新闻人物 俄罗斯强人普京的传奇

As western leaders struggle to respond to the stranglehold Russia has put on Crimea, it is beginning to dawn on them that for Vladimir Putin, this fight started a long time ago.

西方领导人在艰难应对俄罗斯施加于克里米亚的强力控制时，他们开始逐渐明白一点：对弗拉基米尔•普京(Vladimir Putin)来说，这场斗争在很久以前就已揭开帷幕。

Within a week, Russia’s president has had his men bring the peninsula on the Black Sea under his control, called the future of the Ukrainian state into question and forced governments from Warsaw to Washington into crisis mode.

在不到一周的时间里，这位俄罗斯总统就令手下将这个位于黑海的半岛置于自己的控制之下。此举为乌克兰国家的未来笼罩上一层疑云，并迫使从波兰到美国在内的各个国家的政府进入危机应对模式。

To many in the west, Mr Putin’s actions are those of an authoritarian leader dangerously out of control. Yet back home approval ratings are rising for a man Russians see as having defended the national interest and boosted their living standards.

对许多西方人来说，普京的行动属于威权领导人极度失控后的危险行径。但在俄罗斯国内，普京的支持率却在上升，俄罗斯人认为他成功捍卫了国家利益，提升了他们的生活水准。

Surprising as this crisis may have been for Europe and the US, for Mr Putin it is the explosion of a grudge that has been building for most of his 14 years in power, a period when he has gone from flint-faced former communist spy to swaggering leader at ease with the trappings of traditional, conservative Russia. “He is disillusioned with the west,” says Igor Yurgens, a former Kremlin adviser. In Mr Putin’s eyes, the revolution in Kiev is only the latest in a long chain of western attempts to encircle and weaken his country.

尽管此次危机对欧美来说可能在意料之外，但对普京来说，这却是他掌权14年以来的大部分时间里不断积累的怨恨情绪的总爆发。在这段时期里，他从最初那位不苟言笑的前苏共间谍，变成了一位谈吐自如、极度自信的领导人，带着种种传统保守的俄罗斯派头。前克里姆林宫顾问伊格尔•尤尔根斯(Igor Yurgens)说：“他对西方的幻想破灭了。”在普京眼中，基辅发生的革命只是一条漫长链条中的最新一环，这条链条就是西方企图围堵和削弱俄罗斯的阴谋链条。

Given the Russian president’s background, hostility to the west almost seems predictable. Born into a working-class family in 1952 in what was then Leningrad, Mr Putin spent his early years with his parents living in one room of a kommunalka, a communal flat. A childhood taste for rowdiness was tempered in his teenage years when he embraced the discipline of martial arts. He also volunteered to join the KGB, an ambition he realised in his early twenties.

考虑到这位俄罗斯总统的出身，他敌视西方似乎是不难预料的。普京1952年生于一个工人阶级家庭，当时他的出生地还叫列宁格勒。他早年间与父母住在一种称为“kommunalka”的集体公寓里（中国的类似建筑称“筒子楼”——译者注）。普京小时候属于那种喜欢折腾的孩子，青少年时代接受的严格武术训练让他收敛了心性。他还曾志愿加入克格勃(KGB)，并在20岁出头的年纪实现了这一梦想。

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 – an event he has described as the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century – Mr Putin swapped spying for politics, first in his home town of St Petersburg (as Leningrad was once more called) and then Moscow, where he joined the presidential office under Boris Yeltsin. Within five years he was handpicked by Yeltsin to succeed him as president.

1991年苏联解体（普京曾将这一事件称为20世纪最大的地缘政治灾难）后，他放弃了间谍生涯，投身政坛。他的政治生涯始于家乡圣彼得堡（也就是曾经的列宁格勒），随后又来到莫斯科，进入总统办公室，处于鲍里斯•叶利钦(Boris Yeltsin)的领导之下。不到五年，他就被叶利钦亲手选定为总统接班人。

At the start of his first presidential term, there was little sense of any cold war chill. “He honestly and wholeheartedly proposed engagement with the west,” says Mr Yurgens. After the September 2001 attacks on the US, Mr Putin offered Washington the use of military bases in Central Asia. Russia also gave up a radio intelligence station in Cuba and a base in Vietnam – steps for which Mr Putin expected something in return but received little.

在普京的首个总统任期之初，人们并没有感受到什么冷战的寒意。尤尔根斯说：“他曾真诚而全心全意地提倡与西方接触。”2001年9月美国遭受袭击后，普京曾向华盛顿方面提出，允许其使用俄罗斯在中亚的军事基地。此外，俄罗斯还放弃了位于古巴的一个无线电情报站，以及位于越南的一个基地。普京本以为这些举措能换来某些回报，最终却什么也没得到。

His expectation that Nato expansion would stop at the German border was disappointed. So were hopes that the western alliance would not build a missile defence shield in Europe and that Moscow would reclaim its global role as an equal to the US. Mr Putin began to take the rebuffs personally. “He is very good at telling people what he knows they want to hear,” says a former US official. “But when issues come up, he can be very quick to bristle and get quite angry.”

