailor’s workshop. She does her own make up for official receptions, trusting her own tastes and habits.

The first lady’s outfits sometimes surprise observers by their extravagance – e.g. at a reception in sweltering Brunei, she wore a mink stole; in the palace of the Japanese emperor, she sported a short black and white spotted dress. Those working for the presidential protocol service usually don’t dare comment on the president’s spouse. Yet, conscious of her gaffe, Lyudmila has been resolute in making her blunders right on her own. In Japan, she replaced the somewhat inappropriate dress with a kimono and black shoes presented by the imperial family.

In one of her recent interviews Putina admitted how hard it was to meet all the expectations of those surrounding and observing her. “It is tough to remain your own self in such a situation,” she said. “But this is the main thing. Each person has his cross to bear. Though some people think their cross is the heaviest.”  RL