Razor-sharp and terrifying about Putin’s path to power

Corrupt kingdoms, ideological fanatics and a paranoid intelligence service.

It is among the pillars on which Vladimir Putin bases his all-powerful Russian empire.

The Italian-Swiss author Giuliano da Empoli’s documentary novel “The Wizard of the Kremlin” unravels with uncanny precision the thinking, the power play and the economic motives that have made it possible for President Putin to be Russia’s new tsar today.

It is fascinating and repulsive at the same time.

The novel’s narrator is a peripheral figure in Moscow’s academic life.

He has a strong interest in the (real) author Yevgenij Zamjatin, and in particular the novel “We” from 1922.

In its time, the book was read as a showdown with all forms of dictatorship, and in the gray areas of the internet, the narrator becomes acquainted with another Zemjatin lover who acts under a pseudonym.

When the two meet one evening in the mysterious person’s magnificent estate outside Moscow, it turns out that the narrator is face to face with Vadim Baranov. The fabled Putin advisor who suddenly disappeared from the corridors of power, and thus from the public, a few years ago.

Here it is appropriate to point out that Vadim Baranov is in all likelihood modeled after the real-life Vladislav Surkov.

It is Surkov who has received the “credit” for formulating Putinismthe social, political and economic system of Russia formed under the political leadership of Vladimir Putin. as an ideology, and by extension the idea of ​​sovereign democracy. In other words, today’s authoritarian Russian system of government where all power is concentrated around the president and his closest men.

During a long evening and night in front of the fireplace, Baranov tells about his life.

A life that reflects the most important pages in Russia’s recent history. He describes the 1990s’ shocking transition from communism to jungle capitalism as follows:

“They had grown up in a fatherland and suddenly found themselves in a supermarket.”

Vadim Baranov throws himself into the possibilities of the wonderful new world, and after a short career as a TV producer, he becomes connected to the rich man Boris Berezovsky.

Like the book’s other main characters, Berezovskij is also a real person.

His attempts to be a “kingmaker” paved the way for FSB chief Vladimir Putin’s rise to power around the chaotic turn of the millennium. But instead of being a puppet for the country’s new capitalist elite, Putin is quickly proving to be a much more skilled power player than them.

Uncannily precise

A number of people taken from reality pass through the revue in a steady stream. Among them “Putin’s butler” and later Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. All of them are drawn into, and later crushed, by the maelstrom of power.

In minor roles, we meet foreign leaders such as Bill Clinton and Angela Merkel. They are representatives of the international humiliation of Russia, and confirm the ruling elite’s suspicions that the West ultimately wants to take over and control Russia.

The answer to this imagined threat is Putinism. Vadim Baranov, Putin’s wizard, explains the basic ideas as follows:

“Politics has only one goal: to answer people’s fears … Anything that makes people think you are strong also makes you stronger in reality.”

“The Wizard of the Kremlin” is both a literary fable and an eerily precise political analysis.

Only a few unnecessarily sentimental scenes towards the end drag the overall impression down a bit.

But should you be curious to understand just a little of the political mentality of our aggressive neighbor to the east, Giuliano da Empoli’s book is a very good place to start.