The Spy Agent

Vladimir Putin is born in Leningrad in 1952, the son of Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin and Maria Ivanovna Putin.

Vladimir Putin

In his youth, he develops a strong interest in martial arts, eventually earning a black belt in judo.

He attends the Leningrad State University, where he studies history, literature, languages, and law. He graduates in 1975, and is immediately recruited by the KGB, for training in espionage. The KGB is a Soviet spy agency that works undercover to identify and punish enemies of the state, and its power inspires fear. Everyone in the Soviet Union understands that getting in trouble with the KGB means risking life and limb.

After qualifying, he is assigned to the KGB’s counterintelligence division in Moscow, where he is responsible for identifying and tracking foreigners suspected of working as spies inside the Soviet Union, tracking dissidents (people who openly criticize the Soviet regime), gathering information on people suspected of plotting against the state, monitoring foreign visitors, and conducting background checks on new communist party members.

In 1984, he starts working as a foreign agent in Dresden, East Germany. East Germany is a Soviet Union ally, and Putin and other Soviet spies work to monitor any anti-Soviet activities there. They keep files on people and organizations suspected of opposing the East German or Soviet governments; take photographs of people gathering in streets, restaurants, museums, and parks; and recruit informants to spy on their neighbors and coworkers. Once they have gathered the information, they write reports on their findings and send them back to the KGB headquarters in Moscow.

However, when Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Soviet President in 1985, he institutes reforms that allow Soviet citizens to speak out and criticize the government, diminishing the value and role of the KGB. After decades of being silenced, Soviet writers are now free to express their opinions on politics and government, which could previously have landed them in prison or under KGB surveillance.

The reforms take place when the Soviet Union is going through a difficult time. The economy is collapsing, unemployment is at an all-time high, and people are going hungry. Soviet factories are unable to produce enough goods to stock the shelves of state-run stores, so people go out into the streets to protest.

They speak out against communism, which they blame for their problems, and they demand greater freedom, such as that enjoyed by the people of the United States of America and western Europe.

The economic crisis, as well as the protests, spread to other Soviet-allied European countries, including East Germany. In November 1989, crowds gather along the Berlin Wall and begin tearing it down while police look on, a sign that government authority was crumbling.

Others enter government buildings and destroy government posters and statues. They condemn the Soviet Union, which has long had a stranglehold on their government.

In Dresden, Putin is inside the KGB building when protestors surround it and take some of his colleagues prisoner. As they gather, he and dozens of other KGB agents work feverishly to destroy thousands of top-secret documents and photographs. They don't want the public to know that the Soviet Union has been spying on private East German citizens, and they also don't want their method of gathering information to be revealed.

As the crowds become more enraged, Putin calls Moscow for instructions, but his superiors don’t give him any direction or orders, so he realizes that he and his colleagues are on their own. It dawns on him that the Soviet government is growing weak and is unwilling to use military force against protestors.

He fears that the once-powerful Soviet army and the KGB are crumbling.