Putin's Democratic Present Fights His K.G.B. Past

MOSCOW, Oct. 8 There is a question that irritates President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and it is the one about his past as a foreign intelligence operative of the K.G.B.

"They cannot forget about that agency," he replied, seemingly to his aides, when asked a version of it in an expansive interview at his wooded presidential estate outside of Moscow. He chuckled, but not warmly.

Does the president of a newly democratic Russia or, as some say, an increasingly autocratic one regret any part of the K.G.B.'s history?

"No, of course not," he said brusquely and, surprisingly, personally. "There was absolutely nothing that I could be ashamed of." snip

After meeting him for the first time in 2001, President Bush famously said he had looked into Mr. Putin's eyes, got "a sense of his soul" and liked what he saw. To most Russians, Mr. Putin's "soul" remains a far more complicated, conflicted question. snip

Russia, 12 years after the collapse of the Soviet state, still has an opaque judicial system. It still has closed cities, where foreigners and even most Russians cannot go. Its security services again wield significant power.

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