Modern Russian Governance Explained
Foreword by Dmitry Orlov: We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this translation of a very important article that describes the nature of modern Russian governance. It is written by one of Vladimir Putin’s close advisors who is a political expert of considerable stature. It has been widely (though rather toothlessly) reviled in Western press (as well wannabe-Western Russian liberal press) but without quoting the source, which I have only yesterday translated into English. The author definitely hit a nerve by demolishing the Western democratic system of “checks and scoundrels” with its illusion of choice and its ever-vigilant deep state.
——-
Putin’s Lasting State
by Vladislav Surkov
http://www.ng.ru/ideas/2019-02-11/5_7503_surkov.html
“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.
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 counterhistorical 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.”
What is needed is a comprehension and a description of Putin’s system of governance and the entire complex of ideas and dimensions of Putinism as the ideology of the future—specifically of the future, because present-day Putin can hardly be considered a Putinist, just as, for example, Karl Marx was not a Marxist and we can’t be sure that he would have agreed to be one had he found out what that’s like. But we need this explanation for the sake of everyone who isn’t Putin but would like to be like him—and to have the possibility of applying his methods and approaches in the coming times.
This description must not be in the form of dueling propagandas—ours vs. theirs—but in a language that would be perceived as moderately heretical by both Russian and anti-Russian officialdoms. Such language can be made acceptable to a sufficiently large audience, which is exactly what is needed, because the political system that has been made in Russia is fit to serve not just future domestic needs but obviously has significant export potential. Demand for it and for certain specific components of it already exists, its experience is being studied and partially adopted, and it is being imitated by both ruling and opposition groups in many countries.
Foreign politicians accuse Russia of interfering in elections and referenda throughout the planet. But in reality the situation is even more serious: Russia interferes with their brains, and they don’t know what to do with their own transformed consciousness. After the disastrous 1990s, once Russia turned away from all borrowed ideologies, it started generating its own ideas and began to counterattack the West. Since then European and American experts have been erring in their predictions more and more frequently. They are surprised and vexed by the paranormal preferences of the electorates. In confusion, they have sounded the alarm about an outbreak of populism. They can call it that, if they happen to be at a loss for words.
Meanwhile, the interest of foreigners in the Russian political algorithm is easy to understand: there are no prophets in their lands, but everything that is happening to them today has been prophesied from Russia a long time ago.
When everyone was still in love with globalization and made noise about a flat world without borders, Moscow pointedly reminded them that sovereignty and national interests are important. Back then many people accused us of “naïve” attachment to these old things, which had supposedly fallen out of fashion long ago. They taught us that it’s futile to hold on to XIX-century values, but that we should bravely step into the XXI century, where there supposedly won’t be any sovereign nations or nation-states. However, the XXI century is turning out the way we said it would. British Brexit, American #GreatAgain, anti-immigrant enclosure of Europe—these are but the first few items in a long list of commonplace manifestations of deglobalization, re-sovereignization and nationalism.
When on every corner someone lauded the Internet as an inviolable space of unlimited freedom, where everyone is allowed to be anyone and all are equal, it was specifically from Russia that came a sobering question for Internet-addled humanity: “Who we are on the World Wide Web, spiders or flies?” And now everyone, including the most freedom-loving of bureaucracies, is busy trying to untangle the Web and accusing Facebook of accommodating foreign interlopers. The once free virtual space, which had been advertised as a prototype of the coming heaven on Earth, has been seized and cordoned off by cyber-police and cyber-criminals, cyber-armies and cyber-spies, cyber-terrorists and cyber-moralists.
When the hegemony of the “hegemon” was not contested by anyone, the great American dream of world domination was close to being fulfilled, and many people hallucinated the end of history with the final comment of “the people are silent,” in that silence there came Putin’s Munich speech. At the time it sounded as dissenting, but today everything in it seems self-evident: nobody is happy with America, including the Americans themselves.
The previously little-known Turkish political term derin devlet has been popularized by American media. Translated into English as “deep state” it was then picked up by the Russian media. The term indicates a harsh, absolutely nondemocratic networked organization of real authoritarian structures hidden behind showy democratic institutions. This mechanism, which in practice exerts its authority through acts of violence, bribery and manipulation, and remains hidden deep beneath the surface of a hypocritical and simple-minded civil society which it manipulates while bribing or repressing all who accuse it.
Having discovered in their midst an unpleasant “deep state,” Americans were not particularly surprised, since they have long suspected that it exists. If there is a “deep net” and a “dark net,” then why not a “deep state” or even a “dark state”? From the depths and darkness of this un-exhibited and unadvertised power there float up shining mirages of democracy special-made for mass consumption that feature the illusion of choice, the feeling of freedom, delusions of superiority and so on.
Mistrust and envy, which democracy uses as prioritized sources of social energy, inevitably lead to a sharpening of criticism and an increased level of anxiety. Haters, trolls and the angry bots that have joined them have formed a screechy majority that has forced out the once dominant, respectable middle class which once upon a time set quite a different tone.
Nobody believes any more in the good intentions of public politicians. They are envied and are therefore considered corrupt, shrewd, or simply scoundrels. Popular political serials, such as “The Boss” and “The House of Cards,” paint correspondingly murky scenes of the establishment’s day-to-day.
A scoundrel must not be allowed to go too far for the simple reason that he is a scoundrel. But when all around you (we surmise) there are only scoundrels, one is forced to use scoundrels to restrain other scoundrels. As one pounds out a wedge using another wedge, one dislodges a scoundrel using another scoundrel… There is a wide choice of scoundrels and obfuscated rules designed to make their battles result in something like a tie. This is how a beneficial system of checks and balances comes about—a dynamic equilibrium of villainy, a balance of avarice, a harmony of swindles. But if someone forgets that this is just a game and starts to behave disharmoniously, the ever-vigilant deep state hurries to the rescue and an invisible hand drags the apostate down into the murky depths.
There is nothing particularly frightening in this proposed image of Western democracy. All you have to do is change your perspective a little, and it would no longer seem scary. But it leaves a sour feeling, and a Western citizen starts to spin his head around in search of other models and other ways of being. And… sees Russia.
Our system, as in general everything else that’s ours, is no more graceful, but it is more honest. And although the phrase “more honest” is not a synonym of “better” for everyone, honesty does have its charms.
Our state is not split up into deep and external; it is built as a whole, with all of its parts and its manifestations facing out. The most brutal constructions of its authoritarian frame are displayed as part of the façade, undisguised by any architectural embellishments. The bureaucracy, even when it tries to do something on the sly, doesn’t try too hard to cover its tracks, as if assuming that “everyone understands everything anyway.”
The great internal tension caused by the need to control huge, heterogeneous geographic areas, and by the constant participation in the thick of geopolitical struggle make the military and policing functions of the government the most important and decisive. In keeping with tradition, they are not hidden but, quite the opposite, demonstrated. Businessmen, who consider military pursuits to be of lesser status than commercial ones, have never ruled Russia (almost never; the exceptions were a few months in 1917 and a few years in the 1990s). Neither have liberals (fellow-travelers of businessmen) whose teachings are based on the negation of anything the least bit police-like. Thus, there was nobody in charge who would curtain off the truth with illusions, bashfully shoving into the background and obscuring as much as possible the main prerogative of any government—to be a weapon of defense and attack.
