What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in The Wizard of the Kremlin

Movies The new film, starring Jude Law, shows Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. But did the Russian oligarchs who initially recruited him really think he would be easy to control? Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Ramil Sitdikov/Pool/AFP via Getty Images and Carole Bethuel/Vertical. The Wizard of the Kremlin is the story of Vladimir Putin’s rise to and consolidation of power as seen through the eyes of his chief special adviser, a character based on Vladislav Surkov, who was a key architect of Putin’s “managed democracy.” He was also once known as the Russian leader’s “gray cardinal,” thanks to his ability to orchestrate events from behind the scenes. The film is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Giuliano da Empoli, a book described as “factional”—a fictional work heavily inspired by real people and events. Given that the film is based on a novel, not a biography, it would be unrealistic to expect it to be entirely faithful to the facts. Indeed, director/co-screenwriter Olivier Assayas has said that Surkov and “Vadim Baranov,” the film’s stand-in for him, “cannot be mistaken for one another. Surkov is obnoxious; our Baranov, while complicit in the worst actions of the regime and somewhat perverse, retains a certain humanity.” Unfortunately, the result is that Baranov seems less like a Machiavellian media manipulator adept at developing inventive uses of new technology to strengthen authoritarian control and more like a particularly efficient chief of staff given to philosophizing about the nature of power. Moreover, Assayas has admitted that the characters the film was able to portray most accurately were those who are deceased, like the late Russian media mogul Boris Berezovsky, whose depiction, he said, “is as close to the truth as possible—and since he’s no longer alive, we can speak about him all the more freely. With other figures, we remain under strict legal scrutiny, so at times we’ve had to soften certain portrayals to avoid the risk of defamation.” Nevertheless, he asserted, his intention was “to stay as close to the facts as possible, even though we were adapting a novel that itself takes some, albeit measured, liberties.” This blurred line between reality and invention very much suits the film’s subject, given that Surkov’s big innovation, which has been adopted far beyond Russia’s borders, was fake news: using propaganda not to win an argument but to undermine the whole notion of objective, evidence-based truth. As a former associate put it, Surkov’s view was: “Nothing is true. There is no truth. There are alternative truths.” Bearing these caveats in mind, we look at what’s fact and what’s fiction in The Wizard of the Kremlin. Did Vladislav Surkov, Like Vadim Baranov, Start Out in Experimental Theater? After the collapse of Communism in 1989, young Vadim enrolls in drama school just as a wave of innovative theater, music, and other arts rolls through Moscow, comparable to the ’60s “youthquake” in the West. Soon, he gets a reputation as a director and is putting on student productions (that, to judge from the excerpt we see, have six-figure budgets). The real Surkov did go to drama school in Moscow but, as legend has it, was expelled for fighting. He did not continue working in theater but did have a stronger than usual interest in the arts for a Kremlin grandee. As well as attending experimental theater productions in Russia and opera performances in the West and writing lyrics for the Russian rock band Agatha Christie, he was a voracious reader—a passion not shared by his colleagues in Putin’s orbit. He even aspired to be a writer himself (while recognizing that he lacked the talent to make it a career) and, in 2009, at the height of his power, published a dystopian novel, About Zero, about a ruthless gangster-publisher who likes both poetry (Surkov was known to recite works by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg by heart) and guns, and who bribes critics and journalists to create fake news that serves a corrupt politician. Meanwhile, his experience in theater would inform his work as Putin’s spin doctor. As one Kremlin adviser recalled, “He was thinking about himself as the guy who is running the show, trying to find the place of every actor in his play and performance.” Did Surkov Produce a Reality TV Show? In the film, as the artistic and political liberation of the post-Glasnost years fades and oligarchy and hyper-free-market capitalism, along with a flashy consumerist culture, ascend under Boris Yeltsin in the mid-’90s, Vadim decides he’s tired of being poor. Especially after his girlfriend, Ksenia (Alicia Vikander, wasted as “the Girl”), runs off with Vadim’s college buddy Dmitri (Tom Sturridge), a business-minded hustler and budding millionaire. He takes a job producing a reality TV show for the state broadcaster Channel One. It becomes a big success, and Vadim’s ability to appeal to the public brings him to the attention of the station’s owner, the powerful media baron and political kingmaker Boris Berezovsky (Will Keen, who must now be something of an expert on modern Russian politics, having played Berezovsky’s frenemy Vladimir Putin in Patriots, Peter Morgan’s Broadway play about the relationship between the two). In reality, while still in drama school, Surkov started working as a bodyguard for the future oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky (the real-life model for Dmitri), whom he knew from his student days. While in the film his relationship with Dmitri is purely social, Khodorkovsky actually launched Surkov’s career in 1987 by appointing him head of the advertising department of a computer import business the young entrepreneur ran for the Communist Youth Party, then, in 1991, made him a senior PR executive at the brand-new Menatep bank Khodorkovsky had established, tasked with creating an image of the oligarch as a socially responsible millionaire. By 1996, Surkov had risen to head of PR at yet another Khodorkovsky company, RosProm, a business linked to Yukos, Russia’s second-richest oil company, which Khodorkovsky, by now one of the country’s richest men, had bought in 1995 for the knockdown price of $350 million. In 1998 Surkov was hired by Berezovsky to work at Channel One, not as a hands-on program maker but as the head of PR. Did Surkov Accompany