Michael: The most dangerous man in the room is often the one nobody notices. What if the secret to seizing absolute power isn't a grand vision or a magnetic personality, but being so utterly forgettable that no one sees you coming until it's too late? Kevin: That’s a terrifying thought. We always look for the charismatic leader, the loud one making promises. The idea that the real threat is the quiet, grey man in the corner… that’s the stuff of nightmares. It feels like a spy movie plot. Michael: It’s not a movie, but it is the chilling premise behind Masha Gessen's book, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. Kevin: And Gessen is someone who was right there in the thick of it. They were a journalist in Moscow for decades, and even got fired from a magazine for refusing to write a puff piece about Putin. That's some serious journalistic courage. Michael: Exactly. And that firsthand experience gives the book this raw, urgent quality. It’s less a distant history and more a direct warning. It tries to answer the fundamental question: how on earth did this happen? Kevin: Right. How does a man nobody knew, a man Gessen describes as essentially faceless, end up running one of the world's biggest powers? Where do you even start with a story like that? Michael: Gessen argues it all starts in the absolute chaos of 1990s Russia, a country on its knees, desperate for any kind of order.

Kevin: The 90s in Russia. I just picture economic collapse, political instability, Boris Yeltsin… not exactly a stable foundation. Michael: Not at all. By 1999, Yeltsin was a wreck. His health was failing, his behavior was erratic, and his approval ratings were in the single digits. More importantly, his inner circle, a group of oligarchs and family members known as "The Family," was terrified. Kevin: Terrified of what? Losing their influence? Michael: Losing their freedom. They were convinced that once Yeltsin was gone, the next leader would prosecute them for the corrupt deals that made them billionaires. They needed a successor, but not a real leader. They needed a guarantor. Kevin: A guarantor? That’s a wild way to choose the next head of state. So, not a visionary, but more like a security guard for their own interests? Michael: Precisely. They needed someone who would protect them, someone loyal, and most importantly, someone they could control. And that’s where Vladimir Putin, the grey, unassuming bureaucrat, enters the picture. Kevin: The man without a face. So what did they see in him? Michael: It’s more about what they didn't see. They saw a man with no discernible personality, no political ambition, no ideology. The powerful oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who saw himself as the ultimate kingmaker, was one of Putin’s biggest champions. His first impression of Putin was, and I quote, "He was the first bureaucrat who did not take bribes." Kevin: Hold on. That’s the main qualification? The bar is literally on the floor. ‘He seems honest enough, let’s give him the nuclear codes!’ It’s absurd. Michael: It is. They fundamentally misjudged him. They saw his blankness as a sign of malleability. Gessen paints this incredible scene where Berezovsky flies to Biarritz, France, to convince a vacationing Putin to consider the presidency. Putin is hesitant, reluctant. He looks, for all the world, like a puppet waiting for a master. Kevin: This is just a catastrophic miscalculation. It's like they were hiring a quiet middle manager to run the company, but he ended up staging a hostile takeover, firing the board, and seizing all the assets. Michael: That is a perfect analogy for what happened next. They saw a blank canvas and assumed they’d be the ones holding the paintbrush, without ever considering the canvas might have its own, very dark, picture to paint. Kevin: So they have their man, this empty suit. How do they sell him to a country that has no idea who he is? Michael: Well, that’s where the story takes a turn from political drama to something much more sinister. The blank canvas needed a picture painted on it, and it needed to be done fast.

Michael: When Putin was first appointed Prime Minister in August 1999, his approval rating was practically zero. He was a total unknown. The question on everyone's lips, from Moscow to Davos, was, "Who is Mr. Putin?" Kevin: So he’s a nobody. How do you turn a nobody into a national savior in just a few months? Michael: You give the nation something to be saved from. In September 1999, just a month after his appointment, a series of apartment buildings in Moscow and other Russian cities began exploding in the middle of the night. Hundreds of civilians were killed in their sleep. It was pure terror. Kevin: And the official story was Chechen terrorists, right? A perfect enemy to rally the country against. Michael: Exactly. And Putin, the quiet bureaucrat, suddenly found his voice. He stepped in front of the cameras and delivered his now-infamous, thuggish line about the terrorists: "We will hunt them down. Wherever we find them, we will destroy them. Even if we find them in the toilet. We will rub them out in the outhouse." Kevin: Wow. That is not the language of a faceless bureaucrat. That’s the language of a street fighter. Michael: And it worked. The country, terrified and humiliated after years of decline, loved it. Putin’s ratings skyrocketed. He went from an unknown to a national hero, the strong hand they had been waiting for. Kevin: But Gessen’s book raises serious questions about this narrative. This is where the story gets really dark, isn't it? Michael: It gets terrifying. Because just as the country was gripped by fear, a fifth bomb was discovered before it could go off. This was in the city of Ryazan. An alert bus driver noticed suspicious activity and called the police. They found three large sacks in the basement of an apartment building, wired to a timer. Kevin: So they caught the terrorists in the act. Michael: Well, the local bomb squad confirmed the sacks contained hexogen, a military-grade explosive. The city was in a panic. But then, a couple of days later, the head of the FSB—the successor to the KGB, and Putin's old organization—goes on national television and makes a stunning announcement. He says it wasn't a bomb. It was just a "training exercise." Kevin: A training exercise? You’re telling me they planted what looked like a real bomb, with a real timer, in a random residential building, without telling the local authorities or anyone in the building, as a test? That’s insane. Michael: The local FSB branch had no idea it was happening. The bomb squad that identified the explosive was adamant. And the contents of the sacks, which the FSB claimed was just sugar, were quickly confiscated and never independently tested. Kevin: The implication is just staggering. That the state security services, Putin's own people, might have been planting the bombs themselves. Michael: Gessen lays out the evidence so powerfully that the official story seems almost impossible to believe. It suggests a horrifying possibility: that the crisis that made Putin president was manufactured. They didn't just seize an opportunity; they may have created it. Kevin: So he gets the presidency on the back of this fear. The oligarchs think they have their puppet, but he’s a puppet who now has the full backing of a terrified population and the security state. What happens when the puppet master, Berezovsky, tries to pull the strings? Michael: He finds that the strings have been cut. And the puppet is now holding a knife.

