Simon Sebag Montefiore: Please Hold for Mr. Putin

Simon Sebag Montefiore is the author of “Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar” and “Jerusalem: The Biography.”

MASHA GESSEN, a Russian journalist, was recently fired for refusing to cover President Vladimir V. Putin’s hang-glider flight with migrating cranes, an exploit that was much mocked. Last week, she received an unexpected phone call, which she recounted in a blog post for The International Herald Tribune, this newspaper’s global edition. “My phone rang. ... I listened to silence for two minutes.” Finally: “Don’t hang up. I will connect you.” Frustrated, she shouted: “Do you want to introduce yourself?” A famous voice replied: “Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich. I heard you were fired and that I unwittingly served as the reason for it.” He invited her to meet....

Educated Russians would have spotted similarities between this call and earlier Olympian interventions into the lives of writers by Romanov and Communist autocrats, illuminating rituals of Russian leadership and the relationship between power and art. This tradition flatters the writer in a culture where literature has special prestige. But the surprise also promotes the cult of the unpredictable czar who moves, like God, in mysterious ways.

Eighty-two years ago, Mikhail Bulgakov, novelist and playwright, had been fired from Soviet theaters, his works banned, when his phone rang: “Comrade Bulgakov? ... Please hold. Comrade Stalin will speak to you.” Then the famous voice began, “I apologize ... we shall try to do something for you.” Afterward Bulgakov phoned the Kremlin: was it a prank? It was Stalin. Soon, the theater employed Bulgakov again....