The following is a CNN special report.

December 5, 1989.

It was a cold night in Dresden, East Germany.

And it would change the course of Vladimir Putin's life.

The Berlin Wall had just fallen.

All over East Germany, angry crowds roamed the streets,

lashing out its symbols of communist rule.

That night in Dresden, they found a target.

The local KGB headquarters.

A mob surrounded the building.

As the hour grew later, the crowd grew larger.

Inside, peering through the curtains, was a young KGB lieutenant colonel named Vladimir Putin.

He was terrified that there was going to storm the building.

Putin was a junior officer, but the boss was away. He was in charge.

The Berlin Wall had come down. The police weren't going to help. And he called for instructions.

Desperate for help, Putin dialed KGB headquarters in Moscow.

Over and over again.

Finally, one official told him simply, Moscow is silent.

And I think it felt like a deep betrayal to him.

Vladimir Putin was on his own.

He went down into the bowels of the building and fired up the furnace.

He finds himself in the basement at a furnished, shoveling documents.

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