他曾希望北约(Nato)东扩能止步于德国边境，结果却让他感到失望。此外，他还希望西方同盟不要在欧洲建立导弹防御系统、以及俄罗斯能重新获得与美国平等的全球地位，这些希望同样落空了。于是，普京开始认为这些粗暴的拒绝是冲着他个人来的。一位前美国官员表示：“他很善于告诉人们他知道他们想听到什么。不过一旦出现问题，他可能转瞬之间就会发火，变得怒不可遏。”

Then came the Orange revolution. When Ukrainians took to the streets in 2004 and overturned an election marred by fraud, Mr Putin suspected a giant western intrigue to encircle Russia. “Putin was shocked, he wouldn’t talk to any western leader for days,” says a senior western diplomat. Mr Putin also came under pressure from hardline former security officials in his inner circle who saw Ukraine as a major strategic setback. “You started to hear for the first time suggestions that he might not make it to the end of his second term,” says the diplomat, who served in Moscow.

接着发生了橙色革命。2004年，乌克兰人走上街头，推翻了一场被欺诈行为玷污的选举。普京当时怀疑，这是西方围堵俄罗斯的一个巨大阴谋。西方一位资深外交官说：“普京对此感到震惊，他好几天都不愿与任何西方领导人对话。”另外，普京小圈子内的强硬派前安全官员也向他施加了压力，这些人认为乌克兰局势是一个重大战略挫折。这位曾驻莫斯科的外交官表示：“人们开始首次听到他可能无法成功走完第二个任期的说法。”

“Those days changed everything,” says a person whose family is close to Mr Putin and who remembers a “brooding” president.

一位家族与普京关系密切的人士称：“那些日子改变了一切。”他回想起，这位总统那时候一副“耿耿于怀”的样子。

Mr Putin began to crack down on political dissent, tighten his grip on the legislature, the regions and the judiciary – a reaction he has repeated following the latest unrest in Ukraine. Mr Putin’s heavy hand has all but smothered Russia’s civil society, says Gleb Pavlovsky, another former Kremlin adviser. “This is the collapse of the Russian intellectual class,” he says. “I think that’s an even worse disaster than what’s happening in Crimea.”

普京开始镇压政治异见人士，收紧对立法机关、各行政区和司法机关的控制——在乌克兰最新的动乱爆发后，他曾多次作出这种反应。前克林姆林宫顾问格列布•帕夫洛夫斯基(Gleb Pavlovsky)表示，普京的高压手段几乎扼杀了俄罗斯的公民社会。“这是俄罗斯知识分子阶层的垮台，”他说，“我认为这场灾难甚至比克里米亚的局势还要糟糕。”

On the international stage the hardening of Mr Putin’s attitude was signalled in a speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, which former aides say pointed to what was to come. Mr Putin railed against the US and warned Nato off Georgia. A year later he returned to Munich to deliver a veiled warning about western attempts to draw in Ukraine. “And yet again, they didn’t take him seriously,” says Mr Yurgens.

在国际舞台上，普京2007年在慕尼黑安全政策会议(Munich Security Conference)上的一次演讲凸显出他的态度日趋强硬。他的前助手表示，那次演讲预示着后来会发生什么。普京对美国展开了抨击，并警告北约不要插手格鲁吉亚事务。一年后，还是在慕尼黑，他针对西方企图吸引乌克兰入盟含蓄地发出了警告。尤尔根斯说：“他们依然没有把他的话当回事。”

The first time Mr Putin made real his threat – the five-day war with Georgia in 2008 – left relations with the US seriously damaged. Since then, the crises that emanated from the Arab uprising have further cemented Mr Putin’s belief that the US is engaged in dangerous “experiments” around the world.

普京第一次把他的威胁变成事实是2008年与格鲁吉亚的“五日战争”，那件事令俄美关系严重受损。此后，阿拉伯国家的起义所引发的危机让普京进一步坚定了看法：美国正在全球各地插手危险的“实验”。

While it is impossible for outsiders to tell when Mr Putin decided to move on Ukraine, there is consensus that it was long planned. “The level of precision with which this has all been rolled out is astounding,” says the former US official.

尽管外部人士不可能确定普京到底是何时决定对乌克兰采取行动的，但人们的一个共识是，这一行动蓄谋已久。上面提到的那位前美国官员说：“这一行动出台的精准程度令人吃惊。”

The question is where Mr Putin goes from here. If Russia is targeted with tough financial sanctions, the resulting damage could quickly undermine his power. “He has taken a big gamble but he can’t go back,” says the person with personal ties to Mr Putin. The calculus seems to be that Russia will get to keep Crimea as the west will not risk conflict.

问题是，普京接下来要走向何方。如果俄罗斯受到严厉的金融制裁，那么由此带来的伤害可能会迅速削弱他的权力。一位与普京有私交的人士称：“他展开了一场豪赌，但他不能走回头路。”普京打的算盘似乎是，由于西方不愿冒险卷入冲突，俄罗斯最终将把克里米亚纳入囊中。

Some Russian experts therefore have little more than scorn for German chancellor Angela Merkel’s reported observation that Mr Putin is out of touch with reality. “People in the west think Putin is irrational or crazy. In fact he’s very rational according to his own logic, and very well prepared,” says Andrei Illarionov, a former Putin adviser who is now one of his fiercest critics. “It is not Putin who is out of touch with reality – it is the west.”

因此，一些俄罗斯专家对德国总理安格拉•默克尔(Angela Merkel)的说法嗤之以鼻——据报道，默克尔称普京与现实脱节。“西方人认为普京不理智或疯狂。实际上，按照他自己的逻辑，他非常理性，而且准备得非常充分。”曾任普京顾问的安德烈•伊拉里奥诺夫(Andrei Illarionov)表示，“与现实脱节的不是普京，而是西方。”伊拉里奥诺夫现在是对普京批评最为严厉的人士之一。