Page 50 as a sixth-grader: Teacher Vera Gurevich, quoted ibid.
Page 50 “We were playing”: Grigory Geilikman, quoted in Blotsky, p. 160.
Page 50 “We were in eighth grade”: Nikolai Alekhov, quoted in Blotsky, p. 161.
Page 50 “He once invited me”: Sergei Roldugin, quoted in Gevorkyan et al.
Page 51 “Someone picked on him”: Ibid.
Page 52 hand-to-hand combat: Blotsky, p. 259.
Page 52 theme song from the miniseries: “S vyslannymi iz SshA razvedchikami vstretilsya Vladimir Putin,” July 25, 2010. http://lenta.ru/news/2010/07/25/spies/. Accessed Feb. 25, 2011.
Page 52 “When I was in ninth grade”: Blotsky, p. 199.
Page 53 subversive troops: Y. Popov, “Diversanty Stalina.” http://militera.lib.ru/h/popov_au2/01.html. Accessed Feb. 25, 2011.
Page 53 one of only four survivors: Gevorkyan et al.
Page 53 “some intelligence officer for sure”: Ibid.
Page 54 “A man came out”: Blotsky, pp. 199–200.
Page 54 “He surprised everyone”: Gevorkyan et al.
Page 55 Putin graduated from secondary school: Blotsky, p. 155.
Page 55 number of cars: http://www.ref.by/refs/1/31164/1.html. Mikhail Blinkin, “Avtomobil’ v gorode: Osobennosti natsionalnogo puti,” http://www.intelros.ru/pdf/arc/02_2010/42-45%20Blinkin.pdf. Accessed Oct. 27, 2011.
Page 55 gave the car to their son: Gevorkyan et al.
Page 56 Putin made a thousand rubles: Ibid.
Page 56 an overcoat for himself: Gevorkyan et al.; Blotsky, pp. 226–27.
Page 56 “All through my university years”: Gevorkyan et al.
Page 57 “not particularly outgoing”: Blotsky, p. 287.
Page 57 “He says, ‘Let’s go’”: Ibid., pp. 287–88.
Page 57 “Once I tried”: Sergei Roldugin, quoted in Gevorkyan et al.
Page 58 “That’s how it happened”: Gevorkyan et al.
Page 58 a tiny minority: Sergei Zakharov, “Brachnost’ v Rossii: Istoriya i sovremennost’,” Demoskop Weekly, Oct. 16–29, 2006, pp. 261–62. http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/2006/0261/ tema02.php. Accessed Feb. 27, 2011.
Page 58 “One evening”: Gevorkyan et al.
Page 59 such was his cover: Ibid.
Page 59 “I was most amazed”: Ibid.
Page 60 “Only the Central Committee”: Vadim Bakatin, Izbavleniye ot KGB (Moscow: Novosti, 1992), pp. 45–46.
Page 61 Article 190: Bakatin, pp. 32–33.
Page 61 constant surveillance and harassment: Filipp Bobkov, KGB i vlast (Moscow: Veteran MP, 1995).
Page 61 thoroughly familiar with the way it was organized: Gevorkyan et al.
Page 61 A perfectly laudatory memoir: Vladimir Usol’tsev, Sosluzhivets (Moscow: Eksmo, 2004), p. 186.
Page 61 “It was an entirely unremarkable school”: Ibid.
Page 61 Counterintelligence officers in Moscow: Bobkov.
Page 61 assigned to the intelligence unit: Gevorkyan et al.
Page 62 did his job well: Ibid.
Page 63 a little Stasi world: Ludmila Putina, quoted ibid.
Page 63 Putin drank beer: Gevorkyan et al.
Page 64 Putin was assigned: Author interview with Sergei Bezrukov (former KGB agent in Berlin), Dusseldorf, August 17, 2011.
Page 64 Putin and his two colleagues: Usol’tsev, pp. 70–74; author interview with Sergei Bezrukov, Dusseldorf, August 17, 2011.
Page 64 small monthly hard-currency payments: Usol’tsev, p. 36.
Page 65 they made a lot more money: Ibid., p. 30.
Page 65 so unreachable for someone like Putin: Author interview with Sergei Bezrukov, Dusseldorf, August 17, 2011.
Page 65 a former RAF member: Author interview with the man, Bavaria, August 18, 2011; he asked that his name not be printed.
Page 65 every other officer… had his own office: Usol’tsev, p. 62.
Page 66 Former agents estimate: Usol’tsev, p. 105; author interview with Sergei Bezrukov, Dusseldorf, August 17, 2011.
Page 66 Putin’s biggest success: Author interview with Sergei Bezrukov, Dusseldorf, August 17, 2011.
Page 66 The KGB leadership: Bobkov.
Page 66 a public statement condemning secret-police crimes: O. N. Ansberg and A. D. Margolis, eds., Obshchestvennaya zhizn’ Leningrada v gody perestroiki, 1985–1991: Sbornik materialov (St. Petersburg: Serebryany Vek, 2009), p. 192.
Page 68 demonstrations in East Germany continued: Elizabeth A. Ten Dyke, Dresden and the Paradoxes of Memory in History (New York: Routledge, 2001).
Page 69 shoving papers into a wood-burning stove: Gevorkyan et al.
Page 70 “I was scared to go into stores”: Ludmila Putina, quoted ibid.
Page 70 “They cannot do this”: Sergei Roldugin, quoted in Gevorkyan et al.
