Like most of you I was familiar with Vladislav Surkov, known variously in the Western World as the Wizard of the Kremlin, after the fictional character Vadim Baranov in the 2022 French novel The Wizard of the Kremlin by Giuliano da Empolalso, whom very few people credit. He is also called Putin’s Rasputin, the Grey Cardinal of the Kremlin or the Puppet Master and the inventor of “Putinism”, which is really a Western thing like “Stalinism” or “Maoism? Surkov’s use of the term came in this essay in 2019 but the term appears to have appeared in 2000 in the Washington Quarterly in Dmitry Shlapentokh’s article “Putinism”
The Russians don’t do “isms”.
Surkov resigned as Presidential Advisor in 2020. Everyone speculates about that — but he was attracting too much attention I think, with rumors and charges of this and that.
…As a child, I was terrified when I first realized that I was constantly, absolutely nonstop, thinking about something. That all sorts of thoughts were constantly creeping into my head—good, bad, smart, stupid, mine, others’—so many, too many thoughts.
And most importantly, the thoughts were creeping in on their own, against my will. Their influx is uncontrollable and unregulated. There are too many of them, and there are more and more. But my head isn’t made of rubber. It’s pretty small, too. I was little, after all. And I thought, “Well, f...” And it felt like my poor little rubber head would just burst. My brain would drown in thoughts.
So I tried to stop, to block the flow of consciousness. It turned out to be difficult. Holding your thoughts is like holding your breath—you can’t do it for long. How long can you hold your breath? A minute. Two or three. Five, if you’re really cool. And ten or twenty minutes—very few people can do it. If this isn’t a trick at all, I don’t know. You can’t go more than five minutes without thinking like that. If you’re a normal person. Since I’ve been practicing since childhood, I can go without thoughts for up to fifteen minutes. That’s already on the edge. There’s no need to try.
In any case, Surkov is an interesting personality with some very interesting ideas that, unfortunately, are sometimes hard for others to grasp.
This is the whole essay Putin’s Long State as published on Nezavisimaya Gazeta. You will find endless citations on the Internet justifying different interpretations according to the bias of the writer. But there is proper context for everything in Surkov’s article and you need to draw your own conclusions.
On the glossy surface glistens an elite, century after century actively (to their credit) involving the people in certain of their activities—party meetings, wars, elections, economic experiments. The people participate in these events, but somewhat detachedly, not appearing on the surface, living a completely different life within themselves. Two national lives, the superficial and the profound, are sometimes lived in opposite directions, sometimes in concurrent ones, but never merge into one.
The deep people always keep their own counsel, inaccessible to sociological surveys, agitation, threats, and other methods of direct study and influence. Understanding who they are, what they think, and what they want often comes suddenly and late, and not to those who can do anything about it.
Few social scientists would dare to determine precisely whether the deep people are equal to the population or a part of it, and if a part, then which one? At various times, peasants, proletarians, non-party members, hipsters, and public sector workers have been identified with them. They have been “sought” after, “visited,” called God-bearers, and vice versa. Sometimes they have decided that they are fictitious and do not exist in reality, and launched galloping reforms without regard for them, but quickly smashed their foreheads against them, concluding that “there is something after all.” They have retreated more than once under the onslaught of conquerors, both their own and foreign, but always returned.
With its gigantic super-mass, the deep people create an irresistible force of cultural gravity that unites the nation and attracts (presses) to the earth (to the native land) the elite, which from time to time tries to soar cosmopolitanly.
Nationality, whatever that means, precedes statehood, predetermines its form, limits the imagination of theorists, and compels practitioners to take certain actions. It is a powerful attractor, to which all political trajectories without exception inevitably lead. In Russia, you can begin with anything—with conservatism, with socialism, with liberalism—but you’ll always end up with roughly the same thing. That is, with what, essentially, exists.
The ability to listen to and understand the people, to see through them, to their full depth, and to act accordingly is the unique and primary strength of Putin’s state. It is attuned to the people, aligned with them, and therefore not subject to the destructive overloads of the countercurrents of history. Consequently, it is effective and durable.
