During the Cold War, Vladimir Putin manned the KGB's post in Dresden, East Germany, recruiting local journalists, scientists, and engineers to spy on the West. It was a cushy job for a while: Putin took his family on weekend trips to Saxony, ate lunch at home, and drank the finest beers East Germany had to offer, straight from the keg. After the Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9,1989, Putin and his fellow agents in Dresden burned so many secret documents that their furnace broke. At one point, a mob of locals surrounded the office, preparing to ransack it. When Soviet troops stationed nearby refused to help, Putin pulled out a pistol and warned the trespassers in German that he would open fire if they came closer. The crowd dispersed, but Putin recounted in his memoir that he viewed the USSR's demise as a personal humiliation. "The whole country no longer existed," he lamented. "It disappeared."
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