Vladislav Surkov: The Fallen Grey Cardinal
Vladimir Putin is the main face of the political system that has dominated Russia since 2000. It is easy to believe that the country’s current regime, characterised by personalist authoritarianism where the rise and fall can be equally hard, leaves little room for others rather than the Russian President. However, this is not entirely true. Russian history is full of prominent leaders who had an éminence grise behind them, forging and maintaining the system in check or reforming it if needed. The likes of Sergey Uvarov (forger of the triad: Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality during the reign of Nicholas I), Konstantin Pobedonostsev (main representative of conservatism during the reigns of Alexander II, Alexander III, and Nicholas II), or Mikhail Suslov (one of the main ideologues and hardliners of the communist party during the rule of Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev). These characters are often overshadowed, but they play a vital role in modelling the main ideology of the state, the nation, and sometimes their fate. Their power can reach such a level that they even influence the process of succession of the rulers themselves.
In the case of Putin, Vladislav Surkov is considered one of the main architects of internal and external policies that Russia has adopted during the last two decades, including the ones regarding Ukraine post-2014. Surkov was sanctioned by the US and EU back in the spring of 2014 as an aide of the Russian President and responsible for organising popular mobilizations in Crimea and undermining Ukrainian authorities. In 2020 he was dismissed from the government, although he affirms that it was a resignation, and has not returned since. Being away from Russian politics, he has not been subjected to further sanctions, but his role as an ideologue helped guide the Kremlin to the current situation.
Information about Surkov is somewhat scarce and more often than not, contradictory. Surkov himself created an aura of mystique around his theatrical statesman's figure. Sources vary even about his place of birth. Officially he was born in the Lipetsk Oblast (Russian Soviet Republic), but other sources suggest that he was rather born in Shali (Checheno-Ingush Soviet Republic). He is the son of a Russian-Chechen marriage that broke up, which could explain part of the confusion. Surkov did not finish his university studies and in the mid-80s did compulsory military service in Hungary, although, according to the former defence minister Sergei Ivanov, Surkov served in the Main Intelligence Directorate, popularly still known as GRU. Between the late 80s to the early 90s, Surkov became acquainted with the generation of future oligarchs and started working with Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Mikhail Fridman (owners of Menatep and Alfa Bank, among others), learning the “innovative” ways of their sprawling businesses and helping to improve their image during the shock-therapy era with PR campaigns. He later completed a master's degree in Economics at the International University of Moscow and was recruited by Alexander Voloshin, Chief of the Presidential Administration, during the late months of Boris Yeltsin in power. He rose to Deputy Chief of Staff in August 1999 and became Putin's main ideologist after Yeltsin resigned.
Surkov helped strengthen the public image of Putin and dominated much of the internal matters of the country, reshaping the political and public spheres, and coordinating media and electoral processes. He created several youth movements, of which “Ours” (Наши) was the most prominent and which received more backlash in Western circles. The whole process culminated in the so-called “managed democracy” (although Surkov used the term “sovereign democracy") which aimed at prioritising political stability and economic reforms by centralising and consolidating power around a single leader. This was devised and explained as Russia's own way to democracy, with all characteristics and traditions inherent to Russia, where actions are, in theory, implemented by the nation without any exogenous entity's influence or intervention. What Surkov advocated for is not far from what the iron-hand nationalists and siloviki propose, although his methods were subtle as those of a statesman, not a security or military figure.
After Dmitry Medvedev took the role of president in 2008, Surkov was promoted to First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration, putting him in charge of economic modernization and significantly increasing his powers. The “reset” with the US, half-hearted but relevant liberalisation campaigns, and the massive protests of 2011-2013 marked the Medvedev term. Surkov was caught in the middle of the succession infighting between Medvedev and Putin. The first was supported by the more liberal lenient part of United Russia, while the second relied on most of the siloviki. Surkov's rivals took their chance, and shortly before Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, Surkov was replaced by Vyacheslav Volodin and moved to the government as Deputy Prime Minister. During that time, he objected publicly to Putin's criticism of the work done by the government, which triggered his dismissal in the spring of 2013.
In a matter of months, Surkov returned to the Kremlin when Putin appointed him aide to the Presidential Executive Office in September 2013. Surkov was designated as responsible for managing Russia’s foreign policy actions in the Caucasus and, most importantly, Ukraine. His exact mission was not publicly known until thousands of emails were leaked by a Ukrainian hacker groups in 2016. Allegedly, Surkov was the overseer of the Lugansk and Donetsk Republic's governments and worked closely with separatist figures in both of those regions and also in Crimea. He helped coordinate many of their actions and took part in the organisation of a cluster of ideal candidates working from the inside to fulfil Russia's objectives in Ukraine.
As previously mentioned, Surkov was dismissed for the last time at the beginning of 2020. To this day, it is still unclear if the reason is a fall from grace with Putin, political manoeuvring by his rivals, or just because Dmitry Kozak was deemed a better candidate for handling Ukrainian matters. Surkov did not maintain a full low profile, still making remarks about Russian politics. In a recent interview during the summer of 2021, he talked openly about Russia, Putin, and his beliefs. The former aide described the Russian system as one with diversity but under certain controls that needed to be exercised to prevent ruin. For him, Putin is a modern-day Octavian who “married” the democratic aspirations of Russia with its authoritarian tradition, thus finding balance:
“This archetype is working, It is not going anywhere…It has enough freedom and enough order”
Much like Putin, Surkov still reproduces a similar discourse about Ukraine being an imperfection that needs fixing. He believes he worked for helping Ukraine, not undermining it:
“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. [… ]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 predicted that “dramatic transformations” were ahead. Later that same year, he warned about the perils of destabilisation of the political situation in Russia and that the country would confirm its “status as one of the globalizers” as it would receive its share in the “new global gathering of spaces”. It is not exactly clear if his visions align with what 2022 has been for Russia, since little has been heard of him once Russia invaded Ukraine. In April, some Telegram channels along with Ilya Ponomarev, a former Duma member now turned political activist, spread the rumour that Surkov had been placed under house arrest. Тhe Kremlin denied having information about it and it does not seem to have been updated ever since.
Vladislav Surkov is, undoubtedly, a very particular character that tries to draw similarities between himself and the great ideologues of the imperial past. Nonetheless, in modern-day Russia, where even the most conservative anti-western politicians still have a taste for Western education, culture, or products (Surkov himself is no exception), more doubts are left than solved. Where lies the border between truth and lies? Does one truly believe in what he says or is it all a façade, cynicism, another part of the everlasting theatrical play?