In the new system, all institutions are subordinated to the core task of trusting communication and interaction between the supreme ruler and the citizens. The various branches of government converge on the leader, considering them valuable not in themselves, but only to the extent that they provide a connection with him. In addition, informal means of communication bypass formal structures and elite groups. And when stupidity, backwardness, or corruption obstruct lines of communication with the people, energetic measures are taken to restore audibility.
The multi-layered political institutions we adopted from the West are sometimes considered somewhat ritualistic, instituted more to make things “like everyone else,” so that the differences in our political culture wouldn’t be so obvious to our neighbors, irritating or intimidating them. They’re like formal attire, worn when visiting strangers, while at home we’re more at home, everyone knows what they’re wearing.
Essentially, society trusts only the leader. Whether this stems from the pride of a people never conquered, the desire to straighten the path of truth, or something else is difficult to say, but it is a fact, and not a new one. What is new is that the state doesn’t ignore this fact; it takes it into account and bases its endeavors on it.
It would be an oversimplification to reduce the topic to the notorious “faith in a good king.” The deep people are anything but naive and hardly consider good nature a royal virtue. Rather, they might think of a good ruler as Einstein said of God: “Sophisticated, but not malicious.”
The modern Russian state model begins with trust and is sustained by it. This is its fundamental difference from the Western model, which cultivates mistrust and criticism. And herein lies its strength.
Our new state will have a long and glorious history in the new century. It will not break. It will do things its own way, winning and maintaining its place in the top league of geopolitical struggle. Sooner or later, all those demanding that Russia “change its behavior” will have to come to terms with this. After all, it only seems like they have a choice.
The deep people always keep their own counsel, inaccessible to opinion polls, agitation, threats, and other methods of direct study and influence.
Photo: RIA Novosti
“It only seems like we have a choice.” These words are astonishing in their depth and audacity. Spoken a decade and a half ago, they are forgotten today and unquoted. But according to the laws of psychology, what we forget influences us far more powerfully than what we remember. And these words, reaching far beyond the context in which they were spoken, ultimately became the first axiom of the new Russian statehood, upon which all theories and practices of current politics are built.
The illusion of choice is the most important of all illusions, the signature trick of the Western way of life in general and Western democracy in particular, which has long been committed to the ideas of Barnum rather than Cleisthenes. The rejection of this illusion in favor of the realism of predetermination led our society first to contemplate its own, unique, sovereign version of democratic development, and then to a complete loss of interest in discussions about what democracy should be like and whether it should even exist.
Paths to free state building opened up, guided not by imported chimeras, but by the logic of historical processes, that very “art of the possible.” Russia’s impossible, unnatural, and counter-historical disintegration was, albeit belatedly, firmly halted. Having collapsed from the level of the USSR to the level of the Russian Federation, Russia ceased to crumble, began to recover, and returned to its natural and only possible state as a great, expanding, land-gathering community of peoples. The immodest role assigned to our country in world history does not allow us to leave the stage or remain silent in the background; it promises no peace and predetermines the complex nature of our statehood.
And so, the Russian state continues, and now it is a new type of state, the likes of which we have never seen before. Having taken shape in the mid-2000s, it remains little studied, but its uniqueness and viability are clear. The stress tests it has passed and is passing demonstrate that this organically developed model of political organization will be an effective means of survival and the rise of the Russian nation not only for the coming years, but also for decades, and most likely for the entire coming century.
Russian history thus recognizes four fundamental models of government, which can be conventionally named after their creators: the state of Ivan III (the Grand Duchy/Tsardom of Moscow and All Rus’, 15th–17th centuries); the state of Peter the Great (the Russian Empire, 18th–19th centuries); the state of Lenin (the Soviet Union, 20th century); and the state of Putin (the Russian Federation, 21st century). Created by people of, in Gumilev’s words, “long will,” these great political machines, replacing one another, repairing and adapting as they went, ensured the Russian world’s steady upward mobility century after century.
Putin’s vast political machine is only just gaining momentum and is gearing up for a long, difficult, and interesting run. Its full potential is still far off, so many years from now, Russia will still be Putin’s state, just as modern France still calls itself de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic, Turkey (even though anti-Kemalists are currently in power there) still relies on the ideology of Atatürk’s “Six Arrows,” and the United States still appeals to the images and values of the semi-legendary “founding fathers.”
