In the fall of 2011, Vladislav Sourkov (or, according to the chosen spelling, Surkov) was an unknown in France – and even, to a large extent, in its own country. A decade before Gallimard appears the masterful Kremlin magebest-seller of Giuliano Da Empoli devoted to this shadow advisor, L’Express was the first French newspaper to portray this “Putin Rasputin” which, already, pulled the strings to the Kremlin.
A few days after our Exclusive interview with the “real” mage from the Kremlinwe are publishing this article again which raised part of the veil on the small theater of Russian political life at the time. It was another world: Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy were in power in Washington and Paris. The oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovski has been in prison for nine years. Crimea had not yet been annexed by Moscow. And the war in Europe seemed unimaginable to all except, perhaps, to “Slava” Sourkov himself, the first Machiavelli of the 21st century who then prepared the great return of Vladimir Putin, temporarily become Prime Minister three years earlier.
Surkov, Putin’s Rasputin
Some people call it the “Russian Machiavelli”, the “Kremlin puppeteer” or the “Putin Rasputin”. But everyone agrees that Vladislav Surkov is the most influential adviser in Russian political life. At 47, this lover of jazz, rap and surrealist painting would even be the chief ideologist of power: “brilliant, cynical and manipulative, he has, over the years, made himself essential to the system, considers Macha Lipman, an informed analyst of the Carnegie Center. If Putin has been so firmly anchored in power for eleven years, it is largely thanks to the intelligence and the absence of scruples’.
It is now up to him to ensure that the apparent setbacks of Russia in the legislative elections of December 4 is only an accident on a journey. Putin’s party has certainly fell into the ballot boxes, but it retains the majority in Parliament. Above all, the Duma is only a recording chamber of the decisions taken in the Kremlin … The only one counts the presidential election, on March 4, 2012, and the discreet Slava intends to watch over the smooth running of an already written scenario: Vladimir Putin will reintegrate his presidential chair, which he had to abandon in 2008, because the Constitution prohibits him from exercising three consecutive mandates.
“Directed democracy”
Surkov is first of all a theorist. We owe him the concept of “directed democracy”, an understatement to designate the current autocratic system. “Our democracy is the scene of theater, admits Boris Nadejdine, one of the just cause leaders, a liberal” European “party, not represented at Duma. Undoubtedly, Russian pluralism is fake insofar as the seven authorized political parties are all, to various degrees, controlled by the Kremlin. Their leaders must regularly account for Mr. Surkov.”
Imitating democracy requires a certain finesse: “Vladislav Surkov determines the intensity of the opposition of the Communist Party to the current power, in consultation with its leader, Guennadi Ziouganov, explains Alexei Kondaourov, former general of the KGB who became an opponent of the regime. In practice, Ziouganov moderates his criticisms and does not organize street demonstrations. From his party is not hampered … “The same exchange of good procedures applies to the nationalist leader Vladimir Jirinovski, whose activism is inversely proportional to the increase in his heritage.
Those who refuse this give-back are marginalized, such as Boris Nemtsov, former vice-premier minister of Boris Yeltsin and current coalition of the other Russia and the Party of Popular Liberty. Subject to the orders of the Kremlin, the electoral commission indeed refuses to record the “discomfort” parties: devoid of legal existence, they cannot participate in the elections. Pure Kafka … that’s not all. “The Kremlin controls all television channels where opponents like Garry Kasparov [ex-champion d’échecs]Mikhail Kassianov [Premier ministre de 2000 à 2004]Edouard Limonov [romancier] And I have been dismissed from the antenna, “denounces Nemtsov. Another subtlety of” directed democracy “: since 2005, the governors of the regions have been appointed by the central power instead of being elected.
“A puppeteer who privatizes the political system”
Demiurge, the all-powerful Slava even has the ability to create political movements from scratch, then destroy them. Founded shortly before the 2003 legislative elections, in order to channel the dissatisfaction of the elderly, the party of retirees was thus scuttled soon after.
Another example: last spring, the reactive kremlin just cause, a moribund training of liberal obedience, in order to satisfy the pro-Western entrepreneurial elite, eager to be represented at Duma. The Mikhail Prokhorov oligarch is then called to take the direction. Problem: the billionaire does not account for his action in Surkov, criticizes power and co -opted personalities openly hostile to Putin! Five months later, last September, an internal putsch, as if by magic, overthrow Prokhorov. Which, Furibard, gets carried away in front of television cameras: “There is a puppeteer in this country which privatizes the political system and deceives our leaders. His name is Vladislav Yurevitch Surkov!” Last Monday, Prokhorov took an additional step by announcing his candidacy for the presidential election on March 4.
