All is yes or no, black or white. Duba-Yurt, the village where he spent those first five years, was later bombed into oblivion during Russia’s ferocious wars against Chechen separatists. He composed lyrics for the Russian rock band Agata Kristi (whose lead singer later sued a critic for calling him “a trained poodle for Surkov”). Not necessarily its most important part.”. ENCOURAGING, REALISTIC, MOTIVATING The book outlines the entire process from getting your values in order (why you want to declutter), going through each part of the house, how and where to take everything you’re getting rid of, and how to prevent buying more. Surkov articulates the underlying philosophy of the new elite, a generation of post-Soviet supermen who are stronger, more clearheaded, faster, and more flexible than anyone who has come before. Operating in the Shadows of Power in Russia. “Without Sky” was published on March 12, 2014. Mr. Surkov gives interviews so rarely that each one qualifies as a news event, and he did not respond to a list of reporter’s questions. The producers who worked at the Ostankino channels might all be liberals in their private lives, holiday in Tuscany, and be completely European in their tastes. In 1992 he launched Khodorkovsky’s first ad campaign, in which the oligarch, in checked jacket, mustache, and a massive grin, was pictured holding out bundles of cash: “Join my bank if you want some easy money” was the message. Those who want to destroy it are socially dangerous. Within the borders, let there be chaos and plasma. —With translation assistance from Alexei Bayer, Barry Yourgrau is the author of several collections of surreal short fiction, including Wearing Dad’s Head and Haunted Traveller, and a memoir, Mess. And it is a bestseller: the key confession of the era, the closest we might ever come to seeing inside the mind of the system. Such apparent, almost obvious pranking (some commentators suggested Surkov was himself the source of the anonymous tip to Vedomosti) brings to mind what Adam Curtis sees as a feature of Surkov’s political tactics: that he let it be known what he was doing—for instance, officially backing human-rights NGOs even as he guided and funded anti-NGO, pro-Putin youth groups—“which meant that no one was sure what was real or fake,” as Curtis put it in his 2016 documentary HyperNormalization. “This system is not separated from the people, as some people think,” he said. It, wife Natalya’s maiden name is Dubovitskaya. Almost Zero isn’t the only recent bestseller written by a member of the country’s political and economic elite. It’s his political system in miniature: democratic rhetoric and undemocratic intent. Famously an admirer of Tupac Shakur, Surkov can also quote Allen Ginsberg’s poetry by heart, albeit in heavily-accented English (there’s a cringe-making recording online of him reciting Ginsberg’s “Supermarket Sutra” in full). Egor’s god is beyond good and evil, and Egor is his privileged companion: too clever to care for anyone, too close to God to need morality. The place might have been a storage vault, or an office, or a hotel room. And these 2-D survivors, the narrator warns, will come seeking their revenge on the city that refused them shelter. It’s a big honor for me. Only effort and the attempt to write a ‘contemporary postmodern novel.’ It’s boring.”. The novel’s hero, a “bookish hipster” whose background is similar to Mr. Surkov’s, “can see through the superficiality of his age, but is unable to have any real feelings for anyone or anything,” wrote Peter Pomerantsev in the essay, which summed up Mr. Surkov’s work as a “fusion of despotism and postmodernism.”. He said he hadn’t read Almost Zero, but was “very interested” to do so. Inpatient takes the leap and credits Surkov as the author. There were no sanctions from the West that might have threatened economic ties with Russia. Or, see all newsletter options here. More: Even in government, Surkov found time to write essays praising Bollywood movies and Joan Miró in the pages of Russian Pioneer, a glitzy intellectual magazine—which went on to publish Almost Zero in a special edition. It’s exactly the sort of book Surkov’s youth groups burn on Red Square. Stability does not mean stagnation, it does not mean stopping. Yegor is also described as being “perhaps the first in his lilywhite, rhythmless country to hear the curse words in the lyrics of American rappers.” And then there’s Yegor’s richly evoked provincial Russian childhood, which seems to match Surkov’s, post-Chechnya, as do Yegor’s unpartnered mother and his strong grandmother (here, a beloved moonshine-maker named Antonina Pavolvna, “like Chekhov”). Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina looked taken aback when I brought up Almost Zero during audience questions at her performance with the banned Belarus Free Theatre at New York’s La Mama. This is the third time this year that Russian authorities have put Aleksei Navalny, the charismatic anti-corruption crusader who has declared himself a candidate for the Russian presidency, behind bars. It’s secondhand literature. Read more about these literary intrigues at NYR Daily. His tragedy, wrote journalists Zoya Svetova and Yegor Mostovshchikov in a seminal profile in Russia’s New Times magazine, was to imagine himself smarter and better than his bosses—even though “he is always in supporting roles.”, In 2005, Surkov’s persona gained a new layer of complexity when he revealed in an interview with Der Spiegel that his father was Chechen. One of Surkov’s many nicknames is the “political technologist of all of Rus.” Political technologists are the new Russian name for a very old profession: viziers, gray cardinals, wizards of Oz. “Internal exile” during the Soviet period came to mean something metaphorical—about