Vladimir Putin’s ‘daughter’ appears on TV, and a taboo is cracked
Andrew E Kramer | NYT News Service | Dec 10, 2018, 06:29 IST
Katerina Tikhonova appeared on television this past weekMOSCOW: A nearly 20-year taboo on reporting in the Russian news media about President Vladimir Putin’s personal life has unravelled — just a little — with an interview broadcast on state TV with a woman who has been described as his daughter.
The interview suggested some softening of Putin’s steely image and the prospect that his two adult daughters may be easing into public life. Russia has no enduring tradition of a public first family. Putin, a former spy, has mostly kept his daughters out of sight.
He has occasionally spoken with affection of his daughters, and last year announced that he was a grandfather. Still, throughout his tenure Putin has insisted that his family life remain private.
Vedomosti, a Russian newspaper, reported that the interview, which first aired on Thursday, was the first with the woman, Katerina Tikhonova. She has been reported by Russian and Western news media to be the president’s younger daughter, though Putin has never publicly acknowledged her as such. “A big event in our Byzantium,” one Russian in the political opposition wrote on Facebook.
On the show, Tikhonova was asked about her work as director of a scientific institute. The show profiled a group of scientists developing devices that read brainwaves. The coverage portrayed the research as groundbreaking and vital for technology, suggesting an emerging role for Tikhonova as a champion of Russian science.
Her appearance on state television suggests a potential public role for the presidential family, a fraught topic in Russian political culture since Soviet times, Nina Khrushcheva, a professor in New York and a granddaughter of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, said.
Josef Stalin kept his family cloistered from public view, but in 1959 Khrushchev toured the US with his family, Khrushcheva said. President Boris Yeltsin’s daughter was a public figure in the 1990s, before Putin reversed course. The shift now, amid sagging ratings in the polls for Putin, “is a way to show the family is involved in building Russia, and it’s not just Putin sitting in the Kremlin,” she said.
Putin’s youngest daughter, born Yekaterina V Putina while her father was posted in Germany as a spy, is 32. The Kremlin has declined to comment on Tikhonova’s identity. In his fullest explanation about the secrecy around his daughters, Putin suggested a desire in 2017 that his grandkids “live like ordinary people,” out of the public eye.
The interview suggested some softening of Putin’s steely image and the prospect that his two adult daughters may be easing into public life. Russia has no enduring tradition of a public first family. Putin, a former spy, has mostly kept his daughters out of sight.
He has occasionally spoken with affection of his daughters, and last year announced that he was a grandfather. Still, throughout his tenure Putin has insisted that his family life remain private.
Vedomosti, a Russian newspaper, reported that the interview, which first aired on Thursday, was the first with the woman, Katerina Tikhonova. She has been reported by Russian and Western news media to be the president’s younger daughter, though Putin has never publicly acknowledged her as such. “A big event in our Byzantium,” one Russian in the political opposition wrote on Facebook.
On the show, Tikhonova was asked about her work as director of a scientific institute. The show profiled a group of scientists developing devices that read brainwaves. The coverage portrayed the research as groundbreaking and vital for technology, suggesting an emerging role for Tikhonova as a champion of Russian science.
Her appearance on state television suggests a potential public role for the presidential family, a fraught topic in Russian political culture since Soviet times, Nina Khrushcheva, a professor in New York and a granddaughter of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, said.
Josef Stalin kept his family cloistered from public view, but in 1959 Khrushchev toured the US with his family, Khrushcheva said. President Boris Yeltsin’s daughter was a public figure in the 1990s, before Putin reversed course. The shift now, amid sagging ratings in the polls for Putin, “is a way to show the family is involved in building Russia, and it’s not just Putin sitting in the Kremlin,” she said.
Putin’s youngest daughter, born Yekaterina V Putina while her father was posted in Germany as a spy, is 32. The Kremlin has declined to comment on Tikhonova’s identity. In his fullest explanation about the secrecy around his daughters, Putin suggested a desire in 2017 that his grandkids “live like ordinary people,” out of the public eye.
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