The FRONTLINE Interviews
Gennady Gudkov
Opposition politician
Gennady Gudkov served in the Russian parliament, or Duma, from 2001 to 2012. A former KGB officer, Gudkov became one of Vladimir Putin's most vocal critics in parliament and joined crowds calling for Putin to relinquish power in 2011.
This is the transcript of an interview with FRONTLINE's Michael Kirk conducted on July 13, 2017. It has been translated from Russian and edited in parts for clarity and length.
This interview appears in:
TOP
Gennady Gudkov
Chapters
Text Interview:
Highlight text to share it
Vladimir Putin's Early Life
… It’s 1990, 1991. You are in the KGB.What does a KGB man think about what is happening in the Soviet Union during that time?
The KGB was an organization which was one of the first that understood that the Soviet Union was close to a collapse.In 1987 I went to the U.S. I went for a short trip as a KGB officer.Before that, I had been fairly critical about the situation in the Soviet Union.After that trip, which lasted one and a half to two months, I came to the final conclusion that the Soviet Union had no future, because economically and technically, it was very far behind.I'm not even talking about social standards.When I came back from that trip in 1987, some of my superior officers came over to [meet with] us, plus the Kolomna city leaders.They asked me about the main conclusions that I drew from that trip.I told them that I realize that the Soviet Union, if we do not have profound reforms, political and economical, then the Soviet Union would not be able to survive as a political system and as a single country. …
Let me ask you a question about Mr. Putin at about that time, too. He’s in Dresden.Let’s just back up even a little more.What was his preparation? What was the preparation of a KGB officer around that time?What were the ideals? What was the training?What was the way of thinking of the world before the collapse?
When people try to say that he was not a good officer, I think this is not true.I traveled that journey.I have graduated from the same academy that Putin graduated from.I can tell you that the selection was very serious. People had to take very serious exams.All the candidates had to be put in the conditions of a severe stress. They watched how each person is going to react to such conditions. It was only the elite that made it through that training.
The fact that he graduated from that academy is telling us that he was an outstanding KGB officer.By that time, KGB had quite a few political controversies.I had a conflict when I was in the academy.I had a conflict with some of the old professors who were orthodox communists. They did not want to see the coming changes.Therefore, I think Putin should have had a fairly democratic vision.He was a young man, and he should have been a freedom-loving man.At that time, young people were no longer as orthodox as you could expect of the Communist Party in the ’60s to ’70s.We are talking about mid-80s. That is perestroika or transformation time.KGB officers saw that there was too much bureaucracy; there were too many lies around; that a lot of the information was hidden from the people.KGB officers knew about it. We knew what was happening inside the system.
I think Putin should have been the man who would embrace those democratic ideas, the ideas behind the reforms, in the country and in the Communist Party.I regret watching him change toward authoritarianism, toward totalitarianism, toward almost dictatorship. I hope we won't see dictatorship.But frankly, I'm surprised and upset about the transformation of his mindset.He used to be an assistant to [St. Petersburg Mayor] Mr. [Anatoly] Sobchak, who was one of the democratic leaders in Russia at that time. …
So what was it like for Putin, you and many others in those first years to no longer be the elites, in some ways superior members of the society?
You mean the citation when many officers—The churn of men from KGB started approximately in ’88.That’s when it became noticeable.In ’88, it became allowed to leave and break contracts. Before that, contracts were signed for 25 years, and people could not quit.That changed around ’88. Officers were allowed to leave service. We saw quite a few people leaving.The system came to its limit.A crisis occurred, and many people didn’t want to continue service when the country was heading to disintegration.And we were feeling that.
In 1991, the massive number of people started leaving. 1991, ’92, ’93: That’s when very many officers left service, left their offices. They moved to new businesses.I was invited to work for one big corporation. I was invited to become a head of an internal security service in the company. They offered me a good budget.But while I was going through the quitting process, that company went bankrupt, and I had to do something else.This was very typical for that time.Unfortunately, the KGB lost not only a lot of valuable officers.I was in the rank of a major and was about to become a lieutenant colonel. I was 30-something, a rather young man at that time.
… I left service back then, and I started my own business.
For others, it was a time of desperation?
Desperation? What is desperation?
The sadness, unhappiness, wondering what was going to happen, uncertainty.
It was hard to say what exactly it was. There was a lot of disappointment.Some people felt like they lost, but most people left the organization to start their own new life in new circumstances.They were young people with good education, with a good reputation in the establishment, and they had great skills.They dared start a new career. They felt confident in their abilities, in their talents, and very quickly, they made it up in their careers in different structures.They became successful in banks, insurance companies, large production companies, in all sorts of export businesses, etc.