“For him, the only freedom is artistic”
Not enough to frighten Surkov, for which true democracies do not exist. “In his eyes, the important thing is to influence people and give them the illusion of freedom,” said Richard Sakwa, professor at the University of Kent (United Kingdom). For him, the only freedom is artistic. ” Hence, no doubt, his taste displayed for Allen Ginsberg, the Beat Generation poet, Gothic rock – he wrote songs for the Russian group Agata Kristi- or even rapper Tupac Shakur, whose portrait adorns his office next to a photo of Einstein and another from Che Guevara. Anxious to present himself as a friend of the arts, Slava collaborated on the magazine Art Khronika, where he recently devoted a long article to Joan Miró.
His great work, however, remains Zero zeroa novel published under pseudonym and which describes, with incredible cynicism, the corrupt manners of the Russian political class. “At the beginning, no one had noticed this book published under a false name, explains analyst Stanislav Belkovski, a familiar with the Moscow microcosm who holds Slava in poor esteem. So, the author mobilized his networks and unlocked of colossal sums of money so that we cry out in the masterpiece!” What was done. The novel was even adapted by a theater director who subsequently was rewarded. “At the first, Surkov, usually not very expansive, was puffed in pride,” said journalist Zoïa Svetova, author of a excavated investigation, published in March 2011 in the magazine New Times Under the title “Who is Mr. Surkov?”.
Good question! Because Slava does not look like anyone. Neither former KGB nor from Saint Petersburg, like most of the members of the “Putin clan”, he is especially half Chechen (by his father, which he practically did not know). Long held secret, this element of his biography was only revealed in 2005, when the interested party decided to cut short rumors short on his political ambitions. The question was immediately settled, because such a “handicap” forbidden to hope to play a leading public role.
The ascent of the future man in the shadow of the Kremlin
Another curiosity: Surkov started his career in the wake of Mikhail Khodorkovski, ex-Oligarch Honni by Putin, who has been in prison for almost nine years. In 1991, Slava led public relations and advertising of the Menatep bank, owned by Khodorkovski.
At the time, this creative imagined the first advertising campaign ever organized by a Russian bank. The Menatep logo flowers on buses, trams, city walls. Unheard of. “Khodorkovski and Surkov appreciated, assures Gleb Pavloski, ex-advisor of the Kremlin until his recent eviction, due to criticism of Putin. After the arrest of the oligarch, Surkov intervened so that the schooling of the children of Khodorkovski is not hindered.”
At the end of the 1990s, Surkov became director of public relations at Alfa Bank and the ORT television channel, before being appointed, in 1999, deputy chief of the chairman of the Russian Federation. Modest in comparison with its real role, this title is still its today.
For Surkov, Putin is sent to Russia by God
In the service of the Prince – Putin, then Medvedev, then again Putin – he excels in his role. Last July, sitting next to the one who is still Prime Minister, he soberly declared on Chechen television: “I am sincerely convinced that Putin was sent to Russia by God, in order to help him in a difficult moment, for our greatest good.”
In order to please the boss, Slava is never short of ideas. “One day, against any logic, this expert in manipulation ordered our parliamentary group to vote in favor of the construction of a pipeline which would along Lake Baikal, remembers Anatoli Iermoline, a ex-pro-Puttine-Puttine who became a journalist. The parliamentarians begged him, almost on his knees, to give up this madness likely to provoke forces in the region of Irkoutsk. wanted to hear anything. ” Finally, after several weeks of controversy, Putin announces, to general relief, that the layout’s layout will pass 40 kilometers from the banks of the famous lake, behind mountains. “We then understood that Surkov had trapped this twisted scenario, in order to boost Putin’s popularity.”
To date, the most remarkable invention of the “Putin Rasputin” remains the Nachi movement (ours), in 2005. At the time, the Kremlin dreaded to see the scenario of the “orange revolution” to repeat itself in Moscow. A few months earlier, in 2004, street demonstrations propelled the Ukrainian opposition to power in kyiv. Surkov then creates a pro-Putin, ultra-nationalist youth movement, with several tens of thousands of sympathizers and a hard core of hooligans. With comfortable financial means, this group’s mission is to intimidate the opposition, occupy the street if necessary and prevent the birth of any popular protest. So many qualities that could make it useful, again, in the months preceding the March 4 election.