ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — It was 1976, and Vladimir V. Putin was living a lie. He had recently graduated from law school and was working for the KGB when he bumped into two high school classmates, Sergei and Yelena Kudrov.
Putin told them that he had just won a car in a government lottery and was working at the local prosecutor's office, the Kudrovs recalled. He ducked questions about his job by joking: "Before lunch, we're busy catching criminals. After lunch, we're busy shooting them."
Today, after 16 years as a spy and a decade in government posts, Putin is poised to become Russia's second elected president. As acting head of state, he is expected to win next Sunday's election. Yet much of his past remains a mystery, and the kind of president he would be is shrouded in uncertainty.
The Kudrovs remember Putin as an earnest, hard-working student who quietly stood his ground but never bragged. They plan to vote for him but wonder if he hung on to the good qualities of his youth during his rise to power.
"I think he is a decent person," said Sergei Kudrov, a onetime chemical engineer who manages a building materials shop. "But our experience tells us there are no decent people in the Kremlin. So my question is: If there are no decent people in the Kremlin, what is he doing there?"
As prime minister since August and acting president since New Year's Eve, Putin has pledged to restore order, revive the economy and make Russia great again.
He has led this nation into a brutal war in the republic of Chechnya that has left thousands of people dead and forced a quarter of a million from their homes. He ordered the destruction of Chechnya's capital, Grozny--once a city of 400,000--and has kept silent about widespread atrocities allegedly committed by his troops.
Although he has offered few specifics about what he would do with a full term as president, a poll done for the Moscow Times and released Friday shows him leading his 11 challengers with 53% of the vote. The same survey gives his closest rival, Communist leader Gennady A. Zyuganov, 22%.
At 47, Putin is the youngest leader to rise to power in the Kremlin since Josef Stalin became general secretary of the Communist Party in 1922. Fit, energetic and active, he has profited from the striking contrast with Boris N. Yeltsin, the doddering president who appointed him.
