KGB Judged ‘Comrade V.V. Putin’ a Disciplined, Conscientious Spy

(Bloomberg) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin was “prompt, disciplined and conscientious” as a spy in the KGB, according to a declassified profile from the Soviet Union’s feared security service.

“Comrade V.V. Putin constantly improves his ideological and political standards,” according to the document exhibited at the Central State Archive for Historical-Political Documents of St. Petersburg, the Russian leader’s home city. “He’s actively engaged in party education work.”

The profile, which is also on show at a Moscow exhibition of “outstanding figures” of modern Russian history, describes Putin as “morally upstanding” and enjoying “well-deserved authority among colleagues,” noting that he won a judo championship in 1978.

Putin joined the KGB in 1975 after graduating from the law faculty of Leningrad State University, located in what’s now St. Petersburg, and served as a spy for more than 15 years until the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Putin asked to become a KGB officer even before he finished school, according to his Kremlin biography, which cites him saying his view of the organization “was based on idealistic stories I heard about intelligence.”

He served in Dresden in East Germany from 1985 until 1990, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel during a largely undistinguished stint, and was awarded a bronze medal for service to the National People’s Army of the German Democratic Republic. He headed the Federal Security Service, the main successor agency of the KGB, in 1998-1999 before President Boris Yeltsin made him prime minister and named Putin as his chosen successor. Putin was elected president in 2000.

The KGB’s appraisal of Putin, which appears to be from the late 1970s or early 1980s, was absolutely standard and showed that he hadn’t stood out or achieved anything in particular, according to Alexei Kondaurov, a former KGB general. “Usually we wrote ‘morally upstanding’ when there was nothing else to say,” he said.

Still, there’s been “colossal” public interest in the document, shown as part of commemorations of the archive’s 90th anniversary, said Olga Bobrova, deputy head of the institution.

To contact the reporters on this story: Irina Reznik in Moscow at ireznik@bloomberg.net;Henry Meyer in Moscow at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory L. White at gwhite64@bloomberg.net, Tony Halpin, Paul Abelsky

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