Michael: Once Putin is securely in power, the people who put him there, like Berezovsky, quickly learn a lesson in loyalty. Putin’s loyalty wasn't to them; it was to the state, or more accurately, to his own control over the state. The mask of the malleable bureaucrat comes off. Kevin: And what's underneath? What’s the true face? Michael: According to Gessen, it’s a face of insatiable greed and a pathological need for total control. Putin began to systematically dismantle any source of independent power in Russia. First on the list was the media. Kevin: The free press that had blossomed in the 90s. Michael: Exactly. He tells the story of Vladimir Gusinsky, an oligarch who owned NTV, the country’s only independent television network. It was fiercely critical of the government, especially of the war in Chechnya. Within a year of Putin taking office, Gusinsky was arrested, his media empire was systematically dismantled, and NTV was taken over by the state-controlled gas company, Gazprom. Kevin: A clear message: criticism will not be tolerated. And then he turned on the oligarchs themselves, the very people who thought they could control him. Michael: He went after the biggest of them all: Mikhail Khodorkovsky. At the time, he was the richest man in Russia, head of the oil giant Yukos. But his real crime, Gessen argues, wasn't his wealth. It was what he was doing with it. Kevin: What was he doing? Michael: He was becoming a political force in his own right. He was transforming Yukos into a transparent, Western-style corporation. He was funding opposition parties, NGOs, and civil society projects. He was creating an alternative center of power. And in Putin's system, there can only be one. Kevin: So what happened? Michael: In a scene straight out of a movie, armed, masked FSB agents stormed Khodorkovsky's private jet on a tarmac in Siberia. He was arrested, put on trial for tax evasion, and his multi-billion-dollar company was systematically broken up and sold off, mostly to state-owned firms controlled by Putin’s allies. Kevin: It’s the ultimate power play. It sends a message to every other rich person in Russia: you can be wealthy, but only at the pleasure of the Kremlin. Your money is not your own. Michael: Precisely. And this leads to the final, and perhaps most disturbing, part of Gessen's portrait: the idea of Putin as the ultimate kleptocrat. The book details the shocking story of "Putin's Palace," a secret, billion-dollar Italianate palace built for him on the Black Sea. Kevin: A palace? How was that even funded? Michael: A whistleblower named Sergei Kolesnikov came forward with documents showing it was funded by a complex scheme that siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars from, of all things, charitable donations intended to buy high-tech medical equipment for Russian hospitals. Kevin: That’s beyond cynical. It’s not just corruption; it's taking from the sick to build a palace. It perfectly encapsulates Gessen's argument about the nature of the regime. Michael: It does. It’s the final unveiling. The man without a face is revealed to be the head of a state built on fear, control, and an almost cartoonish level of personal greed.

Michael: So when you step back, you see this incredible, terrifying arc that Gessen lays out. A 'faceless' man is chosen for his perceived emptiness. He's then given a fearsome, heroic face through a national crisis that may have been entirely manufactured. And finally, he reveals his true face: a leader who views the entire country as his personal fiefdom. Kevin: It’s a chilling lesson in how autocracy can rise not with a bang, but with a whisper. People were so exhausted by the chaos of the 90s that they accepted a leader they knew nothing about, simply because he promised order. The book is a powerful reminder to never, ever underestimate the quiet ones in the room. Michael: And it’s why Gessen’s work, while viewed as one-sided by some, remains so vital. They are not just writing history; they are sounding an alarm. Kevin: What’s the one core insight you think listeners should really take away from Gessen's account? Michael: That the erosion of democracy is often a quiet, incremental process. It's not always a dramatic coup. Sometimes it's a series of small, corrupt deals that no one pays attention to. It's one independent media channel being silenced. It's one election being subtly managed. It's one businessman being made an example of. Each step seems small, but you wake up one day and realize the entire system has been transformed from the inside out. Gessen's book is a powerful call to pay attention to the details, because that's where freedom is often lost. Kevin: A powerful and incredibly timely message. We'd love to hear what you all think. Does power corrupt, or does it simply reveal what was there all along? Find us on our social channels and join the conversation. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.