It’s not that we have so many former law enforcement officers of different organizations, because they were a special layer of the population.It’s just we had so many of them, and when they left their jobs, they have made new success in other spheres of life.That’s why there are so many people who had formerly had jobs in police or in other law enforcement organizations that now are called <i>siloviki</i>, not because they seized power, but because they had abilities; they had skills.They had the knowledge which made them successful in all spheres of Russian life and Russian economy.
Putin's Political Rise
Do you know enough about Putin’s story to know how he became the head of the FSB [Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation]?
No. At that time, I wasn’t paying attention to those nuances.I didn’t even know who Putin was for a long time.I had an opportunity to meet with this man earlier.There were two times when I was invited to some events, and they told me that someone nice, Mr. Putin, was there, who was our colleague, and they suggested that we meet.But some things got in the way, and I never really got to meet him at that time when he was not head of the government. And he was not the president.
It’s not that I regret it. I'm just saying that there were a lot of opportunities where we could possibly meet before he went all the way to the top of the country, to the top of the political Olympus.I don’t know him very well. I was not following his biography.I learned about him, like most Russian citizens, when Boris Yeltsin brought him over by the hand to the First Channel of Russian TV, put him in front of the TV cameras and announced that he was his successor.1It was at that time that everybody started talking, thinking about him, paying attention and learned about his biography.Before that, nobody really cared. So I, like most other people, was not following his career very carefully.
1
Take me to the night or the afternoon when Boris Yeltsin tells Russians on television that he’s leaving.What was that like? What did he say? What did he mean?
Yeltsin made very many mistakes, and he created a lot of problems for Russia.But when he made an announcement that he voluntarily gives up power, that he’s leaving, I forgave him most of his mistakes.I believed, and I do believe, that the main problem in Russia that we have and that stands in the way of our development, that stands in the way of our being a civilized country, is lack of rotation in the power.
What Yeltsin did was a breakthrough.Never before in Russia had a country leader stepped down from power.Boris Yeltsin was the first man who did this.And at that time, I felt like forgiving him all the mistakes and all the problems that he has brought along.This was a shock. I was very pleased; I was very happy.Finally in this country, we are going to have changing president.That’s what we need. We’ve never had that.We've either had coups or revolutions.If thinking about [Nikita] Khrushchev or [Mikhail] Gorbachev, they were forced to leave their position.Yeltsin had full power, and he gave it away to his successor.He spent a lot of time selecting a successor. He looked at many candidates. I know some of them.And he chose Putin. I know that his family has regretted that more than once.
When Putin gets selected, he is former KGB.Did you think that was a good thing?
Back then, yes.The society took that very well, him as the candidate, because the country, at that time, felt like it could disintegrate.Many territories were trying to leave, and several republics proclaimed their sovereignty and made all kinds of statements.The country was very unstable, so it needed a man who had very clear understanding of the situation inside, a man who would understand the profound causes of the problems.We believed that Putin knew how to collect information, which is typical of all intelligence organizations.He would be able to stop the centrifugal forces that were so dangerous for Russia.And in the initial period, he was living up to our expectations, and we were supporting him.We believed that he was the man we needed. …
Putin's Vision for Russia in his First Term
… After he’s elected president, and he begins to run the country, what do people think then?What did they think of him? What did they want from him?
People have been asking a lot of questions: Who is Mr. Putin?His mindset, his goals were not obvious.He was just a man who came in—a strong man, a firm hand with a modern mindset—who could speak without a bunch of papers in front of him, unlike previous leaders.He made a good impression.He knew foreign languages. He spoke fluent German.People were quite impressed with the president.
… People expected the country to be led by a young, energetic, modern man who can build a good, modern, civilized state. There were many hopes.The first steps that he made, I was a parliament member at that time.His first step made me feel good about him, and I supported what he was doing.He made an attempt to limit the terms in office for heads of regions.I voted for that, and I was fully supportive. It was very important for Russia—succession of power.
He also tried to make sure that political parties played the main role, were the main mechanism in the way the country was managed.He also tried to launch a judicial reform so that courts would depend on society, not on the authorities. These first steps were seen as positive.That was all happening until 2004, when a counterrevolutionary coup happened.Formally it was connected with the tragedy in Beslan.Terrorists captured a high school, and as a result of [government forces] storming the school, 331 person lost their lives. Most of them were children.Before 2004, before that time, we had hoped that we were building a good social and political system and that we were about to get good independent courts and the rule of law. All these things brought hope.But 2004 was the time when we lost hope, and I realized that the country changed direction.
