When pressed for cash, we all do things we don’t particularly like or enjoy, or are not proud of. Russian President Vladimir Putin is also like that.
A new documentary claims to shed light on Putin’s difficult time after the fall of the Soviet Union and how, before he found financial stability again, he had to moonlight as a taxi driver, the Guardian reports. Most of us would see absolutely nothing wrong with having to drive strangers around town for work, but for Putin, the experience was so off-putting that he would rather not talk about it. Too much. The revelation comes in a new documentary by Channel One called Russia: Recent History. Speaking of the fall of the USSR and how he struggled financially in the early 1990s, Putin says he used to drive his personal Volga, which he’d brought into Moscow after serving the KGB in Dresden, as a taxi. There is the insinuation that being someone’s driver is some sort of disgrace, which shouldn’t come as a surprise from someone like Putin. “We lived like everyone, but sometimes I had to earn extra money… as a private driver. It’s not pleasant to speak about honestly, but unfortunately that is what happened,” Putin says in the doc. The greater point he’s making is that the fall of the Soviet Union was a “tragedy” for “most citizens,” including himself. The media outlet notes that Putin is either not talking that much about his once-side-job as a taxi driver because it wasn’t a pleasant experience or, simply put, because it never happened. For instance, in a 2018 documentary, Putin said he came close to becoming a taxi driver out of necessity, but this is the first time he claims to have actually worked as one.
If he did – and that’s a big if – it wasn’t for a very long time. He came to Moscow in early 1990 and, by May, he was already working for his future mentor, Anatoly Sobchak. He also continued to be on KGB’s payroll until August next year.
Keyword: Poor Putin Had to Moonlight as Taxi Driver to Make Ends Meet