Quite many in the West – and very many in Russia – believe that Putin is a great thinker, who is always ahead of his enemies and is constructing cunning schemes like a Magnus Carlsen. Well, he is not. Putin is a street wise thug. When he visited Solzhenitsyn’s home, he saw an old photograph of a stately man and asked the Nobel Prize winner: “Is that your Grandfather”? The answer revealed quite much about the president of the world’s largest country: “No, that is Stolypin”.
What Putin brings to the table, and what helps him staying in power, is cruelty, high temper, ruthlessness and a total lack of any kind of morality. I don’t want to give any psychological diagnosis – I’ll leave that to experts – but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that he went through some very traumatizing moments during his childhood. His easiness when it comes to use brutal violence has made him the most feared person in the power circles in Moscow. The two other elements which Putin is contributing are: 1) a deep and genuine hate of the USA, and 2) the paranoid mindset and some tactical experience of a KGB officer.
Ok, so who does the thinking then? Who has convinced Putin to dig up ancient historical constructions and ideas about “Novorossiya”, Crimea’s “sacrality” etc.? And who is capable of – pardon my French – mindfucking an entire nation so deeply and hard that the majority of a 145 million population actually believes what is being shown on Russian television and now is supporting the coming war against its closest neighbour?
Vladislav Surkov. He is the brain behind most of political structures of Putin’s regime since 2000. Born in 1964 in Chechnya as Aslambek Dudayev to Zinaida Surkova and Chechen Andarbek Dudayev, much of is early biography is rather blurry. He came to Moscow in the 80s, and worked in the advertising business during the 90s. In 1999 he became the adviser of President Yeltsin, and claims to have arranged the peaceful transition of power.
Surkov-Dudayev has a wide range of talents, and has been the architect behind major political projects, such as economics, art, establishing political parties (like United Russia) and movements (Nashi), etc. He is also interested in music (American rap), and probably finds great joy in playing on large parts of the Russian society as an instrument.
His greatest achievement though is to have established the most efficient, massive and manipulative mass media system in the history of mankind. I don’t know how Surkov-Dudayev has managed to persuade relatively educated people like Dmitry Kisilyov, Vladimir Solovyov and thousands of other media workers to produce such a massive wall of lies and hatred, but he has done a very good job. It takes enormous resources only to coordinate all the material which is choked down the throat of a rather willing Russian TV audience. Surkov-Dudayev’s extremely manipulative propaganda war is both helping the Kremlin crooks stay in power, as well as nurturing enough hate among the population to conduct a brutal warfare against its largest European neighbour.
Surkov-Dudayev is not a military expert, but he has played a central role in controlling the Russian officers who established the bridgeheads in Horlivka, Slovyansk, Luhansk and other Donbas cities. Reports show that he didn’t do this job very well, so he sticks to what he can best: manipulation.
He must be very pleased with himself.
http://surkov.info (in Russian)
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