1972 photograph of Leningrad: visitors at the Bronze Horseman monument — Leningrad, 1972 — visitors at the Bronze Horseman monument; an ordinary street scene from Putin's youth — Glavarkhiv Moscow, L. Pavlov (CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons). Not a photograph of Putin.

Early Life

Born in 1952 in post-war Leningrad to working-class parents, Vladimir Putin grew up in a communal apartment, practiced judo and sambo, and graduated in law in 1975 — the year he joined the KGB.

Birth and family

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born on 7 October 1952 in Leningrad. His father, Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin (1911–1999), served in the Soviet Navy’s submarine fleet during World War II and later worked as a foreman in a factory; his mother, Maria Ivanovna Shelomova (1911–1998), was a factory worker. Per Putin’s own account in First Person (2000), he had two older brothers, Viktor and Albert, both of whom died in childhood.

Childhood

The family lived in a communal apartment in Leningrad — Putin has described shared kitchens and a rough neighborhood. By his own telling, he was an undistinguished pupil in his early school years, a brawler in the streets, until a sixth-grade teacher, Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich, took an interest in him and his grades improved. At about age 11 or 12 he began practicing judo and sambo at a local sports club; the disciplines — and the coaches — became a lasting part of his identity. He earned a black belt in judo as a young man and has repeatedly been photographed training and competing.

Education

Putin attended School No. 281 and then School No. 193, from which he graduated in 1970. He entered the law faculty of Leningrad State University that year, graduating in 1975. During his university years he was recruited into the KGB; his acceptance of the offer after graduation set the course of the next fifteen years of his life (see KGB Years). He was baptized as an infant, per his own account — reportedly in secret, given the Soviet state’s hostility to religion.

What the record does not give us

Putin’s early life is unusually well documented by his own account — First Person (2000) was built on long interviews — but there are few independent sources for the details. This site reports his account as his account, not as independently verified fact, where no outside corroboration is available.

Source notes

Family and childhood details: Putin’s account in First Person (2000, interviews by Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, and Andrei Kolesnikov); the Kremlin’s official biography.
School and university record: Leningrad State University records as reported in the biographies listed in sources.