Putin Defends His 'Democracy'

As president of Russia, Vladimir Putin was the proud and gracious host to more than 50 world leaders who are gathered in Moscow to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Putin has twice been elected president of Russia, but is he a dictator or a democrat? Controversy has swirled about him since he became president five years ago.

At the beginning, he was a slum kid from Leningrad who had a dream. He wanted to be an agent of the sinister KGB, and improbably, he did it. He was smart, ambitious, self-disciplined and lucky. Boris Yeltsin plucked him out of virtual anonymity from a local post in Leningrad, and eventually astonished Russia by anointing Putin president.

Last spring, Putin invited to come to Moscow for a rare, unrestricted interview. This report, first broadcast in May, resulted from the interview.

The president has been studying English for five years now, but he preferred to do the seated interview in Russian. Putin remains something of an enigma, so Wallace showed him some old pictures, hoping he would open up about them. He did.

"You were a very serious, young man," says Wallace, showing Putin a photo of when he was around 14.

"Not always," says Putin.

"Oh," says Wallace. "A bad boy from time to time?"

"We lived in a small room, all three of us, in a communal apartment in Leningrad with no private facilities," says Putin. "We didn't even have our own bath or shower. My parents worked a lot, so I spent lots of time in the streets with other teenagers."

Putin and his wife, Ludmilla, have been married for 21 years. They have two daughters, Katya and Masha, who are 19 and 20 now, but the Kremlin does not release current pictures of them for security reasons.

"You didn't want a boy?" asks Wallace.

"I believe that everything is right which God has given us," says Putin.

Is he religious?

"I believe that every person must have some faith within his heart, and this is what is especially important -- your inner world, the condition of your soul," says Putin.

"Is that what brought you and George W. Bush together at the beginning," asks Wallace. "Your feeling about some spirit?"

"Probably so," says Putin.

Unlike Mr. Bush, Putin was reluctant to become president. His reluctance to accept it is apparent in a picture of Yeltsin handing him the reins of power.

"You look as though you're overwhelmed or unhappy or worried," says Wallace, of the picture.

"Definitely, all the thoughts you have mentioned," says Putin. "I had told Yeltsin that I was not prepared, because this, in my view, was a very difficult, very complex fate. And I had never thought about becoming president."

But, in fact, he is a leader who takes charge. "You definitely have to be tough," he says. "Probably, it is more difficult to be patient and to be able to forgive."

"I am told that there are three major TV news channels and that they are controlled by you," says Wallace. "Your people run these news channels and the opposition has no news channels, if there is indeed opposition to you."

"There is opposition to me. It's normal," says Putin. "The opposition has an opportunity to openly express its views and that's what they are doing."

Where?

"Everywhere," says Putin. "Including in the streets, and on radio and television and in newspapers."

This is true, but Putin did not deny that the Kremlin controls the most powerful news broadcasts on the three main television networks. But Putin is a counter-puncher who then pointed to problems between journalists and the government in the United States: "Haven't we seen resignations of leading American journalists from the national media due to their positions on Iraq?"

"What are you saying, Mr. President?" asks Wallace. "Journalists resigning because what?"

"Don't you know that some of the American journalists were fired because of their positions on Iraq or the presidential election campaign?" says Putin.

"Were you talking about Dan Rather, at CBS News?" asks Wallace.

"Yes, exactly," says Putin, who apparently believed that Rather's resignation as anchor of the CBS Evening News meant that he had been fired from CBS.

"On our TV screens, we saw him resigning," says Putin. "We understood that he was forced to resign by his bosses at CBS. This is a problem of your democracy, not ours."

"He has not resigned," says Wallace. "He continues to work as a matter of fact on 60 Minutes." Recently, the Bush White House has voiced concern about democracy in Russia because President Putin has been intent on centralizing power in the Kremlin. Putin, however, insists he is not rolling back democracy, although he has eliminated some public elections.

