Outsider: Putin has cultivated an image of himself as an outsider since he was a young man. He was born and raised in Russia's second city of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), the child of a factory worker and sometime janitor, with earlier humble roots in Russia's Ryazan province. In many respects, Putin was even an outsider within the KGB. He was recruited into the institution in the 1970s as part of an effort by KGB Director Yury Andropov to bring in a new generation of operatives from outside normal channels. But Putin did not rise rapidly through the ranks of the KGB, nor did he secure plum postings.
Putin was never part of the leadership structures of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and remained an outsider throughout the 1980s. During the critical reform period of perestroika, the KGB posted Putin to the provincial city of Dresden in East Germany, where he would remain until after the fall of the Berlin Wall. After his tenure as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, in summer 1996, Putin was specifically brought to Moscow as an outsider to help root out entrenched interests in the capital's political and business circles. Putin has made a virtue of this outsider status throughout his presidency, stressing his connections to "ordinary" Russians and distancing himself from Moscow's resented elites.
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