Vladislav Surkov's Hugely Important New Article About What Putinism Is - Full Translation

Source: Russia Insider

by Vladislav Surkov | Wed, Feb 13, 2019 | 141 comments

Editor's note: Vladislav Surkov has been called the "Kremlin's Ideologist" and partly due to his formidable intellectual firepower, as this article demonstrates, wields power in Russia regardless of what office he currently holds.

A former Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy Chief of Staff to Putin, Surkov excels the white arts of PR, Propaganda, electoral chicanery (which he denounces in this article, he of all people should know what a fraud modern democracy is). This article appeared on Monday in Russian in Moscow, and there were immediate and predictable howls from the Russia-hating media. 'Russia is 'playing with the West's minds' says Putin advisor' quips London's Independent. Surkov is something of an obsession for Russia's tiny liberal opposition and for their fellow-traveler, Russia-hating Academia and Punditry, and he has been written about endlessly, films have been made about him, etc. etc. Here is a good recent example by Whitney Malam on Medium. He is always painted as some kind of Dark Prince of Deception, which is their way of saying he is smarter than they are.

Surkov is no longer in the limelight, but he occasionally hurls down these rhetorical thunderbolts. What he says is always interesting and sometimes profound, and we think this essay is very much the latter. It argues that the system which has evolved in Russia over the last 18 years is extremely durable, and could well last for centuries, and that it is more honest and works far better than the clown show in the West.

Well, judge for yourself. The translation here is brilliant, because it was done by regular contributor Dmitry Orlov, who if you haven't read, you should. One doesn't often see translations of this calibre, because the people capable of doing them don't tend to be translators. - Charles Bausman, Editor, RI


Putin's Lasting State

Russian title and link: Долгое государство Путина

By Vladislav Surkov,

"It only seems that we have a choice." These words are amazing in their depth of meaning and audacity. They were uttered a decade and a half ago, and today they have been forgotten and are not quoted. But according to the laws of psychology that which is forgotten affects us much more than what we remember. And these words, taken far outside the context in which they were first uttered, have as a result become the first axiom of the new Russian statehood upon which have been built all theories and practices of contemporary politics.

Vladislav Surkov

The illusion of choice is the most important of all illusions, the main trick of the Western way of life in general and Western democracy in particular, which has for a long time now adhered more closely to the ideas of P.T. Barnum than to those of Cleisthenes. The rejection of this illusion in favor of the realism of predestination has led our society first to reflect upon its own special, sovereign version of democratic development, and then to completely lose interest in any discussions on the subject of what democracy should be like and whether it should exist even in principle.

This opened up paths toward the free development of the state, directed not by imported chimeras but by the logic of historical processes, by that very "art of the possible." The impossible, unnatural and counter-historical disintegration of Russia was, albeit belatedly, definitively arrested. Having collapsed from the level of the USSR to the level of the Russian Federation, Russia stopped collapsing, started to recover and returned to its natural and its only possible condition: that of a great and growing community of nations that gathers lands. It is not a humble role that world history has assigned to our country, and it does not allow us to exit the world stage or to remain silent among the community of nations; it does not promise us rest and it predetermines the difficult character of our governance.

And so the Russian state continues, now as a new type of state that has never existed here before. It took form mostly in the middle of the 2000s, and so far it has been little studied, but its uniqueness and its viability are now apparent. The stress tests which it has passed and is now passing have shown that this specific, organically arrived at model of political functioning provides an effective means of survival and ascension of the Russian nation not just for the coming years, but for decades and, most likely, for the entire next century.

In this way, Russian history has by now known four main models of governance, which can provisionally be named after their creators: the government of Ivan the Third (the Great Principality/the Kindom of Moscow and of All Rus, XV-XVII century); the government of Peter the Great (Russian Empire, XVIII-XIX century); the government of Lenin (USSR, XX century); and the government of Putin (Russian Federation, XXI century). Created by people who were, to use Lev Gumilev's term, possessed of "long-term willpower," one after another these large-scale political machines repaired themselves, adapted to circumstances along the way and provided for the relentless ascent of the Russian World.

Putin's large-scale political machine is only now revving up and getting ready for long, difficult and interesting work. Its engagement at full power is still far ahead, and many years from now Russia will still be the government of Putin, just as contemporary France still calls itself the Fifth Republic of de Gaulle, Turkey (although now ruled by anti-Kemalists) still relies on the ideology of Atatürk's "Six Arrows," and the United States still appeals to the images and values of its half-legendary "founding fathers."

Please go to Russia Insider to read the entire article.
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