The Case of the Grey Eminence of the Red Kremlin with the Blue Ink

Collage by yours truly: Portraits of Vladislav Surkov (top left and top right) + a portrait of Natan Dubovitsky (top middle) + screenshot of the source of the latter portrait, with the intro to Dubovitsky's short story

By Péter MARTON
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A friend sent along the link to this short story, titled "Without Sky" or Без неба in Russian. The author is indicated as Natan Dubovitsky -- a pseudonym. Keep this in mind for now.

The Wikipedia page on none other than Vladislav Surkov says that "journalists in Russia and abroad have speculated that Surkov writes under the pseudonym Natan Dubovitsky, although the Kremlin denies it." If I look at the above collage, with two of Surkov's publicly available portraits and the drawn portrait of Natan Dubovitsky (from the site where the short story in question was published), I probably don't need a forensic investigation of the strategic geo-coordinates of facial birthmarks (such as the one on Surkov's right cheek) to conclude something meaningful about this...

So who is Vladislav Surkov, you might be asking? And is the story referenced here any good? Answers to both questions follow.

A short biography of Surkov gives you a tour of recent Soviet/Russian history.

• Son of a Chechen-Russian schoolteacher couple, born in Solntsevo, Lipetsk Oblast. His mother eventually raised her in the absence of the father.
• Reportedly served time in the Soviet Army in the 1980s, including on deployment to Hungary, in an artillery regiment, or with the military intelligence service GRU, or perhaps under two hats at the same time. The possibility of this is interesting to some extent, because Surkov is traditionally counted (in superficial analysis) as a member of the "civiliki" faction (a play on words essentially referring to civilians) as opposed to the "siloviki" faction of the Russian elite (who are representatives of the "institutions of force," i.e., basically the ex-KGB/FSB/intelligence people, like V. V. Putin, Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev or Aleksandr Vasilyevich Bortnikov, the trio that, together with Sergei Ivanov, was the key decision-making circle in the 2014 Crimea crisis). Some say that Surkov himself coined the "civiliki" term, which kinda makes this question even more interesting, if you ask me. As a reminder: back under the Medvedev presidency (2008-2012), the civiliki fought to wrestle control of some strategic Russian corporations (in the energy sector, for example) away from the siloviki, rather unsuccessfully eventually...
• But let's not rush ahead. First, Surkov studied, as a student of very different subjects. To become a theatre director, for instance. But he also studied metallurgy, earlier.
• Worked for Mikhail Khodorkovsky's firms, including Bank Menatep, in advertising and PR, in the 1990s. His signature campaign featured Khodorkovsky selling his bank's services personally beaming down on people from posters, with abundant cash in hand, and no apologies for his wealth -- this was quite unusual at the time, in a formerly (at least nominally) egalitarian society.
• That's when and where (at work) Surkov met his second and current wife... Natalia Dubovitskaya. Yes. That is her name. Yes, it is similar to Natan Dubovitsky... I noticed, too.
• Then he went on to work with Russian state media and eventually the Russian presidency (Kremlin), towards the end of Boris Yeltsin's time in office. Now he was in political marketing.
• He played a role behind the scenes in the picking of a successor to Yeltsin, i.e. in bringing to power V. V. Putin.
• He was apparently key in paving the way for Moscow's key ally to this day, Ramzan Kadirov, to lead Chechnya, in 2007.
• He is an intellectual godfather of the Russian concept of sovereign democracy. A simplistic and quite widespread reading of this is that he corrupted the idea of democracy, but a more loyal (and still critical) interpretation of Surkov's thoughts and intentions (along with the contradictions they carry) can be found in Georgii Bovt (2008): Vladislav Surkov: "A Pragmatic Idealism." Russian Politics & Law, 46:5, pp. 33-40.
• He launched the pro-Putin youth movement Nashi. 
• Supposedly prided himself in having stabilised Russia (during the course of which his former boss Khodorkovsky was first arrested and jailed (2003-2013), and eventually exiled (to Switzerland), in what was presented as an anti-oligarch campaign.
• Supposedly, Surkov also prides himself in having liberalised the Russian political system under Medvedev's presidency -- or perhaps used to pride himself in having done some things to this end, in the past (?).
• Was a key advisor to Putin and also a key Ukraine hand after 2013 (and perhaps he is still influential to some extent).
• In 2013, he described his portfolio this way: "My portfolio at the Kremlin and in government has included ideology, media, political parties, religion, modernization, innovation, foreign relations, and modern art." Read: his area was basically the theory and practice of everything, if you take this at face value.
• When asked if the sanctions targeting him would hurt him, given that he enjoys moving around Europe, and in the West, he answered: "I can fit Europe in here," pointing to his head.
• A fan of artists from Allen Ginsberg to Tupac Shakur.

It is interesting that he would have a penchant for writing, and this is, it seems, quite a persistent thing on his part. The way he approaches the subject in public, when asked to reflect on this, is no less interesting -- at times even bizarre... an effect he is probably consciously aiming to achieve. Just listen to what they say about him in the 2016 documentary "Hypernormalisation" (from 0:40 to about 4:00).

Writing (which he probably also likes on a l'art pour l'art basis) thus seems to work as part of his strategy of creating a hall of mirrors around himself. He reportedly does just this with his novel Almost Zero (2008) as well, featuring some seriously badass cynical PR as a key plot element.

Getting back to the story mentioned above, now...

It is idea-driven rather than character-driven (although if you ask me, these two categories do not have to be mutually exclusive). The plot is not particularly thrilling, about a war in the skies between the aerial forces of four different coalitions (all against all, "in non-linear war"). It is absurd on purpose, and is told with sarcasm, amounting to a satire of recent history and contemporary political phenomena.

For example, the way France and Germany are both referred to as having lost WW2 and as having profited from this... In the story, some are joining the war in the skies simply in order to be defeated and to profit from this, having drawn the Franco-German lesson from history.

This is a very Russian kind of historical sarcasm about the Soviet Union's role in deciding WW2, and the impact of post-war Marshall Aid. In response to it (even before you bring up the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or US Lend-Lease supplies during WW2 to the Soviet Union), I would humbly point out the example of Poland to Dubovitsky: the country that was not a Nazi ally, was attacked by the Soviet Union in September 1939, was given a Communist leadership at the war's end, and was ultimately no recipient of Marshall Aid...

Another interesting reference in the story goes to "unmanned states," now that contemporary conflict sees the proliferation of all sorts of unmanned systems and given how a lot of things in the world today seem to evolve in a regrettably path-dependent way (for the author, this seems to apply to international politics in general, or what is in his view the anarchy thereof). Even as you don't have to fully agree with Dubovitsky on all of the implications of these sarcastic references, the humor is not bad, and the writing is dynamic. The ending, for this non-story of a story, is fitting, and leaves you pondering it for a while, for it's a dark vision even if it comes drowned in the sauce of dry sarcasm.

Which means mission accomplished, I guess.

So however Surkov may be using his writing for political purposes, his writing actually deserves and has a life of its own.

P.S. Check out the date when Surkov's short story was published: March 12, 2014. That's while the Crimea crisis was underway...