You just never know what’s going to pop up in your email inbox . . . and Wednesday brought something interesting to mine. It was from Bill, a longtime friend who had come across an article on the Quora website that he knew would be of interest to me, and he wasted no time in sending it on. I’d like to share the backstory with you.

If you’ve followed my blog or my Facebook posts at all, you know that I write a lot about Russia, and that I spent a good bit of time there on business in the early ‘90s. I even lived in Moscow for several months in 1993, though my permanent residence was always in the Washington, D.C. area.

In 1990 or ‘91, I was thrilled to be invited to a small luncheon — about a dozen people — with Anatoly Sobchak, who had already made a name for himself in Russia as a reformer. He had been serving at the time as Chairman of the City Council in Leningrad, and had just become its first democratically-elected Mayor. He was in Washington seeking strategic “partners” (i.e., money) for some of his proposed development projects at home.

What I had no way of knowing at the time — and what has since been made public — was that Sobchak had an aide who had been a student of his at Leningrad State University, and whom he was now mentoring. This fellow was a total unknown, and apparently tended to fade into the background, as shown in this first picture. But Sobchak evidently saw something promising in him.

He is, of course, the shy-looking little fellow on the left. And no, you are not seeing things; his name was, and still is, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. He had not accompanied Sobchak on the trip to the U.S., so there was no mention made of him; there was no need, and no one would have known who he was in any event. But Bill, on seeing the photo this week and having a vague recollection of my having met Sobchak way back when, wondered whether I might also have met Putin at any time.

I am happy to say, I had not . . . not then, not since. Not ever.

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The second (undated) picture, also included in the article, shows the late President and Mrs. Gorbachev on a visit to what by then had been renamed St. Petersburg. It is not clear why Mayor Sobchak did not accompany them to dinner himself, or why he chose instead to assign a nonentity like Vladimir Putin to do the honors; but that is indeed what happened. And it is clear from Raisa Gorbacheva’s memoirs that she was less than impressed: “Sobchak assigned us a nondescript little man . . .”

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Also in 1990, John Guare wrote the screenplay for a movie titled Six Degrees of Separation, the main premise of which was that every person in the world is connected to every other person in the world by no more than six “degrees of separation.” Try it; I’ve found it to be true . . . you know someone who knows someone who knows someone, etc.

And in the case of Vladimir Putin, because of my having been introduced to, and broken bread with, Anatoly Sobchak more than thirty years ago, who in turn was well acquainted with Putin . . . well, that’s just one degree of separation, isn’t it?

Oh, good grief! That is way too close for comfort. Not only because of what he has become, but for what he was even at that time. According to the Quora article:

“At the time, Putin was the link from the organized criminal groups to the city administration, managed by ex-communist bosses, who grabbed the positions of power in the new Russia. Later, when Putin became the head of the FSB [successor to the KGB], most criminal bosses linked to Putin in [the] early 1990s died under mysterious circumstances. Putin has always been meticulous about liquidating witnesses. . . .

“When Putin came to power in 2000, he started with seizing control over media and killing political opponents, journalists and undesirable witnesses (even his former boss Anatoly Sobchak died under mysterious circumstances, likely poisoned). No surprise that Gorbachev criticized the administration of Vladimir Putin. He knew what Putin was — a mafia thug.”

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But in mitigation, I am happy to report that, according to Mr. Guare’s theory, I am also closely (just one degree) connected to some very distinguished individuals: the Gorbachevs themselves, for example, as well as the elegant widow of the last Shah of Iran, and the adorable Dr. Ruth. So it’s not all bad.

But a word of caution: If you do decide to play the degrees-of-separation game, be prepared for some surprises. You won’t believe how many people — some good ones and some really, really bad ones — you’ve barely escaped knowing.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
3/24/24