Luxurious residences and public image of world leaders – a historical perspective

The most expensive private mansion in Russia, closely associated with president Vladimir Putin, has sent shock waves through Russian media, igniting a new wave of protests. This story attempts to put it in its global context, drawing on historical anecdotes, from Louis XIV to Adolf Hitler.

Illustration by Flynn Klein.

One hundred million. That is not the cost of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s infamous palace which is, in fact, much higher. That is the number of views reached within a week by Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny’s investigative film on the issue, making it the most watched YouTube video in Russia that is not an animated kids’ movie or a music video.

Even before the film’s publication, Navalny was put under indefinite arrest after returning to his home country once he had recovered from being poisoned with the military-grade nerve agent, Novichok. Many deemed his return dangerous and unwise, but “Navalny is not afraid and neither am I” has become one of the most popular slogans of the new wave of protest action across Russia. On February 2, Navalny was jailed for two years and eight months.

On January 23 tens of thousands of protesters rallied to the streets of 196 Russian cities, including Yakutsk where the outside temperature was -52°C, demanding Navalny’s release. I have been able to interview the participants of a solidarity meeting opposite the Russian embassy in Riga, Latvia. Standing next to multiple golden-painted toilet brushes stuck up in the snow, they have all confessed to having watched the film and described it as “disgusting” and “exposing corruption.” The next weekend, on January 31, a similarly-sized protest took place across Russia. It was characterised by unprecedented levels of police brutality and intimidation.

Navalny’s film aggregates scraps of previously published information regarding Putin’s secret property, adding intriguing new details, skilful drone footage, sharp commentary and diagrams of fraudulent financial schemes surrounding the president. However, it is hard at times to grasp the scale of the corruption and decadence of the power-wielders that the film presents to the widest public.

“The property’s territory, which is 39 times the size of Monaco, is covered by an official no-flight zone, and the land around it is owned by the secret services.”

One billion pounds is the estimated cost of the luxurious palace that was claimed by Russian billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, one of Putin’s closest friends and the recipient of the country's largest construction contracts, a week after the investigation was released. This ridiculous price tag earns the palace a number of accolades. It is the most expensive private house in Russia. In fact, it is more than double the selling price of the most expensive private mansion in the United States, constructed in Los Angeles. Of course, Vladimir Putin is no Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

The £1 billion cost puts “Putin’s Palace” around the top 50 of the most expensive buildings ever constructed, on par with Tesla’s Gigafactory 1. According to Navalny, a significant portion of that billion was obtained fraudulently from a state-related medical equipment firm. The absurdity of this number in a country where both the number of billionaires and the price of butter are growing is highlighted by the fact that such a building remained effectively hidden from the public. The property’s territory, which is 39 times the size of Monaco, is covered by an official no-flight zone, and the land around it is owned by the secret services. The mansion has multiple expensive and extravagant features, including among many others an aqua-disco, a shisha bar, an underground hockey ring, a casino, a 16-level bunker and one of the viewers’ “favourites” – a €700 toilet brush. 

Photography by Anton Kutuzov.

The palace’s size is 17,691 m2. This size makes Putin’s supposed hideout the 42nd largest palace on the face of the Earth. The calculation does not include a 2,500 m2 teahouse, a 2,500 m2 greenhouse and a separately built 2,400 m2 “chateaux” (which allegedly could be constructed for Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s seat-warmer president in 2008-2012), featuring a 3,200 m2 spa complex and a 5,200 m2 winery, the home of the golden toilet brush. The palace is not even considered an official presidential residence, of which there are eight.

Evidently, the scope, the scale and ambition of this project more than legitimise the comparison with the likes of Versailles or the Buckingham Palace. Curiously, the entrance to this Black Sea residence features an exact replica of the gates, adorned with a golden two-headed eagle, that could be seen in Saint Petersburg's Winter Palace, the largest palace in Russia and the past home of the Tsars.

“...the almost deliberate uselessness of Putin’s residence makes it much more akin to the £1 million burial villas featuring jacuzzis and cable TV built by the cartel drug lords for the sole purpose of holding their bodies after death.”

There is a major difference between Putin’s Palace and Versailles, however. Namely, Versailles was built for specific state-related purposes and held vast ceremonial functions. Versailles was built to impress. In the words of Tea Gudek Snajdar, an art historian, “the most important message Louis XIV sent through the architecture of Versailles was his ultimate power.” It was not merely the consequence of this absolute power, the palace itself  helped to mythologise the Sun King as a demigod. Versailles was an immensely attractive place, hosting thousands of courtiers at a time, all of whom wanted to bask in the glory of the palace and the Sun King. By contrast, it is believed that Vladimir Putin has visited his secret residence at cape Idokopas only four times, and all workers were hastily moved out on each occasion. Despite the building cost already exceeding a billion pounds, the palace is currently being totally renovated in an attempt to combat vast mould growth due to flawed design.