There is no deep state in Russia—all of it is on display—but there is a deep nation.
On its shiny surface sparkles the elite which, century after century (let’s give it its due) has involved the people in its various undertakings—party conferences, wars, elections, economic experiments. The deep nation takes part in these undertakings, but remains somewhat aloof, and doesn’t appear at the surface but leads it own, completely different life down in its own depths. Two lives of the nation, one on the surface and one in the depths, sometimes run in opposite directions, sometimes in the same direction, but they never merge.
The deep nation is always as cagey as can be, unreachable for sociological surveys, agitation, threats or any other form of direct influence. The understanding of what it is, what it thinks and what it wants often comes suddenly and too late, and not to those who can do anything about it.
Rare is the sociologist who would venture to define whether the deep nation is equivalent to its population or is a part of it, and if a part of it, then which one. At different times it was taken to be the peasants, the proletariat, the non-party-members, the hipsters, the government employees. People searched for it and tried to engage it. They called it the executor of God’s will, or just the opposite. Sometimes they decided that it is fictional and doesn’t exist in reality, and launched galloping reforms without looking back upon it, but quickly bashed their foreheads against it and were forced to concede that “something really does exist.” More than once it retreated under the press of domestic or foreign conquerors, but it always came back.
With its gigantic mass the deep nation creates an insurmountable force of cultural gravitation which unites the nation and drags and pins down to earth (to the native land) the elite when it periodically attempts to soar above it in a cosmopolitan fashion.
Nationhood, whatever that is taken to mean, is a precursor of the state. It predetermines its form, restricts the fantasies of theoreticians and forces practitioners to carry out certain acts. It is a powerful attractor, and all political trajectories without exception lead back to it. In Russia, one can set out from any position—conservatism, socialism, liberalism—but you will always end up with approximately the same thing. That is, with the thing that actually exists.
The ability to hear and to understand the nation, to see all the way through it, through its entire depth, and to act accordingly—that is the unique and most important virtue of Putin’s government. It is adequate for the needs of the people, it follows the same course with it, and this means that it is not subject to destructive overloads from history’s countercurrents. This makes it effective and long-lasting.
In this new system all institutions are subordinated to the main task: trust-based communication and interaction between the head of state and the citizens. The various branches of government come together at the person of the leader and are considered valuable not in and of themselves but only to the extent to which they provide a connection with him. Aside from them, and acting around formal structures and elite groups, operate informal methods of communication. When stupidity, backwardness or corruption create interference in the lines of communication with the people, energetic measures are taken to restore audibility.
The multilayered political institutions which Russia had adopted from the West are sometimes seen as partly ritualistic and established for the sake of looking “like everyone else,” so that the peculiarities of our political culture wouldn’t draw too much attention from our neighbors, didn’t irritate or frighten them. They are like a Sunday suit, put on when visiting others, while at home we dress as we do at home.
In essence, society only trusts the head of state. Whether this has something to do with the pride of an unconquered people, or the desire to directly access the truth, or anything else, is hard to say, but it is a fact, and it is not a new fact. What’s new is that the government does not ignore this fact but takes it into account and uses it as a point of departure in its undertakings.
It would be an oversimplification to reduce this theme to the oft-cited “faith in the good czar.” The deep nation is not the least bit naïve and definitely does not consider soft-heartedness as a positive trait in a czar. Closer to the truth is that it thinks of a good leader the same way as Einstein thought of God: ingenious but not malicious.
The contemporary model of the Russian state starts with trust and relies on trust. This is its main distinction from the Western model, which cultivates mistrust and criticism. And this is the source of its power.
Our new state will have a long and glorious history in this new century. It will not break. It will act on its own, winning and retaining prize-winning spots in the highest league of geopolitical struggle. Sooner or later everyone will be forced to come to terms with this—including all those who currently demand that Russia “change its behavior.” Because it only seems as if they have a choice.
Translated from Russian by Dmitry Orlov, ClubOrlov.com
Thank you Dmitry, for the translation. And thank you Vladislav Surkov for this writing.
In reality, it lifts my spirits. ” Russia interferes with their brains, and they don’t know what to do with their own transformed consciousness.”
Many such gems:
My favourite-
After the disastrous 1990s, once Russia turned away from all borrowed ideologies, it started generating its own ideas and began to counterattack the West. Since then European and American experts have been erring in their predictions more and more frequently. They are surprised and vexed by the paranormal preferences of the electorates. In confusion, they have sounded the alarm about an outbreak of populism.
Actually it is a wonderful way of pointing out the amount of cognitive dissonance which has riddled not only the public sphere but, mixed with arrogance, is almost de rigueur amongst the western ruling elites. They truly live in an alternative reality that had it’s day in the 20th century.
Alternate view:
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2019/02/11/deep-people/
“Far more significant, and more controversial, are what Surkov has to say about the external appeal of Putinism and its essence.”
ToothPick,
More than quizzical that you have nothing to say. Just pounce with a Canadian blogger’s antithesis link.
Bot-like of you. How long did you wait for the Orlov article to post?
We have a moment for thought and comments and you give us, from the North American home of Russophobia, a critical opinion blogger’s instant negation. Not yours. No. A slice of Canadian negation in behalf of his “efforts for rationality” in foreign affairs and relations as he boasts on his blog.
Quite the clever bit. But we see the ruse, TP. Slip your poison elsewhere. The Brits pay for your kind of efforts.
Indeed, Larch, we oft see glimpses of the fruits of countless Initiatives of Great Integrity (tm/sic). Their Initiatives (“you musn’t think too deeply about that; quick, look over there!”) are sometimes more subtle, because they have to be, but nonetheless, by their Initiative-inspired deeds and bot-like posts shall we (perhaps) know them, or at least contemplate them, via a weed identifying taxonomy, the compiling of which has just begun.
Out they come quickly after the post… Ten… Nine…
You are very fortunate tooth pick, because Surkov actually goes fairly easy on the degenerate west.
He does not mention for example the religion of satanism and the involvement of western elites in child rape a phenomenon involving hundreds of thousands of children kidnapped tortured and killed each year.
Indeed one researcher into this appalling subject, far and away the worst crime conceivable, has described pedophilia as the glue that holds the western establishment together
Russia only has to not be involved in that (and it is not) to be in a wholly different moral universe from the Zionist inculcated degeneracy which the west has sunk into along with it’s obsession with corporate fascism, clear as anything in vassal state Canada which is routinely referred to as “America’s bitch” –
Has Canada ever had a sovereign government?
How you must yearn for the clean air of the Russian Steppe compared to the stink from the satan worshipping prison camp your puppet elite have led you into.
Try thinking for yourself. And go visit Russia. You might love it. At least there you would be free.
RE:Tomsk
Has Canada ever had a sovereign government?
Funny you should ask.