It is necessary to understand, comprehend, and describe Putin’s system of governance, and the entire complex of ideas and dimensions of Putinism as an ideology of the future. This is precisely the future, since the current Putin is hardly a Putinist, just as, for example, Marx was not a Marxist and would not necessarily have agreed to be one if he had known what it was. But this must be done for everyone who is not Putin but would like to be like him, so that his methods and approaches can be transmitted into the future.
The description should not be couched in the style of two propaganda tools, one domestic and the other foreign, but in a language that both Russian officialdom and anti-Russian officialdom would perceive as mildly heretical. Such language could be acceptable to a fairly broad audience, which is precisely what’s needed, since the Russian-made political system is suitable not only for a domestic future; it clearly has significant export potential; demand for it, or for individual components of it, already exists; its experience is being studied and partially adopted, and both ruling and opposition groups in many countries are emulating it.
Foreign politicians accuse Russia of meddling in elections and referendums across the planet. In reality, the matter is even more serious – Russia is interfering with their brains, and they don’t know what to do with their own altered consciousness. Ever since our country, after the disastrous 1990s, abandoned ideological borrowings, began producing its own meanings, and launched an information counteroffensive against the West, European and American experts have increasingly been making incorrect forecasts. They are surprised and infuriated by the electorate’s paranormal preferences. Confused, they have declared an invasion of populism. One could say that, if words fail.
Meanwhile, foreigners’ interest in the Russian political algorithm is understandable: there is no prophet in their homelands, and Russia has long since predicted everything that is happening to them today.
When everyone was still raving about globalization and raving about a flat, borderless world, Moscow provided a clear reminder that sovereignty and national interests matter. Back then, many accused us of a “naive” attachment to these old things, supposedly long out of fashion. We were taught that there was no point in clinging to 19th-century values, but rather that we should boldly step into the 21st century, where supposedly there would be no sovereign nations or nation-states. The 21st century, however, turned out our way. Brexit in England, “#greatagain” in America, and the anti-immigration walling off of Europe are just the beginning of a long list of ubiquitous manifestations of deglobalization, resovereignization, and nationalism.
When the internet was being lauded on every corner as an inviolable space of unfettered freedom, where everyone supposedly could do anything and where everyone was supposedly equal, it was from Russia that the sobering question to a deluded humanity came: “Who are we in the world wide web—spiders or flies?” And today, everyone has rushed to untangle the web, including the most freedom-loving bureaucracies, and to accuse Facebook of conniving at foreign interference. The once-free virtual space, touted as a prototype of the coming paradise, has been captured and demarcated by cyberpolice and cybercriminals, cybertroops and cyberspies, cyberterrorists and cybermoralists.
When the hegemon’s hegemony was unchallenged, the great American dream of global domination was almost realized, and many imagined the end of history with the final remark, “the people are silent,” the Munich speech suddenly resounded in the ensuing silence. At the time, it seemed dissident, but today everything it said seems self-evident—everyone is dissatisfied with America, including Americans themselves.
Not long ago, the little-known term “derin devlet” from the Turkish political vocabulary was circulated by American media, translated into English as “deep state,” and from there spread through our media. In Russian, it became “deep” or “profound state.” The term refers to a rigid, completely undemocratic network of real power within the security forces, hidden behind the superficial, ostentatious democratic institutions. A mechanism that operates in practice through violence, bribery, and manipulation, hidden deep beneath the surface of civil society, which verbally (hypocritically or naively) condemns manipulation, bribery, and violence.
Americans, however, weren’t particularly surprised to discover the unpleasant “deep state” within themselves, as they had long suspected its existence. If there is a deep net and a dark net, why not a deep state or even a dark state? From the depths and darkness of this unpublicized and unadvertised power emerge the bright mirages of democracy, manufactured there for the masses—the illusion of choice, a sense of freedom, a feeling of superiority, and so on.
