Russian president Vladimir Putin has said the collapse of the Soviet Union spelled the end of “historical Russia”, claiming that he drove a taxi to make ends meet after the fall of the USSR.
Putin, a former agent of the Soviet Union’s KGB security services, was using the story to illustrate his own personal hardships as he declared the USSR’s fall a “tragedy” for “most citizens.”
Putin has never before claimed to have moonlighted as a taxi driver in the early 1990s. “Honestly, it’s not very pleasant to speak about,” he said.
In a 2018 documentary, he shared a different story, saying he feared he would have to drive a taxi after his mentor and employer Anatoly Sobchak lost re-election as mayor of St Petersburg. Instead, Putin moved to Moscow and took a job in the national government.
The comments were excerpts from a film by broadcaster Channel One titled Russia: Recent History. Its release coincides with the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union.
“After all, what is the collapse of the Soviet Union? This is the collapse of historical Russia under the name of the Soviet Union,” the Russian leader was cited as saying.
A loyal servant of the union, Putin was dismayed when it fell apart, once calling the collapse “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century”.
Putin is sensitive to the perceived expansion of western military ambitions into ex-Soviet countries and Russia last week demanded that Nato formally scrap a 2008 decision to open its door to Georgia and Ukraine.
The end of the union brought with it a period of intense economic instability that plunged many into poverty, as newly independent Russia transitioned from communism to capitalism.
In the documentary, Putin said: “We lived like everyone, but sometimes I had to earn extra money … as a private driver. It’s not pleasant to speak about honestly, but unfortunately that is what happened.”
He said he gave rides in his private car, a Volga that he brought back from his KGB posting in Dresden.
By all accounts, Putin was struggling to make ends meet in the months directly after he returned to Russia from east Germany in early 1990. But by May of that year, he was employed by Anatoly Sobchak, his future mentor, as an aide in Leningrad city council. And Putin remained employed by the KGB until the failed coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991.
By the following year, Putin’s office was under investigation for signing multimillion-dollar contracts to export raw materials like oil and timber in exchange for food. While the raw materials were shipped out, the food never arrived, and the companies granted export licences quickly disbanded. Putin has denied any wrongdoing in the affair, which opposition politicians said could have cost the city as much as $100m.
Until the early 2010s, it was possible in many Russian cities to hail private cars and negotiate a fare to other places in the city. The practice has become less popular with the growth of taxi companies and the emergence of ride-sharing apps.