Russia's Would-Be Masters

ast month, a news conference between President George Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin garnered an unusual amount of attention. Most observers watched to see whether Bush would manage to chide Putin—for moving Russia in an increasingly authoritarian direction—without damaging his relationship with the prickly Russian leader. But the conference was a spectacle in another way as well, as two men of nearly opposite personalities struggled to find middle ground. In response to President Bush's rather heroic attempts at humor and affability, Putin maintained the steely, unresponsive exterior he has come to be known for. In the March 2005 Atlantic, Paul Starobin profiled Putin, and managed to get behind that exterior to shed light on the interior life of one of today's most inscrutable and powerful leaders.

Starobin is just the latest in a series of Atlantic authors who have scrutinized the Russian heads of state over the past hundred years—leaders who have been at the helm of a unique nation that in just a century routed monarchy and communism, and then embraced democracy, albeit tenuously. Each leader has wielded power of no mean consequence for Russia and the rest of the world. Articles on Tsar Nicholas Romanov II, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Starobin's on Putin have sought to explain who these men truly were and how their disparate personalities shaped their careers—in the process offering a unique approach to understanding the Russia of their times.

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