Time magazine Person of the Year 2007: A Tsar Is Born

No one is born with a stare like Vladimir Putin’s. The Russian President’s pale blue eyes are so cool, so devoid of emotion that the stare must have begun as an affect, the gesture of someone who understood that power might be achieved by the suppression of ordinary needs, like blinking. The affect is now seamless, which makes talking to the Russian President not just exhausting but often chilling. It’s a gaze that says, I’m in charge.


This may explain why there is so little visible security at Putin’s dacha, Novo-Ogarevo, the grand Russian presidential retreat set inside a birch- and fir-forested compound west of Moscow. To get there from the capital requires a 25-minute drive through the soul of modern Russia, past decrepit Soviet-era apartment blocks, the mashed-up French Tudor-villa McMansions of the new oligarchs and a shopping mall that boasts not just the routine spoils of affluence like Prada and Gucci but Lamborghinis and Ferraris too.

…Although few Russians seem to think Putin himself is corrupt, it is commonly believed that he is surrounded by business and political heavies who are amassing millions in payoffs. Indeed, if anything can bring him down, it may well be graft. As long as living standards rise, people are more likely to forgive the perception that officials are getting obscenely rich by demanding illicit payoffs. But if the economy stops growing