Russia Altered Your Consciousness
Continuation. Putin Project -2: Vladislav Surkov.
For many years, Putin has upheld the stereotype of the chosen one, the fated Russian leader, surrounding himself with obedient servants and image-makers who have boosted his prominence. But because it has never been about the good of the country but rather about unhealthy, overly ambitious imperialistic goals, the “collective Putin” has led Russia to the abyss. Russia’s destiny in the “multipolar world”, the fight against Nazism, western values, and Evil itself — shape his mantra. However, this hodgepodge of ideas is not the fruit of Putin’s rigorous thinking about the Great Country’s future.
While Putin is able to distance himself from questionable influences, the “collective Putin” is too pervasive to avoid contact with whispers of conspiracy. The chekist brain of the world-class manipulator, the “collective Putin,” feeds on new greatness and excellence. Putin is drawn to the radiant mythologies composed by nimbler and livelier minds.
One of those minds is Mr. Vladislav Surkov. With his shovel-wide face and dreamy, yet piercing, dark eyes, this charming, direct, handsome politician stands apart from the Kremlin rank-and-file.
“Surkov is a ghoul; wherever he is, there is blood, filth, and murder.”
The former long-time adviser to the Russian president was unexpectedly put under house arrest coincident with the invasion of Ukraine. Without explanation, he was later released.
Such sharp disfavor at the hands of the regime led to many hot rumors. One of the most explosive was the uncovering of embezzlement and the manipulation of funds allocated to bribing officials in Ukraine and other nefarious activities. Early in 2016, Ukrainian hackers revealed Surkov’s involvement in the destabilization and reconquest of Ukraine. Some would suggest that the commander-in-chief blamed Surkov for the progressive failure of the “special operation”.
His meteoric career does look messy at times. He served in the GRU special forces, then moved to become a bodyguard for Michael Khodorkovsky, the infamous Russian oligarch, who was later jailed. A master of public relations, “part-time” writer and musician, once his political star began to ascend, he entertained himself with all sorts of creative and unorthodox approaches to politics, naming himself a “Putinist of the Heretical Sort.”.
Surkov has been rewarded with various epithets, from “main puppeteer and brain of the Kremlin”, “extraordinary intellectual”, “Putin’s gray cardinal,” to “one accused of starting a campaign to destroy freedom of speech,” to “the father of Putinism,” to the main villain of Putin’s regime,” and finally “the author of hundreds of provocations and murders.”
All of those colorful epithets are well deserved, lifting a heavy curtain to reveal the personality of Vladislav Surkov.
Watching Surkov, one gets the feeling that, as a successful PR person, Surkov is skillfully broadcasting ideas that are already hovering in the Russian ideological noosphere.
Something along the lines of: all of this could be explained, from the vastness of geography and the richness of resources to the unique type of the state itself. Surkov does not shy away from describing a phenomenon he does not fully comprehend. In his rather pathetic article “Putin’s Long State”, written just a few years before the Russian-Ukrainian war, he praised Putinism as a rising new ideology. “A big political machine,”, writes Surkov, “is gaining momentum and engaged in long, difficult, and interesting work. Its full capacity is far in the future, and many years later, Russia is still under Putin’s governance, just as modern France still calls itself the Fifth Republic of de Gaulle, Turkey still relies on the ideology of the “Six Arrows” of Ataturk, and the United States still turns to the images and values of the semi-legendary “founding fathers”.”
“Surkov is one of the main villains of Putin’s regime, one who has the blood of 13,000 Ukrainians on his hands, is the author of hundreds of provocations, and the zombification of millions.”
Surkov’s political style weaves the naiveté of a court poet and the shrewdness of a businessman who looks out for number one: himself. In his stand-up appearance on “Crazy Startup,” Surkov reveals some episodes of his childhood in the Soviet Union and his pen pal relationship with a girl from another communist country. Breaking the typical script of such communications, the young Surkov asks his new friend to send him some chewing gum. At that time, chewing gum was the ultimate dream of any Soviet schoolboy. He then proceeded to exchange the gum for pornographic pictures, earning money in the process from his peers. This is how Slava Surkov first discovered his remarkable talent as an entrepreneur — all of this would be an innocent teenage story if it did not shape the real politician, Surkov.
Born in the USSR, Surkov only shared dreams of freedom and democracy for a brief moment. Upon gaining the wealth and influence he wanted, Surkov no longer needed an “open society”. He dismisses it as “the crown trick of the Western way of life”. He was quickly disillusioned by what is called “the fresh breath of democracy” and called it an “overdose of freedom”. As if hanging in the void between this incomprehensible freedom while longing for the past, he writes: “Minds were confused, and those born to lackey, thrown into freedom, fell into a comatose of humility, some into the most vulgar nihilism. The red party bosses cursed the party, the Komsomol members started some dark banks and stock exchanges, ensigns became assassins, the heroes of socialist labor sold off the defense industry and the oil industry, and at their leisure they rallied, cursed the reformers, and lamented the former greatness of the red power.”
In the book Close to Zero, whose authorship he denies in the best tradition of Kremlin duplicity, Surkov describes not only the mentality of the majority of the population of Russia but that of the nascent elite as well. That emerging system, poisoned by criminal money and abuse of power, is where politicians like Surkov found themselves.
In the Aleksandr Dugin article, I mentioned that the regime’s thinkers all begin with a high note: Russia’s unique fate in world history. Dugin criticized Surkov for lowering the high standards of patriotism to the level of postmodernist silliness. Both “titans” of imperialistic ideology, each in their own unique style, have tried to supply the regime with their best guesses as to where Russia should turn its two eagles’ heads. There are no morals or ethics attached. Like the spiritual gypsy Dugin, Surkov is looking, with apparent forgetfulness, for a new way out, something great for the great country. And he finds it: “… Now, writes Surkov, “the state of Russia continues, and now it is a new type of state, the type we have not yet had. Formed as a whole by the mid-noughties, it has not yet been studied much, but its peculiarities and vitality are obvious.”
In his political reverie, Surkov goes so far as to imagine a world infected with a kind of Russian virus: “Foreign policy,” writes Surkov, “is credited with Russia’s interference in elections and referendums across the globe.” “In fact, the case is even worse — Russia intervenes in their brain, and they don’t know what to do with their own altered consciousness.”
In a conformist fervor, Surkov combines his rising anti-Western sentiment with the intent to elevate Putin in the annals of history. He crusades like a paladin of old against the demonic democratic values he despises, while the shade of the little boy from the USSR with his chewing gum and pornography reflects on his new born ideology.
Even with his whitewashing creative glamor, Surkov’s ideology is still alien to ethics, personal growth, and respect for the individual. From the lofty height of his intellectual superiority, the Kremlin ideologue knows that most people only need “simple-meaning beliefs”. “There is haute cuisine, and there is McDonald’s.” Surkov is not shy about saying, “Everyone takes advantage of such people all over the world.”
Like his philosophical comrade Dugin, Surkov sees no issue with sacrificing human lives in the name of a great idea. There, Surkov fell in with the crude totalitarianism of the USSR. All of this destabilizing, molesting, killing, and looting in the name of greatness is just a necessary step on Russia’s journey back to greatness.
Beyond history and morality, the essence of man is liberated; human nature mutates and degrades. Man forgets, loses himself, and dissolves in the reflections of the delusional idea of greatness.
To be continued…