I remember the time when that new decree was made public and new mechanisms were put in place.I told people around me that Sept. 13 was the time when counterrevolution occurred.
We’ll go back to Beslan in one second.He does other things in advance of Beslan that would start to begin to really define who he is.One of them is he takes over the television networks, right?2He takes them out of the private hands, and a few other little things.What did you think about?Did they come sort of slowly to you?What did you think about the television networks?
2
Perhaps we underestimated the threat associated with those steps at the time.I remember Channel 6 and NTV, we thought that this was a veiled struggle between oligarchs, between different clans in power that were using Putin as a ram in their fight.Perhaps we underappreciated the real threat back then.We should have been more concerned, and we should have asked ourselves a question: What is happening in the country? What are we doing?
Counterrevolution started not in 2004.It started earlier, when other things were done, like political censorship was introduced.This was a mechanism to impact the election process.That’s when it started, before 2004.But we were thinking that those were just some violations, some issues that had to do with the fighting between different groups of oligarchs.We thought this could not stop the development of Russia in the proper direction, and unfortunately we were wrong. …
Who is Putin then? How is he different than when he started?How is he different than the KGB man who was in Dresden?Give me an assessment of who he was then, … after Beslan.
Most people in Russia have not noticed the change.The change of direction was noticeable only for the people in the political establishment.I was a parliament member, and I understood it very well what happened.But for the majority of people, this was nothing. People did not understand that something happened, that Russia became a different country.
At the time of Beslan, September 2004, at that time I had the first serious conflict with the authorities, when I was banned to make comments on Beslan.I was threatened. My business was threatened.There were some threats made against me personally.I had a very serious conversation with the president’s administration and with the Moscow region government.They told me straight, in a straightforward way, “Either you shut up, or we’ll figure you out.”I did not shut up or excuse my language.I somewhat slowed down my criticism, but I had to say what I had to say.
At that time, they decided not to “finish me.”They sent auditors to my business, which was the main source of my income. They did all kinds of checks. They threatened me with revocation of licenses.But then for some reason the pressure disappeared, and I was only slightly afraid.September 2004 was my first serious clash with the authorities, when I was told that anything could happen to me.3
3
So it’s becoming slowly authoritarian.
Yes. Certainly.If you look at the movement of Russia from the state, it could have been a democratic state, and that’s where it was moving.It was happening slowly and mildly. There were some changes in the laws.The president was getting more rights, more authorities.The government was getting a lot of new authorities, and there were a lot of new rights that were taken away from the parliament, the State Duma.The State Duma was slowly becoming an addition to the government that could not really decide on anything.This was a slow process that took years.It took quite a few years before the parliament turned into what it is today, a shameful picture, a shameful shadow of itself.It took like 13 years.
Putin Returns to the Presidency, Sparking Protests and a Crackdown
Let’s go to 2011, when [Dmitry] Medvedev and he have done a switch.Tell me what it is and what does it mean. … Did you know what was happening at the time?
For the people, this was very insulting, for regular people, for millions of people.We understood very well. We knew it very well, that the authorities were getting ready to falsify the outcome of the elections.We knew about it for a long time.In August they started getting ready for massive falsifications of the election results.At this time and especially after Sept. 4—I might be wrong about the exact date, but I think they made an announcement on Sept. 4—when they first said that the switch was possible.That raised a lot of negative feelings among people, and people began to wonder. …
How bad was the cheating?
… It was reflected on TV. It hit the Web.Many people could see that cheating.They saw ballots being tossed in. They saw that observers had been removed from precincts, carried by their arms and legs.They saw how they beat up observers.This was the first time that the public saw how power in Russia is being seized, and people were outraged.
It started on Dec. 5.That’s when a small demonstration, though then it was the biggest one, of about 5,000 people gathered.Then there were a lot of youth demonstrations at Triumfalnaya Square.At that time, I realized that this was a strong movement that could not be stopped.Nevertheless, we were preparing that meeting with [liberal politicians] Vladimir Ryzhkov and Boris Nemtsov.We organized the first meeting on Nov. 10.When we were making arrangements for the sound equipment, we thought that 5,000, 7,000 or maybe 10,000 people would come. We weren't even thinking about big numbers.We thought that if we would get 5,000 to 10,000 at Bolotnaya Square, it would be a big success.