I have recently stumbled across a documentary film being made,
“The myth is Canada” by Doug Force
Doug researches the legal and lawful history and explains how Canada doesn’t really exist and doesn’t
have a constitution.
Others may find it interesting.
Jeez, let’s hope he doesn’t get an incredibly rare form of cancer like critics of canada tend to.
RE: Tomsk
I try a link
Interview with Doug Force
RE: Tomsk
My apologies, before I wear out my welcome here friends,
I must say this link is Much Better
Doug Force: …..The myth is Canada
Cheers
Tomsk, we here in Austfailia, a decaying state if ever there was one, had a Royal Commission into Institutionalised Child Abuse. The breadth and depth of the depraved abuse of defenceless innocents was gob-smacking, but just skimmed the surface. Previously there was a Royal Commission into the removal of indigenous children from their families and societies (as in the USA, Canada and New Zealand, those doughty defenders of ‘human rights’). The efforts over decades were quite plainly attempts to commit genocide against the indigenous, but the Report was met by a storm of racist abuse, of the findings, the victims and the Commissioner, a respected jurist and, apparently, real Christian.In the years since the rate of child theft has burgeoned even beyond the levels of the bad old days, but hypocritically portrayed as ‘concern’ for the children.
I could go on, all day, with the slavish groveling to the USA and Israel, the open hatred and contempt for the Palestinians, the eagerness with which we joined the aggression and genocide in Iraq (and will do so again when the New Purim is unleashed on Iran), the brutal imprisonment of refugees in off-shore Hell-holes, where they linger until driven mad or to suicide, the power of anthropogenic climate destabilisation denialists even as ‘unprecedented’ (one in 2000 years floods)weather and climate disasters befall the country, the ubiquitousness of bullying, from schools, to business and politics, and the utilisation by the ruling regime and its fakestream media allies, led by the Murdoch cancer, of the most bare-faced lying and febrile and hysterical hate and fear-mongering. Nothing I have seen of Russia or China approaches the sheer moral and spiritual perfidy of this benighted land, nor its intellectual insufficiency. China and Russia might not be perfect, but they surely could not be as debased as the glorious West.
“Globalism warming” and now “climate change” is a hoax, non-scientific. It is a scheme for manipulating the public into supporting anything “government” says is a solution, chiefly paying a new tax to combat “global warming”.
There was a booklet titled Operation Northwoods which was supposedly a government study conducted by the RAND corporation which proposed war and environmentalism as the most effective mechanisms for educing the public to give up liberties and accept increased government power and taxation. False flag attacks were also proposed to arouse an apathetic public to support government.
How, David, can a scientific theory that has been researched for nearly 200 years, that is supported by ALL the Academies of Science and ALL the scientific societies and 99% of recently peer-reviewed climate scientists, be a ‘hoax’? And how do you get Arctic summer sea ice, montane glaciers and the Greenland and Antarctic ice-caps, all melting away at differing rates, to go along with the hoax. I agree that the parasites will use the catastrophe to cash in, but any gelt they rip off from futile attempts to solve the cataclysm by ‘Market Means’ pale into utter insignificance in comparison to the riches of the fossil fuel industries, which are valued in the tens of trillions and are the greatest ‘material prize on Earth’, and which underpin the global finance system and the US petro-dollar. You just have to approach this question logically.
Dear Mulga Mumblebrain
Climate change: This is such a contested zone that I think the best way to deal with it is to dispense with the discourse of climate change altogether and talk only of the irrefutable specifics, that is species extinctions, pollution and the melting polar ice. Non specifics always seems to degenerate into ideological debates. Maybe that is the desired outcome?
@Tooth Pick
The linked article elicited some excellent comments, especially the one below:
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2019/02/11/deep-people/#comment-16833
In short, Western supremacism has lost pretty much of its ideological clout these days.
Thanks Anonymous for the calm reply. To be honest, if my post was out-of-line, the moderator would have not allowed it. I do not understand the emotional response that it triggered.
Paul Robinson’s article is reasonable, as are the other articles on his site.
He is moderate, balanced and realistic.
Anatoly:
“And certainly there are very few people in the West, even amongst populists, who agree with Surkov that the Russian system is somehow more “honest” than what they have. As Paul Robinson says, “At this point… Surkov is in cloud-cuckoo land.”
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/surkov-is-not-a-deep-person/
tooth pick
In the article you link to the author says ” I have to say that I think that Surkov is in cloud-cuckoo land. For sure, a lot of people in the Western world are unhappy with their political systems, but that doesn’t mean that they’re looking at Russia and thinking that it’s something altogether more honest. Quite the contrary. The general view of Russia and its political system is one of absolute contempt – a brutal, corrupt, aggressive authoritarian state”
And how, pray tell, do western readers form their opinions on Russia? Do they take time, research carefully, perhaps visit and talk to Russians?
Or are they subjected to a never ending torrent of outrageous lies, misinformation and total demonization of Russia for it’s sole crime of defying the wests aim of owning the whole planet?
On an almost daily basis the Russians are subjected to such a torrent of hate driven poison and naked belligerence as has never been seen in history.
Visiting Prague on holiday recently I happened to see a tv news bulletin, written by the intelligence services no doubt, claiming that Russia had attacked Ukrainian ships and kidnapped their sailors in Kerch – a distortion of what really happened so great that it amounts to outright bloody lies. And the whole western media sings from the same hymn sheet non stop, moving seamlessly from one piece of fake news to the next.
And then Robinson blithely writes that people have a poor opinion of Russia. You wonder why?
Wake up !
For the last ten years at least it has been almost impossible to pick up a western newspaper without reading some utterly malevolent and false accusation against Russia, accusing it of “aggression” or shooting down airliners or poisoning people on England’s streets or endless claims that Putin wants to invade Europe, from non existent submarines threatening Sweden to invading Ukraine and even somehow subverting American elections.
Never in my life have I seen such a coordinated campaign of demonic hate waged against a country which has done nothing wrong and which has time and again bent over backwards to try and engage the west positively.
Even as I write the psychopathic west is moving missiles ever closer to Russia’s borders so it isn’t just the rubbish appearing in the western media that Russia has to cope with but the very real military moves – with the latest being little England’s pronouncement that they intend to use “hard power” against Russia, – which inevitably have led Russian leaders to consider that a nuclear war may be in the planning.
Within that context of full on anti-Russian propaganda, it is no wonder that people who only get their news from tv or the controlled western media believe whatever they are told even if it is complete and dangerous rubbish.
But their uninformed opinions, are sadly worthless.
You would find if you went to Russia for example that there is a far broader spectrum of political parties there than in the west where all you are offered is usually two near identical corporate funded parties. Tweedledum or Tweedledee.
You perhaps need to look a bit more closely at the behaviour of your own country and check the facts before your master to the south takes you into a conflict that could see your entire country destroyed.
Paul Robinson is neither realistic nor truthful. And Surkov is actually telling the truth even if you don’t want to acknowledge it. Read the account of Trump’s state of the union address and decide for yourself who is in cloud cuckoo land.
