Putin’s first magazine column: Firing people is hard
In contrat to vlogging, live-journaling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimiur Putin has generally preferred to let his actions do the talking. But this Friday, Putin will make his debut as a magazine columnist in the monthly magazine Russian Pioneer. But don’t expect an ideological pean to the glories of sovereign democracy. Putin’s topic ...
In contrat to vlogging, live-journaling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimiur Putin has generally preferred to let his actions do the talking. But this Friday, Putin will make his debut as a magazine columnist in the monthly magazine Russian Pioneer. But don't expect an ideological pean to the glories of sovereign democracy.
In contrat to vlogging, live-journaling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimiur Putin has generally preferred to let his actions do the talking. But this Friday, Putin will make his debut as a magazine columnist in the monthly magazine Russian Pioneer. But don’t expect an ideological pean to the glories of sovereign democracy.
Putin’s topic is management, specifically “why it’s hard to fire people.” But the released exceprts of the column, as printed by The Independent, do seem to offer a few clues to recent Kremlin infighting though:
Conflicts within a team, especially within a big team, always arise,” writes Mr Putin, in extracts leaked to a Russian news agency. “This happens every minute, every second – simply because between people there are always clashes of interest.”…
“I can say honestly that while I was president, if I hadn’t interfered in certain situations, in Russia there would long ago ceased to have been a government.” …
“In contrast to previous, Soviet rulers, I always do it personally. I usually call the person into my office, look them in the eye, and say: ‘There are concrete complaints. If you think this isn’t true, then please, you can fight against it; argue your case’.”
Photo by Junko Kimura/Getty Images
Joshua Keating is a former associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating
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