Putin: The Unknown President

Russian Acting President Vladimir Putin appealed Friday for a big turnout in Sunday's election.

While the outcome favored Putin, as a politician, he is certainly starting at the top: this is his first election, for any office. And as CBS News Anchor Dan Rather reports, his rise has little to do with democracy and everything to do with old-fashioned Kremlin intrigue.

Putin's campaign reflected this knowledge gap.

The former KGB spy staged countless photo opportunities, has risen high in the polls, but has said next to nothing about his vision for Russia's future.

"This is a big question mark," said Moscow analyst Lilia Shevtsova, who is troubled that the man apparently headed for a big victory Sunday remains a blank slate.

"We are electing a person who has no political past, no political biography, no political background—who's without history," she said.

Putin remains a man of contradictions: a KGB spy who became a favorite of capitalist investors, a leader who talks of peace as he intensifies the war in Chechnya.

He's been silent on how he'll rescue the economy and what he'll do to control the world's second largest nuclear arsenal.

And at 47, he's likely to be around for a long time to come.

Russia was introduced to Putin when he was named Prime Minister last year, and learned he was president when Boris Yeltsin stepped down on New Year's Eve.

When he announced the abrupt transition of power on national television, Yeltsin made sure the case containing Russia's nuclear codes was in plain sight.

The outgoing leader wanted all to know that Putin was now the one with his finger on Russia's nuclear trigger.

And, some Russians complain, that is about all that's known about the man poised to be elected president.

One can learn more about Putin by traveling north from Moscow to the old capital city of St. Petersburg.

Putin was born there, back when the city was still named Leningrad, and grew up attending schools where the education was still influenced by the communist principles of Lenin and Marx.

Still, Putin's teacher at School 281 in St. Petersburg says the school permitted students to read widely, including dissident authors who questioned the Soviet system.

"This was an experimental school," says Tamara Stelmakova, "and Vladimir was among the best students."

From graduate school, Putin went directly into the Soviet secret service.

But except for mentioning that he was stationed in East Germany, Putin has said little of his 15 years in the KGB.

He came home to St. Petersburg in 1990 when the Soviet Union started to unravel.

As Deputy Mayor, he helped woo foreign investors, including Coca-Cola, to come build in the city.

Alexander Belyaev, then the St. Petersburg City Council speaker, calls Putin a "workaholic."

Belayev clashed with Putin when he and the mayor tried to push changes through by decree instead of the democrtic give and take of city politics.

"I think his mentality is still [a] soviet type mentality," said Belayev. "He dreams about the past...he wants to show that Russian power is still strong."

The day he took over from Yeltsin, Putin throttled-up Russian military power in the breakaway province of Chechnya.

He expanded the war, heaped praise on the military—and Russian public opinion pushed Putin's popularity to new heights.

Putin appeals to many who yearn for Russia to stand tall and those still waiting for a leader to deliver on the promise of a free market economy. People who know him say he dreams of little else than making Russia great.

"The people are frustrated, humiliated," said Shevtsova. "They want some kind of safety. They want order."

Observes Belayev: "I think his hero is Tsar Peter the First, Peter the Great."