deathmtn

The same year the tanks destroyed the hopes of reformers in Prague, a 16-year-old [Putin] walked towards a place known as the Big House in Leningrad, the imposing local KGB headquarters. ‘I want to get a job with you,’ he told the official who came out to speak to him. His ambitions had been fired by what he had been watching on TV. A four-part series called The Sword and the Shield – named after the emblem of state security – had been broadcast on Russian TV that summer.