From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 12/8/2005 1:26 AM
The Atlantic Monthly | March 2005
 
The Accidental Autocrat


Vladimir Putin is not a democrat. Nor is he a czar like Alexander III, a paranoid like Stalin, or a religious nationalist like Dostoyevsky. But he is a little of all these—which is just what Russians seem to want

by Paul Starobin

.....

L ike many Russians, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a late riser. Sometimes he doesn't roll out of bed until 11:00 a.m. Russia's president lives with his wife, Lyudmila, and two teenage daughters, Maria and Katerina, about twenty-five miles west of the center of Moscow, at Novo Ogarevo, a country estate dotted with white birch and pine trees that was built in the late nineteenth century for a son of Czar Alexander II. The neighborhood is now a haven for wealthy Russians, who have constructed opulent and often tasteless dachas. Trim and fit for his fifty-two years, Putin usually starts his mornings with a vigorous workout in the compound's small indoor pool. (The butterfly stroke is a favorite.) The grounds contain stables, a recently restored Orthodox church, a vegetable plot, and a helipad, and Putin sometimes spends the day working at Novo Ogarevo, receiving visitors there rather than at the Kremlin. In any case, he seldom leaves for the office much before noon.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200503/starobin