The longtime Kremlin éminence grise on shaping Russia’s managed democracy, Alexei Navalny — and why Putin is a modern Octavian
Surkov is a founding father of Putinism, and one of its key enablers. He is the architect of Russia’s “sovereign democracy”, an ostensibly open system with a closed outcome: elections are called, candidates campaign, votes are cast, ballot boxes are opened, and the same man wins, every single time.
Its core idea is that the stability of the state supersedes the freedom of the individual, and entails fake opposition parties, rigid control of the media and impossible barriers to entry for political figures not approved by the regime, offset by the illusion of the traditional trappings of a true democracy.
Grey cardinal, éminence grise, a modern Rasputin, a Russian Richelieu — Surkov exhausts the clichés as the consummate Kremlin backroom operator. Never elected, he was Putin’s chief ideologist and by most accounts his closest political confidant for more than a dozen years, who went on to stage-manage the 2014 annexation of Crimea and Russia’s involvement in the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine.
[...] I ask the obvious question: how does one dismantle democracy while enhancing its facade? “In the Soviet Union, there was a lot of homogeneity. And that homogeneity ruined the Soviet Union, because people need diversity. But in the 1990s, we had diversity. And that diversity was ruining Russia even faster,” he begins.
“For a while I was a student at the institute of culture. I studied the Commedia dell’arte. There is a limited cast: Pantalone, the merchant. There is a judge, Tartaglia. There is Harlequin, a stupid servant. Brighella, a smart servant. Colombina, the young servant, and so on. There is a limited group of players, but they represent all strata of society.”
I am initially bemused by this detour into Italian theatrical nomenclature but it soon becomes clear. “People need to see themselves on stage,” he continues. “In this masked comedy, there is a director, there is a plot. And this is when I understood what needed to be done. “We had to give diversity to people. But that diversity had to be under control. And then everyone would be satisfied. And at the same time, the unity of the society would be preserved . . . It works, this model works. It is a good compromise between chaos and order.”
[...] He served in the Soviet army, worked as a turner in a factory, and spent years “smoking and talking with hippies and some other queer people” before entering the chaotic world of Russia’s nascent capitalism as first a bodyguard and then a PR man for banking and oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky was later stripped of his assets, jailed and exiled during Surkov’s time in the Kremlin. After a stint at Russia’s state TV channel he was made an assistant to Alexander Voloshin, President Boris Yeltsin’s chief of staff, in 1999.
When Putin inherited the Kremlin at the turn of the millennium, Surkov was made deputy chief of staff. “When the change happened, it was absolutely clear to me that the personality of the new leader provided an opportunity,” Surkov recollects. “With Putin, I realised everything that I wanted to do could be done now.”
[...] He tells me that Putin, with his help, created “a new type of state”. He describes his former boss as a modern-day Octavian, the Roman ruler who succeeded Julius Caesar. “Octavian came to power when the nation, the people, were wary of fighting. He created a different type of state. It was not a republic any more . . . he preserved the formal institutions of the republic — there was a senate, there was a tribune. But everyone reported to one person and obeyed him.
Thus he married the wishes of the republicans who killed Caesar, and those of the common people who wanted a direct dictatorship,” he says. “Putin did the same with democracy. He did not abolish it. He married it with the monarchical archetype of Russian governance. This archetype is working. It is not going anywhere . . . It has enough freedom and enough order.”
[...] I ask him if he is shocked by the new level of violence being used by police against protesters this spring. He smiles, and says he has no idea. I recommend he goes to a protest. “Me? Why should I?” he responds with mock affront.
“The state protects itself, everywhere,” he retorts. “Sorry, I’m saying simple things like a Kremlin propagandist, but this is obvious. In all countries, illegal rallies are crushed by force. Why should we be different?”
“That man is not acceptable. Navalny is not acceptable,” he says. “He should not be part of Russian politics. Germans love him, let him be elected to the Bundestag . . . They can give him a German passport.”
[...] Surkov tells me that when he worked for Khodorkovsky in the 1990s, he wrote a memo to a senior politician arguing for the need for Russia to retake Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that became part of independent Ukraine when the USSR dissolved. But, he admits, Russia lacked both the resources and the organisation at the time.
In February 2014, five months after Surkov’s new appointment, unmarked Russian troops entered Crimea to capture strategic sites, and lend muscle to pro-Russian separatists that demanded independence from Kyiv.
[...] Surkov is unrepentant, and portrays himself as someone seeking to help — not dissect — a country long divided between east and west. “Ukrainians are very well aware that for the time being, their country does not really exist. I have said that it could exist in the future. The national core exists. I am just asking the question as to what the borders, the frontier should be. And that should be the subject for an international discussion,” he says. “The country can be reformed as a confederation, with a lot of freedom for the regions to decide things by themselves,” he continues.
“Two bones need soft tissue between them. Ukraine is right between Russia and the west, and the geopolitical gravity of both will sever Ukraine. Until we reach that outcome, the fight for Ukraine will never cease. It may die down, it may flare up, but it will continue, inevitably.” Surkov describes the Minsk agreements — a peace deal signed by Moscow, Kyiv and pro-Russian rebels — as an act that “legitimised the first division of Ukraine”.
[...] But as the plates of panna cotta are cleared, and I ask about his role in the next Kremlin transition, his discipline finally cracks. “Well, let’s wait and see. Some exciting things are ahead of us. There will be many new dramatic transformations,” he says.
“Yes, I would like to understand when it will happen. If I live long enough, when it happens, then I will have a job.”