Anyone can find Russophobic material on the internet. For the Anglo Zionists it is a full time obsession of theirs and they spend millions hiring people to do nothing else but produce it
In the first place, it’s patently clear that the “Western man-in-the-street” is [a] not that interested in Russia, and [b] such information as he has is picked out from the MSM’s tsunami of lies and insults as it roars past. So, his “opinion” ain’t worth much. If today his “opinion” of China is that it’s benign, that will change soon enough as the MSM swings ’round to denigrating it as an adversary.
What’s just as clear to me is that Surkov must be right, at least as regards the West’s more thoughtful leaders. The MSM’s barrage is targeted at them, not the Proles. The real elites don’t care much what the “man-in-the-street” thinks, but they care a lot about what the professional, academic and politically active classes think. That is the intended audience, and judging by the shrillness and sheer volume of the anti-Russia (soon China) message, they’re not getting the traction they’d hoped for. We’re not the only ones to have noticed that this message has been going non-stop since Munich 2007, and since 2014 with sanctions added, while Russia goes from strength to strength.
If the more thoughtful amongst them wondered how it was possible that every aspect of the Russian nation stood steadfast and even strengthened in the face of all this provocation, to the point where it went into the lion’s den and put paid to the takfiris and the West’s regime change operation in Syria while the vaunted USM stood down and abrogated their preeminence in the M.E., they’d surely have succumbed to a grudging, if not whole-hearted admiration of what Russia is doing. From there, it’s a short step to realizing that governance must be behind it.
The Europeans may even have found some of the testicular fortitude to stand up, however haltingly, for their interests. I’d submit that this is in no small part because they watched Russia standing steadfast, never pulling a deal off the table, never flinching, in facing what they’re finally realising is the very same threat they’re facing. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and sincere flattery is the surest indication of admiration.
In the last century I knew a local politician of eastern European descent who said to me:
“I am an honest politician and I can be bought… see, that makes me an honest politician.”
The west likes to pretend government and corporate corruption is not as pervasive as it really is. The latest SNC-Lavelin engineering scandal here in Canada is a case in point. Their global mega-construction project competitors must be laughing their asses off.
I agree that the Russian system (and the Chinese etc)are ‘more honest’ than those of the West, because Western propaganda regarding themselves and their victims in the rest of the world is almost completely and psychopathologically dishonest, hypocritical and utterly deranged. The Russians could lie 99% of the time, and they would still be more honest than the Western pathocrats.
It doesn’t matter what the proles think-under Free Market oligarchic fascism, only the parasite elites count. Hence the Zionazis ignore the populace, where more and more, even among Jews, see Israel as the Evil, racist, terrorist regime that it is. They instead simply buy the groveling obedience of the political vermin and fakestream media presstitute swine classes, and have them make the BDS movement illegal, with possible 20 year sentences, no doubt in the torture Hells of solitary confinement. The First Amendment and the so-called jewels of ‘liberal democracy’ such as Freedom of Speech, Opinion and Action can go to blazes when the Chosen Masters bark their orders.
TP,
Comments in a blog site like “At this point, I have to say that I think that Surkov is in cloud-cuckoo land. ” would definitely have me questioning the validity of the writers viewpoint. One of the issues I take with articles penned from a Canadian author, in Ottawa no less, who doesn’t even have the courtesy to list out his qualifications to pontificate on this matter, is the unknown level of indoctrination that may have been induced by the Holodomor refugees.
I personally know an individual of Ukrainian descent who hosted a Canadian family also of Ukrainian descent, and when the discussion turned to Russia the guests were shocked to learn that the host did not hate the Russians. What the guests did not understand is that the hosts family had left the Ukraine before the Holodomor, and were very aware that the Russians kept the Turks from raiding into the Ukraine for a couple of centuries prior. The guests were also unaware that the Holodomor was initiated by … a Ukrainian. The guests did not know about the Hetmanate period, nor hardly any important Ukrainian history. If Paul Robinson has been influenced by people with similar knowledge, he will of course echo that influence.
Furthermore, the author of your piece closes off with a link to a PR firm that measures ‘trust’ in a government. A very simple search turns up the fact that the Edelman company was founded in the USA and appears to certainly be involved in (at best) dodgy marketing practices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edelman_(firm)
This is a tough crowd, far too many educated people with independent view points to pull a fast one on.
The fraudulence of the ‘Holomodor’ myth was plain as soon as the invented term appeared, a few years ago. Its alphabetical and pronounced proximity to ‘Holocaust’ was probably thought by the Ukronazi propagandists to be a clever move, but malignant imbeciles would think that way.
The word dates to the 1930’s and if i recall my history right the first true underpinnings of Ukrainian nationalism initiate in the late 1910’s. The word is a composite of hunger and plague in Ukrainian.
I would actually suggest the term Holocaust was modelled after this.
I never saw ‘Holomodor’ before a few years ago-fake ‘histories’ are readily compiled. The only people uttering it were Ukronazis and fascistic Western Russophobes. The famine and deaths were real enough, but not confined to Ukraine alone, and the deliberate, genocidal, culpability of the Communist Government is simply a Ukrofascist trope. Ukrainian ‘nationalism’ is an artifact of Roman Catholic sectarianism and German manipulation during WW1. The Ukrofascists are a product of Western Ukraine or Galicia, where they love to kill Jews and Poles, Russian ‘coloradoes’ (beetles) being less common. The fascist regime in Ukraine is now the global centre of fascist and neo-Nazi death-squad training and action-coming to a killing field near you, soon.
Here’s a really good article on the Holomodor.
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Holodomor Hoax: Joseph Stalin’s Crime That Never Took Place
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https://sputniknews.com/politics/201508091025560345/
And here’s a whole book on the Holomodor Hoax title “FRAUD, FAMINE AND FASCISM”. Available online for free.
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https://archive.org/stream/DouglasTottleFraudFamineAndFascism/Douglas%20Tottle%20-%20Fraud%2C%20Famine%20and%20Fascism_djvu.txt
Dear me-Putinismo has ‘external appeal’, does it? Good Yahweh-we can’t have the proles being ‘appealed’ to, can we? They might commit Badthink, ‘thought crime’, or, worst of all, that Supreme and Universal Crime, ‘antisemitism’, and abjure the one true, Revealed Faith, that known by so many names. ‘American Exceptionalism’, ‘Manifest Destiny’, ‘Judeo-Christian Western Civilization, ‘liberal democracy’, neo-liberalism, and, my favourite for its sheer hypocritical chutzpah-‘The Rules Based International Order’, where you-know-who gives the orders but never obeys the rules when it does not suit it. Putinism would be admirable solely because it opposes the death-cult centred on Thanatopolis DC.
I have enjoyed reading and learning at this site for years, and this article is one of the most enlightening things that I have ever read here. This bit is especially good:
“Our system, as in general everything else that’s ours, is no more graceful, but it is more honest. And although the phrase “more honest” is not a synonym of “better” for everyone, honesty does have its charms.
Our state is not split up into deep and external; it is built as a whole, with all of its parts and its manifestations facing out. The most brutal constructions of its authoritarian frame are displayed as part of the façade, undisguised by any architectural embellishments. The bureaucracy, even when it tries to do something on the sly, doesn’t try too hard to cover its tracks, as if assuming that “everyone understands everything anyway.”
