Vladimir Putin carefully controls his public image, and the way he accomplishes this leaves ample room for conflicting interpretations, according to Dmitri Shalin, professor of sociology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Speaking at a Kennan Institute seminar, Shalin reviewed Putin's autobiography, First Person, contrasting it to alternative sources of information. The book has a Russian and English edition, which are inconsistent. For example, in the English version, Putin describes his contempt for communism and his admiration for KGB informers, but the Russian version omits those passages, Shalin pointed out. Both versions talk about the "paralysis of power" that grips Russia, however.

The 2000 interview narrative is a coming-of-age story, in which a young Putin describes his early years and his career path, Shalin reported. As a youngster, Putin was a roughneck and earned poor grades, but over time he committed to self-improvement. He joined the German club, got himself elected head of the Young Pioneers cell, and learned judo wrestling. At school he struggled with the bullies, but eventually managed to scare them away. He describes this somewhat ominously as "taking care of the bullies."

Later in the book, Putin describes his metamorphosis into a good citizen, Shalin said. As a ninth grader, Putin visited the local KGB office to inquire how he could join the organization and was turned down. The advice he received was to go to law school. After completing law school, he was offered a job with the KGB. For five years he collected intelligence and wrote reports, but eleven years of his career are not fully documented in his book's account, Shalin stated. While stationed in Germany, Putin met a lot of contacts that would become useful to him later in life.

When the Soviet Union began to enter a period of crisis in the late 1980s, Putin was involved in high-level meetings among KGB officers discussing the restoration of order in Russia, Shalin noted. He openly spoke against the proposals to bar former KGB officers from public offices. One such proposal was made by Galina Starovoitova, a Russian parliamentarian, who was murdered four months after Putin took over as head of the FSB. There is no indication that Putin was implicated in this assassination, Shalin stressed, but Putin's public opposition to the views championed by Starovoitova are well known.

Shalin used Erving Goffman's dramaturgical analysis to shed light on the phenomenon of "Potemkin portable villages" that vividly manifests itself in Putin's presentation of self. The term describes any elaborate effort to maintain a respectable front that covers up less than reputable reality. Manipulating public fronts and covering up the unseemly backstage are strategies that mark Putin's regime and that are consistent with historical trends in Russian culture, he concluded.