The West's obsession with Vladimir Putin's KGB past often misses the biographical detail that can be captured by a single word: dvor. The word means courtyard in Russian, but to a Russian speaker, it is evocative of a whole universe. It was the space where Putin, like so many Soviet kids of his generation, grew up and learned an unforgiving, often brutal social code. Puck journalist Julia Ioffe introduces Westerners to that universe and explains why it’s critical to understanding the Russian president and what he might do next in the war against Ukraine.
To predict what Vladimir Putin might do next in Ukraine, it’s helpful to remember his first and foremost education — in the dvor.
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18 Oct 2023
Chapter 4: The Big Brother
Organized crime and violence reign supreme in post-Soviet Russia. In this world, the rules of the dvor prove invaluable — for the men fighting over the jewels of the Soviet industrial empire, and for Vladimir Putin.
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11 Oct 2023
Chapter 3: The Punk
Putin grows up as a small, scrawny kid in a poor neighborhood with few ways up. Enter judo and the KGB.
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4 Oct 2023
Chapter 2: The Rat
Soviet baby boomers are born into a country ravaged by war. Given that parents are largely absent — either dead, traumatized, or working to make ends meet – children spend most of their time in the dvor, the urban courtyard. The dvor is Vladimir Putin’s world.
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4 Oct 2023
Chapter 1: The Ghosts
The Soviet Union suffers unthinkable horrors during World War II. Leningrad, the city into which Vladimir Putin is born, loses more than a million of its citizens to starvation, and Vladimir Putin’s parents barely make it out alive.
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2 Oct 2023
About a Boy: The Story of Vladimir Putin
In the West, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is always seen as one of two things: KGB spy or judo master. But to anyone who’s ever lived in the Soviet Union, Putin is something else entirely: a street kid. Join journalist Julia Ioffe as she explores how Putin’s childhood taught him lessons that shape his thinking and actions to this day.
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