Thank you Dmitri for the Translation. I’ve been reading Yandex and other translations since this published Monday. It requires precision in translation.
Many critical voices attack it and Surkov. But he is the young philosopher-poet of Putin’s reign. Not only the one public official who ‘oversees’ Donbass portfolio but the only representative in public of Putin himself who deals with the West’s counterparts.
Last year, he published a less volatile piece, personal, a farewell of sorts as Russia went on its on Lonely Way, a third option for the world, neither East nor West.
https://globalaffairs.ru/global-processes/Odinochestvo-polukrovki-14-19477
This year, he published this in Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Established by the Moscow city Council in 1990, became one of the first independent media in the Soviet Union and Russia, and then was part of the media holding Boris Berezovsky. Owner now, CEO and chief editor of the newspaper Konstantin Remchukov. You might say that Surkov used the Fifth Column to publish their inevitable demise.
Most importantly, this is an historic document, not just of these times of Putin. It connects with the entire history of the Russian realm, Empire, and future SuperPower role in global power arrangements. It is about the domestic reality and the future possibilities.
Surkov was recently named one of the 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine. Indeed, he uses his gifts of mind and literary skill with this deft analysis and proclamation.
Surkov’s fine essay (and Orlov’s translation) has an old-school style which is welcome these days, i.e. a style before the epidemic of hyper-specialization in trendy Western pop-science. It cleanses the palate, healing many modern psychoses (albeit temporarily, sigh…) just to read it.
The translation was exceptionally well done. Orlov didn’t translate the words – he translated the concepts. Only the most skilled translators are able to do this.
Could you explain this sentence in his article: “present-day Putin can hardly be considered a Putinist” ? I agree with everything else Surkov wrote, except for this, since he is describing Putinism as Putin’s model of governance, his methods and approches. So how can Putin not be a Putinist in the way that Surkov is describing Putinism? He fits perfectly.
“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,…”
Surkov is missing something very important here. He needs to bone up on Thorstein Veblen. The illusion of choice is driven by stronger illusions, such as the real estate value dream, & the property ladder. Of course there is more to discuss about illusions. Ultra materialistic fallacies abound in the west.
One could also go to Voltaire’s Candide, and his critique of the Liebnitz philosophy of deluded optimism.
‘All for the best in the best of all possible worlds.’ The west has a pathology of Pangloss’ optimistic materialistic mirage
Yes, the Russian state will have a long and glorious history in this century and it will not break. The reason this will be so is because Russia has behind it more than one thousand years of history, and history and tradition are the basis of culture, something the Western elites are incapable of understanding, especially the US elite. They thought Russia could be broken up like some banana republic, using cheap political rhetoric. No way.
Very well said B.F., very well said…
Well, Ostap Bender, there is a new contender for the crown of великий комбинатор!
How many people , you think , know who Ostap Bender is?
“But according to the laws of psychology that which is forgotten affects us much more than what we remember.”
This is interesting, where did Surkov get it from?
Pavlovian conditioning – the victim – uh, subject, reacts according to conditioning, without going through all memories of the conditioning process.
Putin position is good and well.
But at the end the day the real struggle is spiritual: what kind of society is Russia looking for ?
Some kind of rumination of materialistic western society with its decadent hypocritical human right religion BS ? With its inherent identity politics.
Or other kind of value based society ?
Putin tried somehow to reach and reactivate Christian orthodoxy.
But it seems to me that it is only varnish.
It is clear to me that Russian social dynamic is leading to 100% materialistic society.
Therefore it is only Russian trying to get their share of the materialistic pie.
At the end of the day what is the fundamental difference with US oligarchy ?
Not so much.
Only russian trying to catch up and grabing what they deem their fair share.
In such dynamic, medium term issue is the obvious Russian disappearance in globalization.
Putin is great man an exceptional leader.
But a short term materialistic leader who will not change the course of History.
Like Charles De Gaulle, once passed out his country will run its due materialistic course.
At the end of the day that is all about spirituality and civilizational faith.
The Soros a hus ilk are fighting for the civilizational long run.
As a consequence Putin will be soon old story.
His civilizational imprint is simply too weak.
Unfortunately.
Top-notch submission; thank you Vladislav Surkov (author) and Dmitry Orlov (translator). A few conclusions of mine.
”Having discovered in their midst an unpleasant ’deep state’, Americans were not particularly surprised, since they have long suspected that it exists.”
Perspicacious folks, these Pindos. I don’t want to appear overly boastful — a little will do — but I had a, dare I say, fairly good grasp of the CIA and the FBI already at the age of ten (10), and I’m not even American! And I haven’t stopped hating these crime syndicates in the service of political reaction ever since either.
”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 /…/”
Very true. More precisely, the illusion of choice is kept alive by petty choice. Party politics, the MSM, and the ’wider marketplace’ all prove Vladislav Surkov right. Neoliberalism in particular has made an art of this charade. As a corollary, what passes for Western ’individualism’ is rubbish all along the line; just vulgar, empty shallowness.
”Foreign politicians accuse Russia of interfering in elections and referenda throughout the planet. But in reality the situation is even more serious: Russia interferes with their brains, and they don’t know what to do with their own transformed consciousness.”
Yes, and I would like to point out the fact that the unending allegations about Russia interfering here, there and everywhere actually are ironically appropriate, whether the fraudsters behind these campaigns understand it or not. To wit: Russia stands out as a beacon against the rotting, evil West, and some people like what they are seeing. Russia interferes with their brains too, but unlike the Empire’s servants and loyalists these people do understand what to do with their transformed consciousness.
”Foreign politicians accuse Russia of interfering in elections and referenda throughout the planet. But in reality the situation is even more serious: Russia interferes with their brains, and they don’t know what to do with their own transformed consciousness.”
^^^^ My favorite line in the whole article. Put in other words, Russia lives in our brains rent-free LOL.
Peter Dale Scott (and others) have been publishing depictions of the US Deep State for decades. Scott’s ‘Deep Politics and the Death of JFK’, was published in 1993, and one perceptive reviewer called it (correctly in my opinion) ‘..a Rosetta Stone for cracking open the deepest darkness in American politics’. I might also recommend the now defunct, alas, ‘Rigorous Intuition’ web-site and ‘Covert Action’ magazine. And there are scores of others. To deny the existence of the US Deep State is simply preposterous, but mandatory among the ruling pathocrats, particularly the presstitutes.
This conversation is going off-topic. Please take to the MFC or another post which is more suitable. Mod.
I suggest the following will take inquiring minds much deeper into the subject:
THE DEEP STATE: A Brief Bibliographical Sketch
In his book The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World, Col. Fletcher Prouty, who was the briefing officer to the President of the US from 1955-1963, writes about “an inner sanctum of a new religious order.” By the phrase Secret Team he means a group of “security-cleared individuals in and out of government who receive secret intelligence data gathered by the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) and who react to those data.” He states: “The power of the Team derives from its vast intra-governmental undercover infrastructure and its direct relationship with great private industries, mutual funds and investment houses, universities, and the news media, including foreign and domestic publishing houses.” He further adds: “All true members of the Team remain in the power centre whether in office with the incumbent administration or out of office with the hard-core set. They simply rotate to and from official jobs and the business world or the pleasant haven of academe.”
