Vladimir Putin sees himself as an exceptional human being, a man who moves history, the embodiment of Nietzsche’s will-to-power. He plainly wants the rest of us to see him in similar terms — hence the photographs where, bare-chested, he urges his steed across the vast steppes, a He-Man against the forces of darkness.
The truth is more prosaic. Putin was the eighth of Boris Yeltsin’s prime ministers, duller than most of his predecessors and seemingly destined to be as short-lived, but he happened to be in office when the bibulous Uralian suddenly quit. Under the constitution, this made him the acting head of state. Having assumed presidential power, he set about neutralizing rivals, initially with the support of the old nomenklatura, who hoped that the former KGB officer might be their own instrument. Before long, he learned to rule alone, and became, if reports are to be believed, the wealthiest man on the planet.
