Putin as objet d'affection

A few days ago a friend brought me the 2007 Person of the Year issue of Time magazine. Normally, I wouldn't be very interested in their choice (or reading Time magazine in general, for that matter), but it just so happened that this year's Person of the Year is Russia's current president, Владимир Путин (Vladimir Putin); my friend knew I'd be into *that* (due to the random interest in Russia and the Russian language that I've been cultivating this year).

In any case, they actually do have a few interesting articles on, or related to, Putin.. however, the one that I was looking the most forward to was the least satisfying: a (much) abridged interview with the man himself at his Moscow dacha. You see, they basically cut a 3.5 hour dinner down to a page and a quarter of snappy one-line answers to some potentially in-depth questions. Admittedly, it's hard to tell the extent of the wordtrim because Putin *is* known for being to-the-point (to put it, um, diplomatically), but, still, each answer really does *feel* so incomplete; and to me, it became a tease. For example:

Americans wonder why the recent Russian elections could not have been more open and why, for example, Garry Kasparov was put in jail.

Why did Mr. Kasparov, when arrested, speak out in English rather than Russian? When a politician works the crowd of other nations rather than the Russian nation, it tells you something.

And:

Do you think there was a missed opportunity after 9/11 for the U.S. and Russia to work more closely on the anti-terrorism front because of Iraq?

We could have acted in a more coordinated and therefore more efficient way. That is true. But cooperation between our secret services is happening and is achieving results.

I guess if I want some unadulterated Putin, I should join the local chapter of the VV Fan Club.. although I'm guessing that the closest chapter is in that funky "land-locked" island of Russianess among the Baltic countries: Kaliningrad. More seriously, I *am* trying to track down any of their paraphernalia; I've seen some pictures of some pretty cool tshirts, flags and posters. And any help is appreciated if you know where I can get them here in the US (throw any info into the comments).

In any case, beyond the interview, the other articles in the issue fared much better. Specifically, I enjoyed one journalist's chronicle of contemporary Russian life during a recent journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg; he took a route first described by Aleksandr Radishchev in "A Journey from Petersburg to Moscow", written in 1790. As you can imagine, many things have changed, but even more notable are the things that haven't (or, perhaps, changed at some point and then regressed); religion and militancy forever. The article is really an attempt to distill a set of disparate stories into a theory about the current "condition of the country". And, at a first pass, it's a good start; still, its essence is very tip-of-the-iceberg, given the size and complexity of our objet d'affection.

But see everything I've been talking about here; see it for yourself: Time's Person of the Year, 2007.