Mistrust and envy, exploited by democracy as primary sources of social energy, inevitably lead to the absolutization of criticism and heightened anxiety. Haters, trolls, and the angry bots that join them have formed a shrill majority, displacing the respectable middle class, which once set a very different tone, from its dominant position.
No one believes in the good intentions of public politicians anymore; they are envied and therefore considered vicious, deceitful, and even downright scoundrels. Famous political drama series, from “Boss” to “House of Cards,” accordingly paint a graphic picture of the murky everyday life of the establishment.
A scoundrel can’t be allowed to go too far for the simple reason that he’s a scoundrel. And when (presumably) everyone around is scoundrels, you have to use scoundrels to contain them. Fight fire with fire, and scoundrel with scoundrel... There’s a wide range of scoundrels to choose from, and complex rules designed to reduce their struggle to a more or less even score. Thus arises a beneficial system of checks and balances—a dynamic equilibrium of baseness, a balance of greed, a harmony of roguery. If someone does get carried away and behaves disharmoniously, the watchful deep state rushes to the rescue and, with an invisible hand, drags the renegade back to the bottom.
There’s nothing truly frightening about the proposed image of Western democracy; just shift your perspective slightly, and it becomes less frightening again. But the aftertaste remains, and Westerners begin to look around, searching for other models and ways of life. And they see Russia.
Our system, like everything else, may not look more elegant, but it does look more honest. And while not everyone considers “more honest” to be synonymous with “better,” it’s certainly not without its appeal.
Our state isn’t divided into a deep and an external one; it’s built as a whole, with all its parts and manifestations outward. The most brutal structures of its power structure run directly along the façade, undisguised by any architectural excesses. The bureaucracy, even when it’s being cunning, doesn’t do so very carefully, as if on the assumption that “everyone understands everything anyway.”
The high internal tension associated with maintaining control over vast, heterogeneous territories and constant presence in the thick of geopolitical struggle make the state’s military-police functions crucial and decisive. Traditionally, they are not hidden, but rather displayed, since Russia has never been ruled by merchants (almost never, with the exception of a few months in 1917 and several years in the 1990s), who consider military affairs inferior to trade, or by the liberals who accompany them, whose doctrine is based on the rejection of anything remotely “police-like.” There was no one to drape the truth in illusions, shamefully pushing into the background and hiding deeper the inherent property of any state—to be an instrument of defense and attack.
There is no deep state in Russia, it is all in plain sight, but there is a deep people.
Surkov has been notably quiet since leaving office in 2020, granting only one interview since then — this year for L’Express who published with the provocative but misleading headline….
EXCLUSIVE. Vladislav Sourkov, the wizard of the Kremlin : “Russia will expand in all directions, as far as God wills”
Oh my, just like Joe Biden warned.
No matter, L’Express is French.
Now, I don’t agree with everything Surkov says— obviously. And I am sure Putin doesn’t either.
But recently, the Western media —as I suggested — have been cherry picking his writing like the essay I have just published to push specific interpretations, such as L’Express’s idea of Russian imperialism and neo-colonialism, an idea floating around in American academic circles, like shit in a fetid pont.
Historian Timothy Snyder: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Is a Colonial War
But in writing my current special-article-that-became-a-book I had already reached conclusions, not identical to some of Surkov’s (definitely NOT Snyder), but in (shall we say) “alignment” about Russian and Western “civilizations” and the role of Putin (leaving aside Xi for the moment). .
I am also, as Surkov appears to be a “high functioning autist”, fairly meaningless label for somebody who can’t stop thinking, LOL. I find it easy to follow Surkov’s “flow” in this article and the logic.
Now I need some “thoughtlessness”. Thankfully, I have cats. That’s what cats do for you, they stop you thinking. Cats are all a special kind of autistic. They turn around Descartes’ “I think therefore I am “ to “I don’t think therefore I am”.
Not just Cats….
I grew up loving all animals, except maybe for some of the bipedal types, who think they are different from their four legged friends.
IMO, animals make us “human”. What we call “humanity”—the qualities that make us “human” — it is love and kindness — our animal nature.
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Julian you outdid yourself! Great article. Thank you.,
Thank you for this interesting article.
"like shit in a fetid pont."? pond?