Chapter 1: The Ghosts

To predict what Vladimir Putin might do next in Ukraine, it’s helpful to remember his first and foremost education — in the dvor.  

Organized crime and violence reign supreme in post-Soviet Russia. In this world, the rules of the dvor prove invaluable — for the men fighting over the jewels of the Soviet industrial empire, and for Vladimir Putin.

Putin grows up as a small, scrawny kid in a poor neighborhood with few ways up. Enter judo and the KGB. 

Soviet baby boomers are born into a country ravaged by war. Given that parents are largely absent — either dead, traumatized, or working to make ends meet – children spend most of their time in the dvor, the urban courtyard. The dvor is Vladimir Putin’s world.

The Soviet Union suffers unthinkable horrors during World War II. Leningrad, the city into which Vladimir Putin is born, loses more than a million of its citizens to starvation, and Vladimir Putin’s parents barely make it out alive.

In the West, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is always seen as one of two things: KGB spy or judo master. But to anyone who’s ever lived in the Soviet Union, Putin is something else entirely: a street kid. Join journalist Julia Ioffe as she explores how Putin’s childhood taught him lessons that shape his thinking and actions to this day.