I have adopted the view outlined by Joseph Farrell in his Nazi International, The Reich of the Black Sun and The Third Way, by Alfred W. McCoy in his The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade and by William Engdahl in A Century of War, Anglo-American Oil Politics And The New World Order. See also Peter Dale Scott´s writings. Essentially I am referring to a consortium of intelligence agencies, their bankers and the drug cartels who finance themselves off money laundering and resource expropriation.
Post WW2 theft of Axis booty was used to finance intelligence agencies (see Seagrave: Gold Warriors: America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold” and the transfer of control over the Asian heroin trade (see: McCoy: “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade”) has been used to finance off-budget operations of intelligence agencies worldwide. The western deep state’s object is to capture the resources of eurasia and prevent a geopolitical alignment of Russia and Germany, formulated by MacKinder: The Geographical Pivot of History”(https://www.jstor.org/stable/1775498?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) and the modern exponents of western hegemony, such as George Friedman (http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=22223) and Brzezinski, of course. With regard to Russia, didn’t we seen a version of this movie in 1918? (http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/museum/ruscivil.jpg)
In pertinent point:
London is now the global money-laundering centre for the drug trade, says crime expert
Gomorrah author Roberto Saviano says ‘the British treat it as not their problem’
“The City of London is the money-laundering centre of the world’s drug trade, according to an internationally acclaimed crime expert.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/london-is-now-the-global-money-laundering-centre-for-the-drug-trade-says-crime-expert-10366262.html
In my view, any attempt to analyse geopolitical machinations that doesn’t recognize the everyday efforts of the entities alluded to above will lack depth. I’m not referring to the holdover, identifiable bureaucrats who survive from one political administration to the next. I’m referring to those who administer the funds laundered by the too-big-to-fail-too-big-to jail banks as well as the funds disappearing into the black holes of the defense department: see:
Pentagon Claims That It Has “Lost” Over $18 Trillion, Which Probably Paid Foreign Army Payrolls
https://therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/pentagon-claims-that-it-has-lost-over-18-trillion-which-probably-paid-foreign-army-payrolls/
9/10/2001: Rumsfeld says $2.3 TRILLION Missing from Pentagon
Cynthia Mckinney questions Rumsfeld and Myers about 9/11 War Games [and accounting]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6crfATz6PI
MSU SCHOLARS FIND $21 TRILLION IN UNAUTHORIZED GOVERNMENT SPENDING; DEFENSE DEPARTMENT TO CONDUCT FIRST-EVER AUDIT
12-11-17
Earlier this year, a Michigan State University economist, working with graduate students and a former government official, found $21 trillion in unauthorized spending in the departments of Defense and Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015.
The work of Mark Skidmore and his team, which included digging into government websites and repeated queries to U.S. agencies that went unanswered, coincided with the Office of Inspector General, at one point, disabling the links to all key documents showing the unsupported spending. (Luckily, the researchers downloaded and stored the documents.)
Now, the Department of Defense has announced it will conduct the first department-wide, independent financial audit in its history (read the Dec. 7 announcement here).
The Defense Department did not say specifically what led to the audit. But the announcement came four days after Skidmore discussed his team’s findings on USAWatchdog, a news outlet run by former CNN and ABC News correspondent Greg Hunter.
“While we can’t know for sure what role our efforts to compile original government documents and share them with the public has played, we believe it may have made a difference,” said Skidmore, the Morris Chair in State and Local Government Finance and Policy at MSU.
Skidmore got involved last spring when he heard Catherine Austin Fitts, former assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development, refer to a report which indicated the Army had $6.5 trillion in unsupported adjustments, or spending, in fiscal 2015. Given the Army’s $122 billion budget, that meant unsupported adjustments were 54 times spending authorized by Congress. Typically, such adjustments in public budgets are only a small fraction of authorized spending. Skidmore thought Fitts had made a mistake. “Maybe she meant $6.5 billion and not $6.5 trillion,” he said. “So I found the report myself and sure enough it was $6.5 trillion.”
Skidmore and Fitts agreed to work together to investigate the issue further. Over the summer, two MSU graduate students searched government websites, especially the website of the Office of Inspector General, looking for similar documents dating to 1998. They found documents indicating a total $21 trillion in undocumented adjustments over the 1998-2015 period. (The original government documents and a report describing the issue can be found here.)
In a Dec. 8 Forbes column he co-authored with Laurence Kotlikoff, Skidmore said the “gargantuan nature” of the undocumented federal spending “should be a great concern to all taxpayers.”
“Taken together these reports point to a failure to comply with basic constitutional and legislative requirements for spending and disclosure,” the column concludes. “We urge the House and Senate Budget Committee to initiate immediate investigations of unaccounted federal expenditures as well as the source of their payment.”
https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2017/msu-scholars-find-21-trillion-in-unauthorized-government-spending-defense-department-to-conduct/
As they say, follow the money.
Tremendous essay by Surkov. Excellent translation by Orlov.
In essence, society only trusts the head of state. … The contemporary model of the Russian state starts with trust and relies on trust. This is its main distinction from the Western model, which cultivates mistrust and criticism. And this is the source of its power.
A few years ago, Saker said “Putin is Tsar”. I didn’t know what he meant at the time. After reading Surkov’s essay, I think I understand it better.
If Russian society trusts the head of state, couldn’t a bad Tsar do a lot of damage? Yes, the deep nation would eventually destroy him (if I understand Surkov properly), but in the meantime couldn’t he do great damage?
It would seem that the selection of Putin’s successor is of critical importance in the coming years.
And if Russia has to keep getting lucky in its choice of Tsar, would it run out of luck one day? The Romans had five “good emperors” but disaster eventually occurred. Could something similar happen to Russia? Or perhaps I don’t understand Surkov’s source of optimism for the long term.
The very nature of ‘liberal democracy’ under Free Market capitalist oligarchy, must be characterised by division and internecine hatred, the features we see growing like topsy in the decaying and moribund West today. These regimes are ruled by that type that ‘neo-liberal capitalism’ most empowers, the so-called ‘Rightwing Authoritarian Personality’, a category that, with its insatiable greed, gigantic egotism, misanthropy and xenophobia, unscrupulousness and preference for violence, seems to me to be perfectly congruent with the psychopath.
The nature of ‘businessmen’ and ‘business’ is pretty plain when one considers the consequences of their greed-driven actions. We may consider numerous capitalist enterprises, such as tobacco peddling, asbestos mining and utilisation, junk-food peddling, fossil fuel extraction and utilisation, opioid trafficking in the USA and elsewhere, agri-chemical poisons, the military industrial complex etc, and see that, despite knowing that their rackets are killing millions (billions, soon, in the case of fossil fuels), the psychopaths show no remorse or compunction in pursuing their deadly machinations. Instead they spend billions on lying propaganda to deny their malevolence, and to buy the loyalty of political Gadarenes who do their bidding, or else, and then, like the monsters Obama and Blair, get rewarded in retirement for their efforts. Is it any wonder that humanity, under the totalitarian rule of these little emanations from the diabolic regions, stands on the very brink of self-destruction, either by thermo-nuclear war, or by its precursor, the global ecological Holocaust?
