Oliver Stone - The Putin Interviews

VP:You see, you can allow yourself, you can afford and you have the right to give this or that assessment to the actions of your country’s leadership as you deem fit because you’re an American. And you can even give harsh assessments. Whereas we are fostering partnership relations, not just with your country, but with your government as well. That’s why we have to behave very cautiously. And however great the differences are, we have to stick to certain rules. Otherwise international relations cannot be built.

OS:I understand—that’s very clear. Lastly, I am not anti-American, I am not pro-Russian, I am pro-peace. It’s very important to me, in my lifetime I would like to see peace and I’m scared right now. I’m worried for the world, because I’m worried about my country’s attitude towards peace. And it doesn’t seem to understand the stakes that it has raised. That’s the point I’m trying to make in my documentary here.

VP:And you’re a man of peace. It’s easy for you. And I’m pro-Russian. And it’s more difficult for me.

OS:And I thank you for illustrating for us in these last days the stakes.

OS:How are you, Mr. President? Nice to see you. I thought maybe you could sit over there and I’ll sit here and we’ll play it by ear a bit. That’s an old American expression—do you know it? “Play it by ear?” Playing an instrument without sheet music—improvising, like jazz.

VP:No, I don’t. Well, there’s a whole gang of people here—so many.

OS:You had a tough day. It’s been a while—nice to see you. I think last June was the last time I saw you.

VP:Yes, it was in June.

OS:Did you miss me? [laughter]

VP:Yes, I cried every now and then, but finally we’re here.

OS:I’m sure you’ve cried about other things. I fell asleep upstairs while we were waiting—caught up on my jet lag.

VP:Well, I envy you.

OS:How was your day?

VP:Well—in work. I met my colleagues, I talked about domestic policies and security. Economic issues—talked on many occasions with the minister for finance. I also talked to my assistant on economic matters. So that’s about it. That was my day. I met the speaker of the parliament, defense minister, also minister for the interior.

OS:Holy cow. Well, you didn’t have a cabinet meeting then?

VP:No, not today.

OS:I’m told there was a National Security Council-type meeting.

VP:Exactly, many years ago I put into place a small group of people comprising the heads of security services and also other special services and ministries. And we call it the meeting of the Security Council of Russia.

OS:I see. A crisis or anything?

VP:No, it’s a regular meeting. It happens once a week.

OS:Well, I would just ask you because we were normally scheduled for 3 p.m. and now it’s… six hours and 40 minutes later.

VP:Well, I knew that you had to have some rest and have some soup.

OS:[laughter] I’m saying there must be crises that come up—there are things that aren’t scheduled.

VP:No, there is no crisis. It’s just regular work, routine work. But one thing entails another thing. It’s like a chain. And when you plan a meeting for 10 minutes and he asks you one question after another and then 10 minutes turns into an hour. And it’s very difficult to put an end to this chain of events.

OS:Well, it seems then that you’re a man of details.

VP:Yes, I try to be. I don’t even read some summaries of reports of my intelligence services or special services. I don’t read summaries.

OS:You read the actual report?

VP:Yes, the reports themselves.

OS:That goes to my bigger question, because my producer who’s here, Fernando, we were talking earlier and he said you are an excellent CEO—chief executive officer—of a company. Russia is your company.

VP:Maybe. The process of coordinating. It all starts with finding, detecting some problem areas, questions that need answering. And then we get down to finding ways to address these issues.

OS:You’re a great CEO. You kick the tires, you deal with these problems and you’re trying to solve them on the spot.

VP:Yes, I think that’s the case.

OS:Well, sometimes the argument is—I mean I’m talking about work management because it’s an interesting question to everybody. Let’s say the problem is this, you go into the details and the details sometimes get smaller. And you look at the micro detail. And each micro detail has another micro detail and before you know it you’ve lost the forest for the trees, as they say.

VP:No, I try not to get to that point. I try not to stop halfway, if I see that we are moving in the right direction. In other words, I am not trying to go into too many details—I’m not too meticulous. I try to respond to the existing issues, to the existing problems, but I do it on the spot. It’s a living process.

OS:That can be very irritating. You can probably go to bed at night not having solved some of these things and it really drives you nuts.

VP:Yes, sometimes that happens.

OS:Terrible.

VP:But that’s very interesting.

OS:Interesting in what way? It goes into your subconscious and you sleep on it?

VP:I meant that the process itself is interesting. It’s not about having some issues unresolved. It’s about the very process of addressing these issues. I try to make it more creative. Just imagine a painter is painting a picture and then he has dinner. And he just quits his picture and goes to dinner. But that’s not how it happens. The painter tries to complete something and only after that he’s ready to have some rest. I’m not comparing myself to….

OS:Well, for example, just using an old fashioned example, if you have a tractor factory. One problem is you don’t make enough tractors. That could be one problem and there’s ways to solve that. Do you throw more men at it? Modernize the equipment in a certain way? How do you go about making more tractors? Number two, is the management of the factory wrong? Is there a problem with the manager? Do you have to see the manager for yourself to know, or do you trust the associate of an associate of an associate to tell you. And number three—do we need tractors? Should we rethink this thing? These kinds of questions are not solvable right away.

VP:Yes, certainly. Well, it’s especially about the market. If the project is required, that’s one matter. If you need modernized products then it’s another matter entirely. But anyway we always have to seek modernization to be more efficient.

OS:Right, but sometimes it’s hard to identify the problem. It’s a messy thing and it doesn’t solve right away. It could be a problem of personnel or could be a problem of technique or problem of “am I doing the right thing in the first place?” You know—it’s messy.

VP:Yes, I agree. And one always has to give it some thought. And then you have to think a lot about dealing with the issue you are faced with—what are the instruments, what are the tools you need to do that?