MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin lauded himself Monday as Russia’s hardest-working leader since World War II, putting himself above Communist-era titans like Stalin and Khrushchev in his first lengthy interview since announcing that he will return to the presidency next year.

The nationally televised display of bravado was remarkable even for a man known for his extreme self-confidence, obsession with his public image and virtually unquestioned control over Russia’s most important institutions.

Putin announced last month that he will run for a third term as president in March elections, and his victory is seen as a certainty. He told the heads of Russia’s three national television channels that the Soviet Union’s Communist-era leaders were not physically capable and willing to run the country the way he does.

“I can’t recall Soviet leadership after World War II who worked as hard,” the former KGB colonel said. “They did not know what to do because of their physical capabilities or misunderstandings.”

The channel heads took turns asking Putin a series of polite questions that ranged from deferential to obsequious. One of them compared Putin to a hawk — to which the prime minister replied with a condescending smile.

“A hawk is a good birdie,” he said. “But I am against any cliches.”

None of the interviews questioned Putin’s favorable comparison of himself to the Soviet Union’s post-WWII leaders.

Those leaders include Joseph Stalin, who turned most of Eastern Europe into a Communist bloc; Nikita Khrushchev, who provoked the Caribbean missile crisis, sent the first man in space and banged his shoe on the table in the United Nations promising to “bury” the Western world; and Mikhail Gorbachev, who started perestroika and the democratic changes that led — against his will — to the 1991 Soviet collapse.

Putin accused his Communist-era predecessors of making people feel unsafe and monopolizing ideological and economic power in ways that led to the collapse.

Printed on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 as: Putin praises self as most hardworking Russian leader