What makes the most powerful person in the world mentally strong ? Read what hardships Putin's family encountered.
Image: Putin with his mother.
Vladimir Putin has
written a column (something he very rarely does), recalling the stories of his
parents who survived the hardships of the Leningrad blockade, his dead brother
and World War II with very personal details.
Forbes ranked Putin as
the world most powerful person for the second consecutive year. This year he is
followed by US president Obama was (rank 2), Xi Jinping of China (rank 3), Pope
Fancis (rank 4) and Angela Merkel (rank 5).
He is heading Russia as
the president or the prime minister since 1999. He has run the country largest
by land mass for 15 years. During that time USA has seen three presidents
change. American president has to face resistance in his decisions from the
congress while the Russian system allows Putin to take big decisions without an
opposition.
Putin writes:
‘My dad was breathing via a reed in a swamp while the Nazis
passed by, just a few steps away’
Putin’s father,
Vladimir, joined a small sabotage group under the People's Commissariat for
Internal Affairs (NKVD), whose mission was to blow up bridges and rail lines
near St Petersburg (then Leningrad), the Russian president recalled in
his column in the “Russian Pioneer” journal. Of the 28 members
in the group, 24 died in battles with the Nazis near St Petersburg.
One day, German soldiers
were chasing them in the woods. Putin’s father survived because he hid in a
swamp for several hours.
“And he [Putin’s father]
said that, when submerged in the swamp and breathing through a reed, he heard
German soldiers passing by, just a few steps away from him and he heard dogs
barking.”
His father recalled how
he sustained an injury, which invalided him for the rest of his life because he
had to live with parts of a grenade in his leg.
Father: Vladimir
Spiridonovich Putin
Putin-Sr was making a
sortie behind Nazi lines together with his fellow fighters. However, they
suddenly encountered a German soldier.
"The man looked at
us carefully. He took a grenade, then another, and threw them at us,” Putin recalls his father’s words.
"Life is such a
simple thing and cruel,” the
Russian president concluded.
When Putin’s father woke
up, he couldn’t walk and there was another problem – he had to reach his group
stationed on the other bank of the vast Neva River which was frozen.
“The Neva was constantly
monitored and exposed to fire by artillery and machine guns. There was almost
no way of reaching the opposite bank.”
However, by chance
Putin-Sr met his neighbor, who despite enemy fire managed to get him to a local
hospital. The fragments of the grenade were lodged in his leg and the doctors
preferred not to touch them in order to save the limb.
The neighbor waited for him
[Putin-Sr] in the hospital, and after seeing that his surgery had been
successful he told him: "All right, now you're going to live, and
I am heading off to die."
However, they both
survived the war, though Putin’s father thought his savior had been dead for a
decade. In the 60s, they met by chance in a shop and there was a tearful
reunion.
‘My brother died from diphtheria during the Leningrad blockade’
Putin’s elder brother
was born during World War II. To support his little son, Putin’s father secretly
passed his own hospital rations to his wife. But when he started to faint in
the hospital “doctors and nurses understood what was happening,” said
Putin, recalling his parents’ stories.
The child was taken from
the family by the authorities and put in a foster home from where he was set to
be evacuated.
“He fell ill there [the
foster home] - my mother said it was diphtheria - and didn’t survive. And they
were not even told where he was buried. They were never told.”
Russian President
Vladimir Putin (Reuters / Mikhail Klimentyev)
It was only last year
that Putin managed to find information about his brother and where he was
buried.
“And this was my
brother,” wrote Putin. “Not
only the address where he was taken but the name, surname, and date of birth
all matched. He was buried in Piskarevsky cemetery [in St. Petersburg]. And
even a specific area was mentioned.”
‘Among the bodies my dad saw my mom’
When Putin’s mother was
on her own – her son was taken and her husband was still in hospital – she got
sick. The medics considered her almost dead and were transporting her with
other bodies for burial. As luck would have it, Putin’s father made a timely
return from the hospital.
“When he [Putin-Sr] came
to the house, he saw the medics were carrying corpses. And he saw my mother. He
came closer and it seemed to him that she was breathing. ‘She's still
alive!’," he told the
medics.
They insisted she would
soon die, but he refused to listen to them, and instead attacked them with his
crutches.
“And he took care of
her. She lived,” the Russian
president wrote. His parents died at the end of the 90s.
Vladimir Putin with his mother
(Image from wikipedia.org)
‘My parents didn’t harbor any hatred for the enemy’
Every single family lost
loved ones in this war, Putin said.
“But they [Putin’s
family] had no hatred for the enemy, that's amazing. To be honest, I still
cannot fully understand this.”
He remembered the words
of his mother, who said she didn’t hate the German soldiers as they “were
common people and were also killed in the war.”
Ref:
http://rt.com/news/254445-putin-family-details-wwii/
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