When we saw a sea of people, an ocean of people, and we had a small stage, only 15 rows of people could hear us well.This was a big square. People were everywhere, on the bridge, on the other side of the river, across the river from where we were. I think we’re talking about 80,000 or so.I know a good method to count people. People were coming in and leaving.I think we had at least 100,000 people in that square, maybe more.This was a shock. We were surprised that, for the first time since the 1980s, we had so many people coming to a big gathering in one square.
How was Mr. Putin reacting to the demonstrations?Is he surprised by them?
I haven't talked to him personally at that time, but I think the authorities in general were very lost.Nobody expected that. We didn’t expect that many people to show up.The authorities did not expect tens of thousands, almost 100,000 to hit the streets and demand just elections, and they were frustrated; they were upset.
Now, people who were more radical members of the opposition, … they said that we should have stormed the Kremlin.Nobody was prepared to act. This was spontaneous. People in the street were not organized.They came out peacefully.They thought that this demonstration would make the authorities change the situation.They were not prepared to storm the Kremlin or the central election authority.This was a delusion. …
He believes, people tell us, that the demonstrations are not spontaneous.They're not even about the election fraud, because there had been election fraud many other times, and there hadn’t been a demonstration.He thought Hillary Clinton had something to do with it. He blamed the Web for having something to do with it.4… He thinks it’s all a United States plot, in a way, to turn him into Qaddafi or something.What is actually happening there?I mean, did you hear that?Did you know that he wasn’t taking it seriously because he thought it was an American?
4
Yes. There was a lot of talk about various conspiracy theories.Some said that [protest organizer] Mr. [Alexei] Navalny is a CIA agent who was fulfilling somebody’s orders.There were some theories that this was all conspired by the U.S., by NATO.There were other theories.This is because the authorities in Kremlin have set up a barrier around themselves, and they would only receive information which they welcome, which they would allow to get through.I was amazed when one very top-ranking official in the presidential administration, after we had a bottle of brandy, seriously, he was telling me that there was reliable information that CIA recruited Navalny.He was so sincere that at first I thought he was kidding me. I thought this was a joke.I thought that was his kind of sense of humor.
But then I realized that this was his serious belief, a man in a very high government position.Then I realized that Kremlin does not have true objective information about what's going on.I said it back then, and I'm saying it again: The most awful thing for the authorities is when the government is no longer politically adequate.This is what happened to Qaddafi.This is what happened in Egypt and Tunisia and a number of other countries.This must have happened in Syria. This is what caused the current situation in Syria.
When people act inadequately, that’s what happens.And it happened in Kremlin, maybe even earlier.Either that’s Putin’s mindset or that is the worldview that his assistants help him to acquire. It doesn’t matter anymore.What matters is that they truly believed in those gossips and conspiracy theories that they created themselves.It’s funny, but it’s very sad, because we are talking about the leaders of the huge country, with the second biggest nuclear potential.
After he is re-elected, there is a crackdown. What happens?
After the election in March 2012, Putin followed the tough policy of tightening the nuts.They decided that protest movement had to be put down to isolate the protest leaders, activists.Since that time, they started enacting searches, arrests, detention, actions against opposition leaders, persecution in the mass media.They created a new unit in FSB to take strong control of the opposition.And they launched individual persecution that applied to tens of hundreds or maybe thousands of people in the country. …
So the man who started with lots of hope becomes the man elected in 2012. And what has happened?
It’s a tough question.I think every person from birth to death has some things that he or she has from their childhood—our complexes, our problems. Those things affect how we act during our life.When Putin was a young man, maybe when he was a boy, probably he had this fixation he had to overcome when he was a boy in St. Petersburg.He probably was smarter by nature. He had stronger will.He was more gifted, but there may have been stupid kids in his neighborhood that humiliated him and that he had to fight.
I think this could be some kind of a complex from his childhood, from his youth.He had to win. He had to be victorious against everyone.I think this wish to overcome humiliation, to become a strongman, to become a special man brought him to sports where he learned martial arts to become strong and independent.Then he chose to work for the KGB for an intelligence service, which has some halo of unusualness.
I think that complex is so deep inside him that, even now, having been a president of the country for 17 or 18 years, he continues to prove that he is the toughest man in the neighborhood, that he is the most confident man around, and that prevents him from doing many things at the time of his presidency.Oh, OK, he is the president.Now he should have been thinking what can he do to be remembered in the future, to be remembered not as a man behind bloody events or repressions.He should have thought how he could be remembered as a man of creation, someone who would break through to democracy and civilization development, who could make his country develop economically, scientifically, culturally.
