The Kremlin Demiurge: "[Vladislav] Surkov is the real genius of the Putin era. Understand him and you understand not only contemporary Russia but a new type of power politics, a breed of authoritarianism far subtler than the 20th-century strains.” - Peter Pomerantsev
ADAM CURTIS is a documentary-maker whose work has a way of
making the world look and feel completely different. The secret to the success
of series as varied as
Century of the
Self (2002),
The Power of Nightmares
(2004), and his most recent work,
BitterLake (2015), is Curtis’s ability to bring what’s been hidden in History’s
shadows into the light.
The nineteenth century British Prime Minister, Benjamin
Disraeli, remarked that:
“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by
those who are not behind the scenes.” Curtis not only takes us behind the
scenes, he introduces us to the personages.
The latest personage to whom Curtis’s viewers have been
introduced is Vladislav Surkov – Vladimir Putin’s political impresario. In the
words of Peter Pomerantsev, writing in
The London Review of Books: “Surkov is the real genius of the Putin era.
Understand him and you understand not only contemporary Russia but a new type
of power politics, a breed of authoritarianism far subtler than the 20th-century
strains.”
Surkov’s great insight into the character of the post-Soviet
era was that it would be an epoch devoid of ideological conviction. A society
in which all of the grand narratives of the 20th Century (from Absolutism to
Socialism to Capitalism) have been tried and found wanting. A place where
cynicism and irony will ride shotgun for an amoral authoritarianism whose twinned
priorities of self-enrichment and self-aggrandisement recognise no limits.
It is a world that fosters in its hapless citizens feeling
of vertiginous disorientation. According to Pomerantsev’s chilling description:
“[T]he stage is constantly changing: the country is a
dictatorship in the morning, a democracy at lunch, an oligarchy by suppertime,
while, backstage, oil companies are expropriated, journalists killed, billions
siphoned away. Surkov is at the centre of the show, sponsoring nationalist
skinheads one moment, backing human rights groups the next. It’s a strategy of
power based on keeping any opposition there may be constantly confused, a
ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it’s indefinable.”
If all this is beginning to sound unsettlingly familiar,
Pomerantsev has more. Surkov, he says, has perfected what he calls “sovereign
democracy”, a new form of governance “in which democratic institutions are
maintained without any democratic freedoms”. Surkov was also “the man who
[turned] television into a kitsch Putin-worshipping propaganda machine”.
If you think that’s coming uncomfortably close to a description
of New Zealand television (substituting “Key” for “Putin”) then you’re not
alone.
Obviously, New Zealanders are not ruled over by a political
beast as big or as dangerous as Putin, but Pomerantsev’s depiction of a
political environment subject to continuous and disorienting shifts of
perspective; of leaders performing on a revolving stage whose sets and props
are constantly changing; rings more than a few Kiwi bells.
Certainly it is Curtis’s view that the curiously
“post-modern” style of politics that has distinguished the UK under David
Cameron and George Osborne owes a great deal to the political ideas and methods
of Vladislav Surkov. (Curtis illustrates his point by advancing video images of
the Chancellor of the Exchequer and then rolling them backward – providing a
potent visual representation of Osborne’s black is white, 2 + 2 = 5 political
style.)
Our own Prime Minister and Finance Minister display a
similar, loose, relationship with reality. John Key, in particular, seems able
to shift his shape almost at will. From the saccharine family man ordering in
Saturday night pizza; to the jokey-blokey sports-lover trading wisecracks with
commercial radio shock-jocks; to the dead-eyed critic of Nicky Hager’s latest
revelations daring the Press Gallery to contradict him; our own post-modern
performance artist makes it easy to see from whence his fine-arts student
daughter draws her inspiration.
Pomerantsev offers us a frightening glimpse of the sort of
world to which Surkovian politics is leading us:
“In Soviet Russia you would have been forced to give up any
notion of artistic freedom if you wanted a slice of the pie. In today’s Russia,
if you’re talented and clever, you can have both. This makes for a unique
fusion of primitive feudal poses and arch, postmodern irony. A property ad
displayed all over central Moscow earlier this year [2011] captured the mood
perfectly. Got up in the style of a Nazi poster, it showed two Germanic-looking
youths against a glorious alpine mountain over the slogan ‘Life Is Getting
Better’. It would be wrong to say the ad is humorous, but it’s not quite
serious either. It’s sort of both. It’s saying this is the society we live in
(a dictatorship), but we’re just playing at it (we can make jokes about it),
but playing in a serious way (we’re making money playing it and won’t let
anyone subvert its rules). A few months ago there was a huge ‘Putin party’ at
Moscow’s most glamorous club. Strippers writhed around poles chanting: ‘I want
you, prime minister.’ It’s the same logic. The sucking-up to the master is
completely genuine, but as we’re all liberated 21st-century people who enjoy
Coen brothers films, we’ll do our sucking up with an ironic grin while
acknowledging that if we were ever to cross you we would quite quickly be
dead.”
To which, as Adam Curtis rightly observes, we can only say:
“Oh Dear.”
This essay was posted
on The Daily Blog and Bowalley
Road blogsites on Tuesday, 24 March 2015.