Vladimir Putin is certainly not the first authoritarian leader keen on building grand palaces. Perhaps the most prominent example, and a much more modern one, is the immense 330,000 m2 Palace of Parliament commissioned by Nicolae Ceaușescu, the president of communist Romania, in 1984. The building is the largest palace in the world by some distance and was inspired by the North Korean urban planning program. Yet, as was the case with Versailles, it at the very least was intended to fulfil an important stately function – hosting the Parliament. In this regard, the almost deliberate uselessness of Putin’s residence makes it much more akin to the £1 million burial villas featuring jacuzzis and cable TV built by the cartel drug lords for the sole purpose of holding their bodies after death.

Now, imagine an immense luxurious residence for which an entire mountain face has been reshaped, featuring bunkers, bridges, underground tunnels and expensive toilet-ware, with no public access, closely guarded by the secret services. This would not only describe the Idokopas residence, but also Obersalzberg, the home and headquarters of Adolf Hitler, built in 1935. This historical parallel is particularly important in the light of the recent criminalisation in Russia of comparing Hitler’s and Stalin’s regimes. Logically, comparing Putin’s and Hitler’s regimes could be seen as even more criminal. Furthermore, the Russian president himself said earlier this year in his speech at the Davos Economic Forum that analogies between the current global political climate and that of the 1930s are “begging to be made.”  

Apart from the practical similarities I have briefly mentioned, two important issues link these hideouts. First, constructing a residence for the national leader is a political tool of utmost significance. Overseeing the construction of Berghof (the Mountain Court, residential part of Obersalzberg) and Kehlsteinhaus (the Eagle’s Nest, a tea house and Nazi headquarters located just above), allowed Martin Bormann, future Chief of Nazi Chancellery, to rise effectively above everybody else in the Nazi high command. He cut in front of his ex-superior Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Führer, in the ranks of Hitler’s closest associates and remained his second-in-command since, largely due to his close involvement with Hitler’s private affairs and particularly the building of his most used home. He was the de jure owner of much of the land and properties at Obersalzberg. Similarly, it is hard (although not impossible) to imagine Vladimir Putin browsing the catalogues choosing between €600 and €700 toilet brushes. The existence of colossal projects like the Idokopas residence reflects more what is perceived by Putin’s inner circle as desirable and pleasing to him, and his unwillingness or inability to restrict this money-draining process.

Secondly, private homes could be an important aspect of the public image of autocratic leaders. Throughout the 1930s and 40s the New York Times was notoriously thorough in describing the aforementioned home of Adolf Hitler, publishing articles on the topic in 1937, 1939 and 1941. The author of the latter, Peter C. Brooks, has noted that “the Führer’s private and personal domain” would be of high importance to the historians of the future. Indeed, Nazi propaganda went to great lengths to create the image of Hitler as a man of taste and culture as well as a “peaceful neighbour,” by publicising images of the delicate interiors at Berghof and Hitler walking his dogs or feeding deer on the majestic mountain trails of the Bavarian Alps.

For Putin, the Idokopas residence has only spelled PR trouble so far, but in his 20 years at the top of Russian politics he has done well to build up a thick public image façade of both a masculine strongman and a benevolent leader. He flew a hang glider to guide endangered cranes along new migration routes, sang and played the piano at a charity event in Saint Petersburg, earned an incredible goalscoring record at the Night Hockey League in Moscow and even retrieved some ancient Greek amphoras from the bottom of the Black Sea.

I could not touch on this topic without discussing one of Putin’s favourite publicity stunts which was adopted from the playbook of Benito Mussolini – partial nudity. Both leaders have resorted to popularising their topless images as a political tool. Mussolini’s most famous image is that of him skiing with only the chest hair to protect his muscular torso from the snow and wind, while Putin’s most publicised image is that of him fishing topless in Siberia with sunglasses partially covering the expression of joy and peace on his face.

One can indeed go too far with such images and I am not referring to pornography. In 1966 the Chinese propaganda used an image of Chairman Mao in the river Yangtze to claim that the national leader had made a 15-kilometre swim to cross the river in just one hour and five minutes. A simple calculation shows that Mao would have to be moving at a blistering pace of 3.8 metres per second for this to be true, which is more than double the speed of the record-breaking 1500m freestyle swim at the 2012 Olympics.

At the end of the day, Putin’s Palace is just the tip of the iceberg of a regime that rests on misinformation, corruption and repression. Yes, it exposes extreme levels of fraud and theft among the Russian ruling elites. Yes, it shows once more the lies that an informational autocracy has to maintain for the sake of its own survival. Yet, Putin’s regime has navigated through all kinds of wild waters–political assassinations, economic crises, constitutional and legal obstacles. Sums far exceeding the costs of the palace are spent yearly on maintaining and expanding the police force and the repression machine in general. The process of breaking free from this dark place for the Russian people would be long and hard. It has already taken or ruined many lives and will continue to do so. However, there is hope that the time is on the side of the truth here. With every passing year it becomes harder and harder to hide reality, as online media and drone-carried cameras penetrate further into the murky authoritarian depths. And, as a Russian saying goes, hope dies last.