traveling within yourself or relocating mentally, a sort of “retreat into the self” that allowed one to live more happily, avoiding politics or public life. Translated by Nino Goji and Nastya Valentine, this English-language edition of Okolonolya (Almost Zero) was, in its 2009 Russian edition, written by an unknown named Natan Dubovitsky. His first wife was an artist famous for her collection of theater puppets (which Surkov would later build up into a museum). Almost Zero - Kindle edition by Dubovitsky, Natan, Surkov, Vladislav. The secretive strategist was known as the grey cardinal in … He just wouldn’t be able to get to it for a while because he was too busy making a follow-up to HyperNormalization. He was given his chance by Russia’s best-looking oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Vladimir Rodionov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images, prepared to fire the finance minister, Aleksei L. Kudrin. “It’s exactly the sort of book,” noted Peter Pomerantsev in the London Review of Books, the Russian-born British journalist and Surkov’s main chronicler in English, that “Surkov’s youth groups burn on Red Square.”, Russian reviews of Almost Zero ranged from awestruck to contemptuous. The butterfly’s predators had long died off, but still it changed its colors from the sheer pleasure of transformation. It was Surkov, variously called a “political technologist,” the “gray cardinal,” or a “puppet master,” who had created and orchestrated Putin’s so-called sovereign democracy—the stage-managed, sham-democratic Russia, the ruthlessly stabilized, still-rotten Russia that Almost Zero was savaging. Such apparent, almost obvious pranking (some commentators suggested Surkov was himself the source of the anonymous tip to Vedomosti) brings to mind what Adam Curtis sees as a feature of Surkov’s political tactics: that he let it be known what he was doing—for instance, officially backing human-rights NGOs even as he guided and funded anti-NGO, pro-Putin youth groups—“which meant that no one was sure what was real or fake,” as Curtis put it in his 2016 documentary HyperNormalization. Surkov is more than just a political operator. In the 21st century, the techniques of the political technologists have become centralized and systematized, coordinated out of the office of the presidential administration, where Surkov would sit behind a desk with phones bearing the names of all the “independent” party leaders, calling and directing them at any moment, day or night. Mr. Surkov’s job is to oversee the relationship of the executive branch with Russia’s Parliament, its regional leaders, its political parties and mass media, though that is a little like saying Lady Gaga’s job is to sing. Identity-shifting came early to the future puppet-master. “He protects the borders. The buyer of the Victor O. story is the “gangsta” of Almost Zero’s subtitle, a middle-aged, world-weary ex-bookworm named Yegor Samokhodov. These days, Surkov is in American news as Putin’s envoy in talks with the US over eastern Ukraine. Almost Zero is reviewed for the NYR Daily, by Barry Yourgrau. I asked some Russians for advice. He said a violation of such borders had resulted in the showdown with Mr. Prokhorov, the billionaire: Mr. Prokhorov had been anointed by the Kremlin to build a pro-business party, but when he broke the rules by using nationalist language, it was Mr. Surkov’s job to stop him. Yegor is thus a publisher as drug dealer, and wielding a gun is part of his business arsenal. Then, in early 2014, amid Russia’s black ops in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Natan Dubovitsky published a jarring dystopian sci-fi short story, “Without Sky.” This has been translated into English on various websites. No. On this spring day in 2013, he was wearing a white shirt and a leather jacket that was part Joy Division and part 1930s commissar. Centering on a poetry-loving gangster-cum-book publisher wracked by Hamletian perplexities over a possible snuff film, it unloaded a darkly absurdist, but caustically knowing, satire on the corruptions and machinations of post-Soviet Russia, with a whirligig of literary remixes and references. Surkov helped to organize the annexation, with his whole theater of Night Wolves, Cossacks, staged referendums, scripted puppet politicians, and men with guns. In one cable, a diplomat described a rally of Russian nationalist groups in 2004. Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible, This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality. He sees the world as a space in which to project different realities. Plenty of politicos write novels; but not many write eviscerating self-satires. I won’t read anything else. It was almost as if he didn’t exist, which, for a Confucian official, amounts to a state of grace. Given Almost Zero’s assumed author, the reader plays detective, perhaps a tad feverishly, for evidence of a confessional roman à clef, clues about the “gray cardinal.” Some obvious ones turn up, as in Yegor’s sideline as a PR operative—bribing a journalist to renounce a story critical of his governor client, arranging phony political debates on television. Dmitry Astakhov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. He occupies the time-honored role of the “gray cardinal,” a behind-the-scenes manipulator who inspires fascination and fear. I also received a reply from the filmmaker Adam Curtis. His tragedy, wrote journalists Zoya Svetova and Yegor Mostovshchikov in a seminal profile in Russia’s New Times magazine, was to imagine himself smarter and better than his bosses—even though “he is always in supporting roles.”, In 2005, Surkov’s persona gained a new layer of complexity when he revealed in an interview with Der Spiegel that his father was Chechen.