The Kremlin Mage | In Putin’s Bubble

What’s going through Vladimir Putin’s head? Many of us have been asking ourselves this question since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. In a superb first novel that has been all the rage since its release, an Italian political scientist offers us some keys to better understand the dictator.

Nathalie Collard
The Press

An atypical author

Giuliano da Empoli is not a novelist, he is a political scientist. He was adviser to the President of the Italian Council, Matteo Renzi, and responsible for culture at the City of Florence. He now teaches in Paris, at Science Po, in addition to directing the Italian think tank Volta. More accustomed to political science conferences than to literary salons, Giuliano da Empoli has published several remarkable essays. Let’s say he’s the Italian equivalent of a John Parisella. This time, Giuliano da Empoli has chosen fiction to tell us about Russia. His inspiration? Vladislav Surkov, the ideologue behind Putin’s rise to power.

A golden character

This Vladislav Surkov is more than a political adviser or a businessman. He’s a “character”, a bit like Emmanuel Carrère’s Limonov. His professional career is atypical: after studying drama, he was public relations director for a Russian TV station. He also wrote songs for the gothic rock band Agata Kristi and published a novel under the pseudonym Natan Dubovitsky. But if history has retained his name, it is for his position as adviser to President Putin, and responsible for the Ukraine file. He is said to be cunning and manipulative, we speak of him as the “Russian Machiavelli” or the “Rasputin of Putin”. Despite his successes as a fine strategist, he was nevertheless “thanked” in February 2021. It was this character with an eventful life who inspired Giuliano da Empoli to imagine Vadim Baranov, the narrator of his novel who looks back on his ” Putin years.

Knives fly low

As in the court of a king, intrigues multiply in the entourage of Putin, nicknamed “the Tsar” by the narrator. The latter recounts how he orchestrated Putin’s reign as a spectacle. We think of Wag the Dog, this film which told how image makers had fabricated a war in Albania to distract public opinion from a scandal involving the American president. Baranov’s approach is even more frontal and aims to make Putin an untouchable and feared leader. The idea: create chaos to better reign. If one revels in the narrator’s observations of the wildlife that gravitates around Putin, one shudders to discover his brutal and vicious methods. Superbly written, this novel allows us to better understand the scenes of power and Russian society. From the inside, we witness the war in Chechnya, the invasion of Ukraine and the Olympic Games in Sochi. But we also infiltrate social gatherings where oligarchs, supermodels and politicians rub shoulders. For readers who do not necessarily read Foreign Affairsit is a reading which, in addition to being pleasant, makes it possible to better understand Vladimir Putin.

Fiction, a happy choice

The author repeated it in an interview, he is not a novelist, and The Kremlin Mage will perhaps be his only novel. It would be a shame, because he has an elegant and incisive pen. And by going through fiction, the Italian political scientist can afford to go further into the psyche of his characters. We also feel all his experience of politics in the description of this universe and its workings. If contemporary Russia interests you, or if you are fond of political novels in general, you are in for a treat.

The Kremlin Mage

Giuliano da Empoli

Gallimard

288 pages