Putin mania: Russian personality cult obsessed with powerful president

MOSCOW — It’s not every day you see President Vladimir Putin with Joseph Stalin, taking a break and counting wads of cash in a Moscow café. So a walk through GUM, a popular department store in Moscow, on a weekday afternoon may well force a double take.

A few months into his new job as a Putin impersonator, Siberian native Valentin Sergeyev continues to turn heads. His Putin — complete with receding hairline, dapper black suit and trademark sunglasses — is the newest addition to a host of lookalikes posing with tourists on Red Square.

“People come to me to bare their problems and concerns. Just look at how they react,” he says, breaking off to pose with two Chinese tourists. “I am Putin for them. They thank me for returning Crimea and making Russia great again.”

In GUM, an elegant kiosk attracts a curious crowd. Black boxes of cologne decorated with the president’s profile stand neatly arranged in shiny glass cases. And below them are the words “Inspired by Vladimir Putin.”

Leaders Number One is the name for a limited release of 2,000 cologne bottles, produced in France and dedicated to the Russian president. A saleswoman, Ekaterina, says some 70 boxes have moved each day since the Dec. 23 release, at 6,500 rubles (about $83) each. A new shipment is on its way.

Putin, the former KGB officer who has effectively run Russia for the past 16 years, is everywhere these days. His sullen gaze follows you around Moscow, from T-shirts sold in patriotic clothing stores to iPhone cases displayed in kiosks that fill underground passages in the capital. His portrait hangs on walls in government buildings across the vast country, with some communities erecting monuments in his honor. “Words That Change the World” is a 400-page book of Putin quotes sent to members of the Federal Assembly as a new year’s gift from the Kremlin.

Muscovites enjoy citing his latest approval ratings, which have soared since his internationally condemned but domestically celebrated annexation of Crimea in 2014. The phenomenon is not new. As early as 2002 a Russian girl band sang about chasing out loser boyfriends and replacing them with strong men like Putin. But the Putin mania has never before hit such a high level.

And GUM is not alone in cashing in and giving the presidential obsession a place to flourish.

At his small workshop in Moscow’s Kitai Gorod district, artist Andrei Budayev has been winding down since putting finishing touches on his latest batch of political calendars. He produced seven for 2016 — far more than for any prior year. Each depicts Putin as the hero in popular movies and Western leaders as a squabbling bunch who fall victim to his schemes.

One calendar, based on the cult Soviet-era film “White Sun of the Desert,” features digitally altered images of Putin and other members of the Russian elite outwitting Barack Obama and his allies on the Caspian Sea’s desert coast. A special role is reserved for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, who sticks his parched mouth out of the sand in February to drink water from Putin’s hands.

Budayev reflects the popular view. While he insists his work has often been critical of Russia’s leaders — over 20 years, he has satirized most of its politicians — he says Putin’s latest actions, especially in Crimea, have earned the authoritarian president widespread respect.

He sees his artistic duty as supporting Russia in tough times. “There’s a war on, an economic and information war. At such a time, what choice can an artist have? I’m a patriot, and I’ve chosen my side.”

Events in Ukraine have boosted demand, but Budayev is unable to take full advantage. At 1,000 rubles each, his calendars are a luxury in economically trying times. To boot, they’re available only on his website. Despite their patriotic slant, he says, storekeepers are afraid to stock them.

Their fears are likely unfounded. Budayev and others may work without the state’s imprimatur, but their art embodies the self-confident image that the president and his handlers wish to project. Putin, plucked from obscurity to replace ailing President Boris Yeltsin in 1999, has gone out of his way to establish an imperious persona in a country with a history of authoritarian leadership. In carefully staged photo ops, Putin has been pictured riding horseback bare-chested in Siberia, testing weaponry developed by Russia’s vast military-industrial complex and overseeing tiger-tracking expeditions in the country’s far east. Official speeches have aided that macho image, with defiant pronouncements against a U.S.-led world order fueling support at home.

Putin has been known to oppose moves to tarnish his image. In 2002, Gazprom Media–owned NTV was forced to terminate its popular puppet show “Kukly” (“Dolls”) after one episode reimagined the president as Klein Zaches, an unsightly creature from a 19th century tale by E.T.A. Hoffmann. According to one of the show’s writers, Victor Shenderovich, the reportedly 5-foot-7 Putin took offense that attention was drawn to his short stature. “Kukly” was the last TV show to needle him in this way, and NTV fell under Kremlin control shortly thereafter.

To some critics, the Putin personality cult is similar — albeit in a much more limited way — to the one surrounding Stalin, the Georgian-born Soviet leader whose mustachioed visage was ubiquitous in the USSR. Frenzied devotion to him reached its peak in the 1930s, when Soviet press heralded him as the “omniscient father of nations” and children’s choirs marked his birthday on Red Square. 

Putin has been largely silent on his growing presence in the Russian mind. In 2011 in an appearance before Western press when he was prime minister, he denied the existence of a personality cult in Russia and dismissed any comparisons with Stalin as inappropriate, AFP reported at the time.

Vasily Gatov, a Russian media critic, emphasizes a clear distinction between the two eras. He says, “Stalin was a symbol of both the proletariat’s hegemony and the USSR itself. He was as close to divinity as a living person can be. Putin’s aides, facing economic upheaval and polarization in society, are trying to replace political discourse with ideology. Today’s cult covers the regime’s weaknesses.”

For some, explicit endorsement of the new orthodoxy functions as a kind of insurance policy. According to Lev Kantor, the owner of a Moscow construction company with 95 employees on its books, a framed portrait of the president is a standard feature in company directors’ offices. Even if the person opposes Putin’s policies.

“It’s a sort of safety measure, in case the tax inspector or police come. And they can, at any moment,” he says. “Having Putin on your wall won’t get you off the hook, but it creates a certain atmosphere. It may just spare you that one extra uncomfortable question.”

Regardless, Putin continues to dominate the country’s public consciousness like no other, and the work of artists like Budayev is in sync with the zeitgeist.

As is Russia’s music industry. “My best friend is Vladimir Putin” is the refrain of a sycophantic hip-hop tune released by Timati, Russia’s most famous rapper, to coincide with Putin’s 63rd birthday, on Oct. 7. “The whole country is behind him. You know he’s a superhero,” raps Timati, who is half Tatar and half Jewish. “He’s the main man, so everything will go to plan.”