liked the cooking so much that he became and actually outlived joseph stalin. national the stories that the personal chef of stalin had and he shared that with vladimir putin -- with young vladimir. out putin had a lot of inspiration, not just from his grandfather but his favorite movie growing up is called "the shield the sword." the russian equivalent to james bond. he wanted to be a spy. he also became a world competitor in judo. so he enrolled in the law department at the statement university of lenin grad. by 197 a 5 he was ecruded by an agent and looks east german and hi german accent was undistinguishable, so he was sent essentially what putin calls, and i quote himself, a specialist in human relations. we in north america call it a spy. so when putin got to st. petersburg after the collapse of ussr, he didn't hang a photo of president yeltsin like everyone else did. he put up a picture of peter the great. that's who putin most relate to he does not relate to the modern failed politicians of russia. he wants to pick up where peter the great left off and t

decks her look at the early life and ascendancy of joseph stalin with author of sub for the first of the planned 3-volume biography of the soviet leader. this is about an hour. >> please join me in welcoming stephen kotkin. stephen is an international affairs professor. [inaudible] [applause] >> gets a particular pleasure to launch my remaining book tour at the university of pennsylvania bookstore because the university of pennsylvania faculty in this area were instrumental in helping me work out some of the in what i might call the first draft of this manuscript. i'm very grateful to them and would repay my gratitude by being here tonight and i appreciate the fact that those people helped me those professors are here tonight as well. so somebody said it's very difficult to summarize 739 pages of text in a a book taught that somebody else said when the camera starting rolling the book readers only 628 pages and it read so fast. my strategy would be to talk about a little bit what's in the book and spend most of the time on questions than answers. somebody asked me do we really need a

first formed under joseph stalin in 1939 the choir was meant to be the voice of the revolution and liftan american song book. this one once used by lennon and the head of his secret police is now use edd by lennon and mccartney. ♪ hey jude don't make it bad ♪ ♪ take a sad song and make it better ♪ >> we're doing this only for them. personally for them. not for the government. not for their bosses. but p personally for everyone who is in the hole or watatching us on televisionon to touch every heart. >> r reporter: while i it's hard to imaginine president putin tapping his toes in approval experts say the fact they were allowed to do thihis meansns their work, no matter how bizarre. >> you can hear the accent even in the singing. >> "happy" i kind of liked. "hey jude," i'm not so sure. >>> it's 2015 not too early to think of your travel destination. peter greenberg has some destinations. don't go away. you're watching "cbs this morning: saturday." >>> fame came in 1970 when tomlin joined nbc sketch comedy show rowan & martin's ""laugh-in."" is this general motors? hi general. >> reporter