Unless I am misreading, with the importance placed on the head of state, why is the author so confident of the future, when Putin is no longer the head? Is there a guarantee that someone with Putin’s outlook and ability will succeed him? Why?
To attempt an answer, I think he is indicating that the Deep Nation (the People) will choose the successor because now there is a standard, a model, an imperative that must be and will be met or the person can not lead the nation.
What Putin has established is the requirements of leadership. Surkov describes the dynamics of President to People, People to President. It is beyond democracy and elections.
It isn’t just Putin who represents this in Russian history. And thus, it is deep inside the Russian psyche to bond with a leader, especially at historic epochs. It is two-way. A profound mark of Russian civilization that distinguishes it from other nations and transcendent compared to Western democracies.
So whoever steps up or is put up has to “connect”.
Observers note that Putin has a great knowledge and affection for Russian history and historical figures, Russian Culture and Science, Military and Russian Arts and Sports. In him is a love for the People and Nation.
Surkov indirectly surmises that anyone who presents himself to replace Putin understands the threshold through which he must pass.
For now, it is inconceivable that Putin will not stay on for life. Two paths could exist for this to happen. Change in the Constitution by the Duma, or using the device of the Union State which would supersede the RF with a new presidency.
Perhaps, this Surkov article was an argument to convince Putin to take one of these paths and to stay.
One hundred and fifty million people with a unique language living in eleven time zones of geographic area ; rich in natural resources makes for a special people. A twelfth generation Nationalist Patriot ” Putin ” with the brains and energy to establish trust in a benevolent government which he heads is a recipe for success. Western Bankers have already ruined the Western Nations. Honest money and a strong belief in our Creator’s benevolence in Russia will lead it to be the best Nation on the Earth. That is ; if the Geo Engineering assault on the Eco Sphere does not kill all life on Eath.
I very much agree with the concept of a deep nation, and would only take it somewhat further in expansion. I think there is also a ‘deep world’, and that the Russian people are exceedingly fortunate to have leadership which aligns itself with this concept. I am thinking here of Russia’s firm commitment toward international law and concern for multipolarity. We on the outside may know little of Russia’s deep nation characteristics, but we know international law and are concerned for our ‘deep world’ in very much the same way that Russians have been concerned for their country. Russia at a few moments had the dissonance being experienced now in the West, and the deep nation’s leadership knows, I am sure, what I am talking about. They too, have been where we are now. And they want a world community that follows the same path they have forged.
May we in the West come through this shameful, destructive period in order to experience what Russia now has! I’m very grateful that the Russian leadership continues to keep the door open for this to happen. It looks very dark at present, but so it looked even for Russia just a few short decades ago. That gives me hope.
Juliana. You have it I think. As far as I can see Russia is special because it has an historic awareness of its connection to the “deep world.” This gives the nation remarkable inner power. Therapeutic for our civilization in fact. I sense that this connection profoundly frightens the bourgeoise West who have a need to deny the existence of this real “deep world.” That denial is an essential component of their ego driven Cartesian paradigm. However it appears for Russia that very connection is an active component of their Christianity.
When Russia manifests such connection it enormously stimulates western phobia. They are really terrified of it. To them it must be evil. However it is a force far more powerful than they. It crushed fascism once.
I don’t know if there has been something lost in translation, but the comment that the Russian system is “no more graceful, but it is more honest”, seems incorrect. I would suggest that the phrase “less hypocritical” would be more fitting. In the West, the ruling elite claims that it is morally and ethically superior to other countries, whilst carrying on corruption most vile, behind a facade that not enough people see through.
Also the Russian bureaucracy assumes that “everyone understands everything anyway”, so it doesn’t try too hard to hide it’s tracks, is actually rather true according to my observations.
From my experience and travel, I do agree that most Russians know the system is rigged, but still accept it as a possibly necessary way of running the country. After centuries of being subjugated by the Czars, then by the Bolsheviks, they have been culturally conditioned the accept their serfdom, from which they are only recently emerging. This is the result of more freedom of expression, without the fear of a Siberian holiday.
I a picture is worth a thousand words, then the fact there is a huge number of billionaires in Moscow demonstrates that the system is corrupt. I am glad that Putin and his guys managed to slow the rape of Russia that occurred in the 90’s. Maybe that was using a bigger wedge, ie crook, to drive out smaller crooks, I don’t know, but, you just end up with bigger crooks if that is the strategy.
My Moscow brother, like many others, had a few roubles folded in with their driver’s licence, for the police, when pulled up. He said it was expected, and it worked. Russians have an awesome reputation for political jokes, and this came out of the harsh reality of previous times. Nothing like that in the West, mainly because of the illusion of “freedom”, “choice” etc, and a bought media, keeping the masses ignorant.
Saw a doco on the GUM emporium recently. Very posh. It was full of crowds, but the high end shops were mostly empty, as the people only came to look, and buy iceream, as the prices in the fancy shops were too high for them. Funny, I remember walking the whole GUM in 1984 wanting to buy a corkscrew to open some wine. No luck, Nyetu! Felt like W.C.Fields in Afghanistan. Lol!
When I was there, I fell in love with the place for two reasons. I was born in Australia to Russian parents, and I felt that I had gone “home”. The other reason was that it was not yet the West, even though they wanted to buy my jeans. Moscow etc is unrecognizable to me now, apart from the iconic features.
Putin has Russian enemies, within the Kremlin and without, and I pray that he can continue to do good and raise the standard of living for the people. That is the whole purpose of government, at least in my opinion.
His administration is truly a fresh breeze sweeping the land.
If a few heads need to be kicked, then of course, we all understand.
The jast time I was in Moscow was 2000. I remember asking a pension woman how she was liking Putin, she just replied, how your Nazarbayev. I myself could see the change even then, I continue to be impressed year after year, I too see no end in sight, save a nuclear confrontation God forbid.
As long as Russia can keep the Western Bankers and NGO’s out of it’s great land mass ; the Natural love that native Russians have for their own country { along with 12th generation Russian Patriots like Putin } are all that is needed to maintain it’s standing as a great Country. The seventy year nightmare of the Soviets was a Satanic Banker financed tragedy. A unique common language …a devout Christian Orthodox Church …and the tough and smart Russian people { who have been inoculated ; by their experience with Communism} will be the salvation of all other peoples in the World who are looking for an example of what a Great Country can be. The Corruption in the US Government makes my heart sick….as I witness their lying and criminal behavior both Internationally as well as at home.
Very insightful.
This is true of all long established “countries”, small or large; India, Turkey, Persia, Japan, China Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Nepal, Greece, Mayans, Aztecs, etc. etc.
Time may have shrunk or expanded its reach or boundaries but the generally lives on, expanding or contracting according to circumstances.
