Reporting from Moscow — He's been a KGB spy and judo black belt; a painter whose work fetched top dollar at auction and a bare-chested fisherman in Siberian rivers. He has been president and prime minister, and in both jobs Russians have regarded him as being at the apex of power.
But Vladimir Putin, the would-be Renaissance man with the familiar black turtlenecks and cold gazes, never seems to tire of surprising his countrymen.
This week, Putin the magazine columnist weighed in with a timely meditation on management and change.
His maiden column, titled "Why You Can't Fire a Person," hits newsstands in today's issue of Russian Pioneer. But the bulk of the text leaked early and created a buzz in Moscow. Peppered with earthy folk sayings, Putin's first-person essay is part management consulting, part personal reflection -- and part lecture to the nation on virtue and vice in the often-coarse culture of the Russian workplace.
"I'm deeply convinced that constant change is not for the better. Neither for business, nor for people," Putin writes. "In the end, it will be the same thing as before, if not worse."
Is Putin hinting at a hidden soft spot? Or is he merely giving a nod to stability, which many Russians list as a key virtue of his leadership? Either way, it's a telling message from a man who managed to relinquish Russia's top office while keeping a grip on authority. When term limits forced him out of office, Putin ushered in a longtime underling as his replacement and eased himself into the prime minister's office -- where many believe he still is calling the shots.
It was not the maneuver of a modest man, and Putin's column bears out his image as a man of scant humility.
"I can say honestly that if I hadn't intervened in some situations when I worked as president, Russia would long ago have had no government," he writes.
Why Russia's mercurial prime minister chose this moment to debut as a print columnist is anybody's guess. His essay boosts the profile of Russian Pioneer, a new, glossy magazine that eschews politics in favor of lifestyle and trend pieces.
"Every word he pronounces is interesting to people," said Andrei Kolesnikov, editor of the magazine, who said he was basking in the "splash" of Putin's column.