I think that his inferiority complex from the childhood was standing in the way of that.He just had to prove that he was the toughest man around, and this became his second nature.He needs constant conflicts. He needs to prove that he is tougher than Obama or [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel or Trump.He must keep proving himself, which is completely against the state logic.But it makes very good sense to him. That is a part of his nature.That’s why he makes his mistakes.
Let me see what we missed.
Vladimir Putin's Early Life
What did the KGB represent to you as a boy, to Putin as a boy?What was the institution? What would draw him to it?
When I was a boy, yes, indeed, I was watching movies; I was reading books.KGB was an all-powerful organization that could solve all kinds of problems.The officers were superior men, supermen.They were very special, and they propagated the exclusiveness of the KGB.Actually it was confirmed when we looked at the people who were in service.Until the time when KGB started recruiting party members, KGB was very serious and tough about selecting candidates. They were the elite.It was very difficult to get a job in the KGB.One had to prove himself to be very smart, scientifically or in any other profession.This was the only path that led to KGB service.
This was the atmosphere of a caste, of elitism. That was certainly attractive for boys. I was not an exception.When I was 12, I wrote a letter to the head of the KGB, asking what I should do to get a job in the KGB. They sent me a response three or four months later, when I stopped waiting for the response.The KGB office sent me a letter, and they explained to me what I should be doing to get a job in the KGB.So for Putin and for myself, we are people of the same generation.This was an organization that people wanted to work for.
Putin's Vision for Russia in his First Term
I assume you met Mr.Putin sometimes when you were in the Duma.If you have, tell us what it was like to be with him.What was his aspect?Did you see a change up close over the years?
I have had several meetings with Mr. Putin.They were not personal meetings where it would be just us.There were groups of people, not only myself.I have witnessed serious changes in his talk and his behavior between different meetings.The first time we met was in 2001 or early 2002, when Putin was a young president.At that time he communicated with the parliament members a lot.He was looking for a lot of facts. He was looking for a lot of answers. He wanted to understand things better.… In later meetings, we had conversations that were more like a dialog between a boss and his employees, maybe high-ranking employees, but still people that worked for him.It was not an attempt to find an answer. It was an attempt to explain his decisions and to get an approval.The tone of those conversations was changing.He was becoming increasingly confident; he was needing less and less advice.He was no longer prepared for a dialog or a change.He was becoming kind of more rigid, more orthodox in the way he made his decisions compared to the first times we met.I think that happens to all leaders, especially those who have unlimited power in their countries, with nondemocratic model.
He has a huge volume of information that he acquired over years, and he probably isn't very interested in other people’s advice because he’s heard it all hundreds of times.He’s had those discussions hundreds of times, and he knows better how to respond to those situations.He doesn’t need advice; he has all the answers for all kinds of issues.
Putin and Trump
You’ve seen Mr. Putin over the years.I wanted to ask you, what do you think President Putin sees in our President Trump?What's the attraction?Or is there something different that he feels he might be able to either work with him or possibly use him?
This shouldn’t be big news.Putin very much wanted Mr. Trump to win.He was hoping that he would set up personal relations favorable for Russia and favorable for himself.But I think Putin … underestimated the mechanisms of democracy and the system of checks and balances that exist in democratic countries.The United States and Great Britain and Germany and other democratic countries have those systems of checks and balances.He thought that if he could make a deal with Mr. Trump personally, that if he can establish the atmosphere of trust and confidence, if Trump likes him, if they have mutual respect, then all of America would be friends with him.
I think he did not take Congress into account.I think he did not take into account the mass media.I think he did not take into account the politicians who are opposed to Mr. Trump, people who have quite a bit of weight in American political system and that also play a role in decision making.I think Putin underestimated that, because we don’t have that in Russia.He doesn’t have to ask the parliament.He doesn’t have to see if the Federation Council would agree to his decisions.They would agree to anything, including harakiri.
He simply missed the point that the system of power in the U.S. is a multilevel system, and it has checks and balances, and there are lots of things that limit the president’s power.I think that’s where Putin had a miscalculation, because of the way he is used to thinking about things and the fact that the relations with Trump didn’t work out.I think Putin is still hoping that, in the future, he would be able to change this negative trend, make a deal with the American president, establish working relations and make changes that he wants, like lifting of the sanctions, lifting of financial limitations, and several other things which are irritating and unpleasant for Mr. Putin. …
Latest Interviews
Latest Interviews
Policies
Teacher Center
Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation
Koo and Patricia Yuen
FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. Web Site Copyright ©1995-2025 WGBH Educational Foundation. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation; Park Foundation; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. Web Site Copyright ©1995-2025 WGBH Educational Foundation. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
