KGB was the only game in town for people with ambition.
Had the Czar still ruled, Putin would have worked for the Okhrana, defending the Czar from the Bolsheviks.
“Putin discusses how the Soviet Republics had no real power. ‘In practice, a strictly centralized, absolutely unitary state was created... under the conditions of a totalitarian regime, everything worked anyway, and outwardly it looked beautiful, attractive and even super-democratic.’”
Yes, from his speech what he believes is authoritarian control, and that is what he misses from Russia’s past.