Berezovsky to Putin’s Office? After raising campaign funding from his fellow oligarchs and using Channel One, Russia’s most popular TV station, to help Boris Yeltsin win the 1996 presidential election, Berezovsky becomes in effect the shadow president, as Yeltsin is increasingly incapacitated by alcoholism and heart disease. He wants to find a successor for Yeltsin and brings Vadim with him to approach Vladimir Putin, the director of the FSB (the new version of the old secret police, the KGB), who he thinks would make a good figurehead for a new party, considering him a not-especially-bright bureaucrat who would be malleable. They meet with Putin (Jude Law) in the latter’s dreary office. It is true that Berezovsky and other members of Yeltsin’s circle of close advisers had decided that Putin would be a good candidate to succeed Yeltsin, mistakenly believing that the FSB chief would allow the oligarchs to continue making money hand over fist without reasserting government control. And in July 1999, they sent Berezovsky not to Putin’s office but to Biarritz, where Putin was vacationing, to sound him out. However, Surkov did not accompany the oligarch. Did Surkov Invent Russian Troll Farms? Putin sends Vadim on a tour of the Internet Research Agency, which is being run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putin’s former chef (now better known for heading up the Wagner Group of mercenaries). Prigozhin is very proud of the IRA’s propaganda efforts, but Vadim tells him the regime’s internet activity should not be about promoting a particular message, because “we’re not going to convert anyone.” Rather, it should be about pushing incendiary hot-button issues by anger-provoking posters to create an atmosphere of hate and debase public discourse. This is more or less what happened, although the change of direction probably took more than one conversation. Surkov lay the framework of early online influencing strategies, while Prigozhin carried out the aggressive “active measures.” According to disinformation expert Olga Lautman, the IRA was formed by Russian intelligence agencies, with Prigozhin merely its public face. The Putin government had been spooked by mass anti-government protests in 2011 and 2012 that demonstrated the danger posed by uncontrolled online organizing. Surkov’s solution was to organize teams of paid posters to create the illusion of popular consensus on forums and social media platforms. By late 2013, hundreds of young language experts, writers, and designers were already establishing multiple fake personas and posting to social media sites and forums. There was even a section devoted to English-language speakers, training them in American slang and cultural references for greater authenticity. The IRA’s true purpose as an instrument of hybrid war came into its own when Russia seized Crimea and started its covert war in Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2014, as the troll armies proclaimed that Crimeans were happy to “reunify” with Russia and escape Kyiv’s new fascist regime. Surkov remained focused on creating a “fifth column” of agents and paid influencers, manipulating public opinion to break down the effectiveness of the Ukrainian state. Did Surkov Really Enlist a Notorious Biker Gang? Disturbed by the throngs of young people demonstrating in Kyiv’s Independence (Maidan) Square against the Russia-backed Ukrainian government, Vadim meets with the tattooed head of the Night Wolves, a notorious biker gang with conservative sympathies, telling him the government needs to give young people a cause and an enemy to unite against before the Americans provide one (a sort of Maidan uprising in reverse) and so could use an emblem of rebellion and cool, like the Night Wolves. Soon, footage appears on Russian television of Putin riding into Crimea on a motorcycle with the gang. Putin did in fact ride with the Night Wolves (once, for the cameras), an actual motorcycle gang known for its virulent nationalism, ultraorthodox views, and active participation in paramilitary activities; the group was recruited to play a key role in drumming up support for Russia’s incursion into Crimea. In 2000 Surkov set up a youth movement called Those Who March Together, which took part in a Surkov-created stunt during which participants tore up novels by Vladimir Sorokin, a bestselling postmodern novelist, and threw the deconstructed books into a huge toilet bowl in front of the Bolshoi. (Never mind that Surkov’s own approach to PR was based entirely on postmodernism and his own novel was in this vein.) At least the stunt pushed Sorokin to the top of the bestseller lists. To further his inroads among young Russians, Surkov recruited cultural workers, journalists, and rock musicians. In line with his MO of stoking confusion and blurring the line between artifice and reality, far from forbidding NGOs devoted to defending human rights, Surkov established such organizations but then boosted nationalist movements that accused these same groups of being tools of the West. He sponsored festivals featuring provocative, avant-garde artists, then encouraged Orthodox fundamentalists to protest the works. He even supervised the creation of new political parties to foster the illusion of pluralism. The intention was to encourage the deeply cynical idea that no one perspective is better than another and everything is manipulated anyway (a view that frequently shows up on left-leaning U.S. social media), so it is not worth bothering to take a stand or fight for an idea. Did Surkov Retire to the Country? The film is bookended by scenes of Vadim in an isolated country house, built by his grandfather, where he is discussing his career with an American academic (Jeffrey Wright). On a European sanctions list due to his being one of the architects of the invasion of Ukraine and so unable to visit (or flee to) the West, he had the good sense to retreat to his family’s residence and keep a low profile after he realized that Putin had no further use for him and his star was falling. This is what happened. Surkov resigned as Putin’s adviser in February 2020 (no explanation has yet been offered as to why), and, subject to travel sanctions, he did indeed retreat to his country house, where he has lived out of the spotlight ever since. Get the best of culture Get the best of movies, TV, books, music, and more. How Accurate Is Movies Russia Social Media Vladimir Putin