FOREWORD OF THE AUTHOR
When I first expressed my desire to write a book about president Putin, editors and friends said to me 1) that I will need “kompromat” [compromising material]; 2) that in order for the book to be convincing, I will need a lot of “kompromat”; 3) that I need to get “kompromat”.
After giving it a thought, I almost decided not to use “kompromat”, for the following reasons: I don’t have connections in the elite; I don’t have agents in the Kremlin or in the government, those who would have passionately desired to get me exclusive information about the president, which means that I can’t get “kompromat”. Besides, I thought, in his past life Putin surly hasn’t left written confessions about committing illegal or criminal activities, so I won’t be able to prove anything for sure. After all, London’s exiles, Berezovsky, Litvinenko and others didn’t succeed to prove anything when they put forward the version that it was the FSB, which blew up the houses in Russia in fall 1999 in order to bring an ex KGB officer to power. Nevertheless, they succeeded in planting a doubt in the masses. After almost deciding that I won’t use “kompromat”, I finally did the exact opposite. I dedicated the first chapters of my book to V. V. Putin’s life until March 22nd 2000, in other words before the day he became RF president. In doing so, I enumerated all the scandals related to Putin’s name and the accusations put forward against him in different times by different people. And what I did was right. Let the reader decide for himself if he should believe a president with such a life experience.
After the president’s biography and his adventures as head of the KGB where he didn’t accomplish anything special, then in St-Petersburg’s city hall, where he was mostly noted as the hero of suspicious corruption scandals, then in the president’s administration and as prime-minister, the structure of my book’s second part repeats the form of my comrades National-Bolsheviks’ leaflet, a leaflet they have given out on December 14th 2004, when they came to the reception room of the President’s Administration, in order to say to VVP: find some courage and resign. I made the book’s chapters with those ten accusations – proofs of Putin’s professional inadequacy as president, enumerated by my forty comrades who have paid for their courage with prison detention.
In the process of my work I added a series of personal accusations to the ten accusations of the “Decembrists”. And finally the book’s third part also consists of “kompromat”, but of a special nature. It is not hidden on mysterious websites, in Sobchak’s or Shutov’s (Sobchak’s former associate, he is detained in St-Petersburg for six years now, but wasn’t accused) archives, but is daily visible to us all. We see it from the television screen. It is VVP himself. Daily, in practically all events life throws him in, he proves that he is hardly competent, that he is not at all able to be the leader of our state, the builder and the guider of our collective life. That he, unwanted, behaves as if we were his subjects on bended knees or moreover – he behaves as our wicked, very wicked and unjust father.
It is getting harder for us to support his oppression, that of a pale, petty, early bold simple colonel. Even if we are to trust the results of the March 2004 presidential elections (personally I absolutely don’t trust these results), we should acknowledge that the forty-eight point something million voters who voted for him did a mistake. Well, it happens. Are people around us always right about everything? Not at all. Besides, why those who haven’t voted for him, and according to the official results they are ninety-five million, should live under the oppression of Putin’s autocracy?
Vladimir Vladimirovich doesn’t read letters from the citizens or pretends he doesn’t. He behaves as an arrogant monarch, especially as his parents were simple people: his father was a metalworker and his mother a housecleaner. There is a disease common to simple people who have miraculously reached the power heights – contempt to the people and arrogance. I believe that president Putin will read my book. But I am absolutely sure that my book will not be helpful to him. Actually it is not intended for him. I firmly believe that my book about Putin will be helpful to our society. That it will convince society: we are governed by a little wicked man. Dangerous precisely because of it. Because he is wicked, unwise and simple.
So let’s begin with God’s help…