This is real Russian Manifesto! Beautiful. Masterfully deconstructed the true state of affairs in the west. Spread it far and wide brothers! Thanks Dimitry for translating this gem!
Wonderful article. West obviously takes notice, but because of:
“… Nobody believes any more in the good intentions of public politicians. They are envied and are therefore considered corrupt, shrewd, or simply scoundrels…”, nothing will change because scoundrels want their “pound of flesh”.
Also, I believe that Putin’s plan will work only if “decision makers” are screened and tested for their true patriotism. “Multi-citizens” need not apply.
Yes, Anonius. And the same is true of the hugely slandered Soviet/Eastern one-party system. It served as a gatekeeper against Western fraudsters and wreckers and their spreading of poison until the West managed to subvert the rulung party itself.
WHAT IS BEHIND THE “LONG STATE” OF VLADIMIR PUTIN?
Why Vladislav Surkov published his reflections on the Russian state
2-14-19
http://www.iarex.ru/articles/64396.html
Alas, the link doesn’t go there, but tries to go to http://router.asus.com/error_page.htm?flag=8.
Needless to say, I’m quite interested in any background to Surkov’s revelatory article.
Does the link work for anyone else?
It does work. Try again. Or google the title “Что стоит за «долгим государством» Владимира Путина?”
pogohere,
The piece you linked is most unintelligent.
To what particular point were you drawing out attention?
Thought provoking and confirmation of some of my observations over the past 5 decades. The hypothesis helps explain why no real opposition to Putin has arisen. My standing question is: Who will continue Putinism once Putin passes completely from the scene, for as long as he lives he will always cast a shadow for better or worse.
It is not really complicated. Russia has always been more crude in its ways compared to the west, more “right in the face”, no illusions, no bullshit. Russian people have an understanding of it, they come from a tradition of it. I think the westerners also have no illusions of democracy, France being the best example of it, fighting for their social gains and having no single grain of trust for their elites (i.e., yellow vests). But with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the threat of communist/socialist boogeyman gone, the western elites are taking back all those social gains one by one and drowning lower classes in misery. The difference is that the western masses simply do not have a shared “national consciousness” with their elite overlords, while Russians do. And it is simply formed over time by defending your home nation against the imperialist invaders and achieve certain success at it. Russia has it. Iran has it (mostly due to the long Iraq war). Turkey has it. And these are the countries that are now the thorns in the empire’s way.
Surkov is the man of the oligarchic elite, an Atlanticist. Here is a much better analysis by A.Dugin.
https://www.fort-russ.com/2019/02/its-time-for-super-putin-dugin-on-surkovs-putin-analysis/
And here is an excerpt:
I find that in the article of Surkov the main message is sincere and reflects the will of the current elites to self-preservation and to preserve the regime in an unchanged state and in the post-Putin period. So that Putin himself does not decide to change something by chance, he is reassured: everything is perfect. But sincerity does not mean truth. The solipsism of the ruling elite still cannot replace history and political logic. Therefore, Surkov’s analysis of the state of the political regime in modern Russia is entirely and completely false in its very foundations.
This from an alien, observing from across the ocean:
Having read both, I suspect that Surkov’s ultimate reference is to the will of the people as a whole; to their collective intention to remain Russian and living by Russian values.
That said, I more than suspect that Dugin’s point — that will is impotent when it lacks organizational apparatus to enforce itself — is spot on. (Neither one views existing political parties as being capable of exercising this function).
But could this be accomplished without constituent elements polarizing and fighting each other — European Christians against Islamic people of the various “Stans” and both against the Asian Buddhists and Animists ? The current balance is an uneasy one, with some states broken away (Belarus, Baltics, Ukraine), and others essentially ethnic fiefdoms. In the face of this, the potential for further disintegration along ethnic-religious lines is frightening. If Putin (a political genius who could accomplish this if anyone could) has not seen fit to lay the groundwork for translating the popular will for social justice into reality, what successor could ?
It seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same, and that the unifying factor in Russia being faith in a Good Tsar (whatever his title) remains the surest foundation on which Russian society can remain coherent.
FWIW
This is such a beautiful essay and Dimitri Orlov must be congratulated for his sensitive translation. The English language has been used to magnificent effect and l am left feeling inspired and enlightened. l am beginning to feel that in western countries our language usage has been so degraded that we are loosing the ability to think with subtlety, imagination and precision. So thank God for translators!
And of course many thanks for sharing with us that shining mind of Mr Surkov.
The raw in the face truth of Russian reality — the deep nation– the very essence of Russia’s heartbeat — her soul! A truly profound essay that hits home– the depth of it, so comprehensively encapsulated. To me, the closest description of what will forever be the enigma and mystery which constitutes Russia! But yes, one quality shines through — the spontaneous unadulterated love Russians have for the Motherland …
How many people , you think , know who Ostap Bender is?
Makes me wonder. So many people praising that article.
And for me it looks like much ado about nothing, mix of trivialities and wishful thinking, even to a degree “call for everything good and against everything bad”.
While i am not a big fun of Dugin, in this Surkov’s article he is on point, i believe.
https://www.geopolitica.ru/en/article/its-time-super-putin-dugin-surkovs-putin-analysis
Maybe Saker can add that article link to his post. Cause, frankly, way too much cheering and syrup about Surkov’s piece.
On the difference between Putin and Putinism, I believe it connects first with the idea that Russia is only beginning to hit its stride, and is doing so through its striving. To clarify, looking back at the years between his coming to power in the chaotic mess of post-USSR, looking back on those chaotic events and mistakes which Putin and his govt made, like the Moscow building bombing, theft of public resources, and the murders of dissidents, looking back even on video of Putin in those earlier years, when he didn’t « have the same aura » as nowadays, looked like the stereotype cold Russian, and even as a bit of a goofy-looking, arrogant thug. Well, that was my impression, comparing to video of Putin nowadays.
What I mean to say is that it seems to me that – and I’m only speculating – Putin has grown into his role as Russian leader, having learned from all that chaotic history and his personal administrative mistakes, has probably had an epiphany or two at some point, from seeing the results of « mafia-style » govt, and been forced to feel the compassion for all the victims of misrule and thuggishness. And so I consider it quite plausible that his Christian Orthodox religion is not merely a veneer, but an extension of this growing spirituality of caring for his people, and this religion has the benefit of being accessible to everbody in his country, as a spiritual access, and as a unifying factor.
So I believe Putinism is about spiritual and nationalistic growth, an attitude that goes beyond a person, and is rather an Impeccability to live up to, like a personal code (of Putin) to do the best he can, high-mindedly, nobly, for his people. Of course this is only my interpretation.
Thanks to you both for this uplifting and useful article,Dmitry and author Vladislav Surkov.
Daily we have Western “news sources” telling us what Putin thinks, or wants, or means, or hopes, based on their ingrained and warped ideas of what THEY would do or how they would act. Of course they are wildly off the track, and rarely, it seems, does anyone in a position of power ever look online at the thousands of speeches and interviews given by President Putin over the years. In them we can often find answers to questions we ask ourselves, but of course if people want correct answers they do not seek real sources which could upset their already firm “knowledge”.