The Childhood that Shaped Russian President Vladimir Putin

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is one of the most intriguing world leaders. A former KGB agent, he has been the President of Russia and has been in power for more than 2 decades.Born in 1952, Putin had a tough childhood, and it is often said that the present leader’s life was shaped then. He grew up in Leningrad, now St Petersburg. The second largest city of the Soviet Union was under siege by Germany and Finland for 872 days (8 Sept 1941 to 27 Jan 1944), but was never captured. However, the destruction caused by the siege was the deadliest in history and according to reports was the cause of 1.5 million deaths.

Putin’s father was away fighting in the war, while it is said his mother had almost died due to poverty and starvation. The postwar generation of Leningrad grew up in poverty. According to the website of History, "he has recalled growing up modestly in a rat infested communal apartment building. His parents, who lost two children prior to his birth, one of whom died during the prolonged Nazi siege of Leningrad in World War II, apparently doted on him despite working long hours." Putin was their miracle baby.He also once spoke about the memories of eating food prepared by his mother. She would "bake pies with cabbage, meat, or rice, and vatrushki, ring shaped buns made from sweet yeast dough and filled with tvorog (cheese)."

In In the First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self Portrait by Russia's President Vladimir Putin, an autobiography of the leader, he wrote about his parents and his father surviving the Nickel. "My father managed to survive. He spent several months in the hospital. My mother found him there. She came to see him every day. Mama herself was half dead. My father saw the shape she was in and began to give her his own food, hiding it from the nurses. To be sure, they caught on pretty quickly and put a stop to it. The doctors noticed that he was fainting from hunger. When they figured out why, they gave him a stern lecture and would not let Mama in to see him for awhile. The upshot was that they both survived. Only my father's injuries left him with a lifelong limp." For the unversed, the Nickel is a reference to the Neva Patch, a small and highly contested piece of land on the Neva River near Leningrad (now St Petersburg).Such was his parents’ love for him that as a teenager he owned a wrist watch, which even his father did not have. According to the Daily Mirror, when Putin's father won a car, they gave it to their son.

According to The Week's article titled Cradle to Kremlin: how Putin’s childhood casts a shadow, "His love for spy novels as a child strengthened his self belief in his own unique destiny." They quoted Putin as saying, "Books and programmes about espionage like 'The Shield and the Sword' took hold of my imagination. What amazed me most of all was how one man's effort could achieve what whole armies could not."He was often picked upon when he was small, but despite this he always stood his ground and never shied away from a brawl. The Boston Globe quoted a schoolfriend of Putin who said, "He could get into a fight with anyone… He had no fear… If some hulking guy offended him, he would jump straight at him, scratch him, bite him, pull out clumps of his hair." Putin went on to earn a black belt in judo.During his growing up years in the communal building, he would often see rats. In his memoir he wrote about seeing a rat which had nowhere to run."Suddenly it lashed around and threw itself at me… Luckily, I was a little faster and I managed to slam the door shut in its nose."Years later he had come to the conclusion that "No one should be cornered. No one should be put in a situation where they have no way out," wrote Philip Short in The Sunday Times in the article titled The extraordinary story of Putin's early life.