"There was a time when the regional governors were elected, correct?" asks Wallace.

"Absolutely right," says Putin.

"And, all of a sudden, Putin says, 'No, no, no. I shall appoint the governors.' That's democracy?" asks Wallace. "That's not democracy, the way I understand it. Now maybe, I'm just dead wrong."

"You're absolutely wrong," says Putin, laughing. "And you know you are. For instance, India is called the largest world democracy. But their governors have always been appointed by the central government, and nobody disputes that India is a large democracy."

"Why did you change from electing your governors to appointing your governors?" asks Wallace.

"The principle of appointing regional leaders is not a sign of a lack of democracy," says Putin, who then criticized America's Electoral College system.

"In the United States, you first elect the electors and then they vote for the presidential candidates. In Russia, the president is elected through the direct vote of the whole population -- that might be even more democratic," says Putin. "And you have other problems in your elections. Four years ago, your presidential election was decided by the court. But we're not going to poke our nose into your democratic system because that's up to the American people."

His obvious implication was that Americans should not poke their nose into Russia's democracy.

Russia has almost 30 billionaires, called oligarchs, who managed to snap up Russia's state industries and natural resources at bargain prices after the breakup of the Soviet Union. This happened under Boris Yeltsin, but Putin was not about to criticize the man who made him president.

"The fact of the matter is, Mr. President, that Boris Yeltsin made it possible for his friends, the oligarchs, to get a leg up in return for which they helped him in his last election campaign," says Wallace. "It was a quid prod quo. Right?"

"You have oversimplified. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we faced economic problems. We faced terrorism and practically civil war," says Putin.

"It had nothing to do with Boris Yeltsin?" asks Wallace.

"They took advantage of the weakness of the state by using their money to buy influence in the legislature, and the judicial system, and the mass media," says Putin.

Putin is now cracking down on many of the oligarchs, forcing them to return some of their ill-gotten gains. Several billionaires have gone into exile, a few into Russian prisons.

"Corruption is every place in Russia. Agreed? Why? To get anything done, money," says Wallace. "You want an apartment? A bribe. You want a job? A bribe. And you know, who tells me this? My Russian friends. They're disgusted by it, but they say it's a fact of life. Corruption in Russia."

Asks Putin: "Have your American friends never told you about corruption in the United States?"

Putin blames much of the corruption on the oligarchs. Most of them are Jewish and President Putin has made a point of speaking out against the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Russia.

"I said that even in our country, most unfortunately, we see signs of neo-Nazism, of extremism, of anti-Semitism," says Putin. "And for us, this is a special evil, because Russia is a multi-ethnic, multi-national country. And as soon as we let anti-Semitism pop up, national intolerance grows, and that is bad for the country."

Last spring, all over Moscow, banners celebrated the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.

What did Putin hope to accomplish, with all of the heads of state attending the celebration?

"We should not forget the things that brought us together, that united us," says Putin. "And that we need to unite our efforts again to counter contemporary threats and challenges. We have to look to the future. To fight for the future of mankind."

And to fight, especially against terrorism. Putin believes the Iraq War has spawned more terrorists, and that the war was perhaps Mr. Bush's biggest blunder.

"Democracy cannot be exported to some other place. This must be a product of internal domestic development in a society," says Putin. "But if the U.S. were to leave and abandon Iraq without establishing the grounds for a united country, that would definitely be a second mistake."

"They're pressing us to end the interview," says Wallace, when 60 Minutes had run over its alloted time. "Just a few more [questions]."

"Nobody can be pressing us because I'm the president," says Putin, laughing.

"So, in English, what would you like to say to the American people?" asks Wallace.

"I want to say a lot, really a lot," says Putin, in Russian. "But I am afraid to offend Americans with my improper pronunciation."

"Don't worry about it," says Wallace.

"And, at the conclusion, I would like to say only one thing," says Putin, who adds in English, "All the best to every family in America."