The Wizard of the Kremlin
Based on Wikipedia: The Wizard of the Kremlin
In April 2022, less than two months after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, a French novel arrived in bookstores and immediately displaced itself from the fiction shelves to the current events tables. It was not a reportage from a war correspondent, nor a dry analysis of geopolitical strategy by a think tank. It was a novel titled The Wizard of the Kremlin (Le mage du Kremlin), and it was selling because it offered something the news cycle could not: a terrifying, intimate window into the irrational heart of the Russian state just as that state began to consume itself. Written by Giuliano da Empoli, an Italian political consultant who had previously studied the mechanics of populism, the book is a debut that feels like a lifetime of observation condensed into a single, confessional monologue. The narrator is Vadim Baranov, a fictional character who serves as a mirror to the real-life Vladislav Surkov, a man once described by The New York Times as one of Russia's most intriguing figures and by the French magazine Marianne as "a poet among wolves." Through Baranov's eyes, the reader does not just watch history unfold; they inhabit the mind of the man who helped design the machinery of modern Russian authoritarianism.
The premise is deceptively simple, yet it carries the weight of a philosophical treatise. The story is framed as a late-night conversation in Moscow between the retired, enigmatic Baranov and an unnamed writer, presumably da Empoli himself. Baranov, once a reality TV producer, an avant-garde theater director, and a rap enthusiast, recounts his journey from the chaotic wilderness of the 1990s to the inner sanctum of the Kremlin. He is the architect of the "vertical of power," the chief ideologue behind the concept of "sovereign democracy," and the shadowy hand that guided Vladimir Putin from a little-known former KGB lieutenant to the undisputed autocrat of the twenty-first century. The novel is a work of fiction, but da Empoli was meticulous in his grounding of the narrative. He spent years researching his previous essay, The Engineers of Chaos, interviewing countless sources and traveling extensively through Russia. He has never met Surkov in person, yet he claims to have captured the essence of the man who defined an era. "He is so romantic that he freed me and pushed me to become a novelist," da Empoli explained, acknowledging the strange, artistic logic that drives men like Baranov and Surkov. The result is a book that feels less like a story and more like a forensic reconstruction of a mind that operates on a different frequency than the rest of the world.
The Supermarket and the Countryside
To understand the rise of Putin, da Empoli argues, one must first understand the trauma of the 1990s in Russia. It was a decade of disorientation, a cultural shock so profound that it redefined the national psyche. "[Russians] had grown up in the countryside and suddenly found themselves in a supermarket," Baranov tells his listener. This metaphor is the key to the entire novel. The Soviet collapse did not just change the government; it stripped away the moral and social fabric that had held a civilization together for centuries. In the vacuum, chaos reigned. The economy was looted by oligarchs, the state was paralyzed, and the dignity of the average citizen was obliterated. Into this void stepped the demand for authority, a demand that was not born of ideology but of exhaustion.
Putin arrived not as a savior in the traditional sense, but as the ultimate manager of this chaos. He was a lieutenant-colonel of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, a man of few words and cold calculation. But he was not alone. He was surrounded by men like Baranov, who understood that power in the modern age was not just about brute force; it was about narrative, about the ability to shape reality itself. Baranov, inspired by his real-life counterpart Surkov, viewed politics as a form of avant-garde theater. He believed that the state could be directed, that the public could be led like an audience through a play where the lines were blurred between truth and fiction. This was the birth of the "managed democracy" that would define Putin's first two decades in power. It was a system designed to give the illusion of choice while ensuring that the outcome remained constant. The 1990s had left Russians terrified of the unknown; Putin offered them the certainty of the known, even if that certainty was a cage.
The novel traces this metamorphosis through a series of pivotal historical moments. The Second Chechen War, the presidential election of 2000, the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk, the hostage-taking at the Moscow theater in 2002, and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004. In each of these crises, Baranov is present, whispering in the ear of "the Tsar," as Putin is nicknamed in the book. He helps craft the response, turning tragedy into a rallying cry for national unity. When the Kursk sank with all hands lost, the initial denial and the subsequent cover-up were not just bureaucratic failures; they were calculated moves to maintain the image of an infallible state. When the theater hostages were taken, the brutal storming of the building, which resulted in the deaths of over a hundred civilians, was justified as the only way to protect the nation. Da Empoli does not shy away from the human cost of these decisions. The civilians who died in the theater, the sailors trapped in the burning hull of the Kursk, the victims of the Chechen conflict—they are not footnotes. They are the price paid for the stability that Baranov and Putin were so desperate to construct. The novel forces the reader to confront the reality that the "vertical of power" is built on the bones of the forgotten.
The Poets and the Wolves
The cast of characters in The Wizard of the Kremlin is a gallery of the most significant figures in modern Russian history, rendered with a startling vividness. Boris Berezovsky, the oligarch and media mogul who initially funded Putin's rise, is depicted with a tragic complexity. He is Baranov's employer, the man who brings the young FSB officer into the fold. Berezovsky is intelligent, charismatic, and ultimately doomed by his own inability to understand the nature of the beast he was feeding. "But intelligence does not protect against anything, not even stupidity," Baranov muses, reflecting on Berezovsky's downfall. The oligarch's depression and eventual suicide in exile in London are portrayed as the inevitable conclusion of a man who thought he could control the game, only to realize he was merely a piece on the board. His death is a stark reminder that in the Kremlin, loyalty is the only currency that matters, and even the most powerful can be discarded the moment they become inconvenient.
Then there is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil tycoon who believed he could buy influence and even court the regime's favor by marrying Baranov's concubine. His arrest in 2003 for fraud and embezzlement marked the turning point where Putin drew the line: the oligarchs could be rich, but they could not be political. Khodorkovsky's fall was a message to the rest of the elite, a demonstration that the state was the ultimate arbiter of wealth and power. The novel also brings in other historical figures: Igor Sechin, the faithful and ruthless government official who would become one of Putin's closest allies; Garry Kasparov, the chess champion who became the face of the opposition; Eduard Limonov, the ideologue and writer who represented the chaotic, rebellious fringe of Russian politics; and even Bill Clinton, who asks about his "friend Boris Yeltsin" with a mixture of concern and helplessness. These are not caricatures; they are flesh-and-blood people navigating a landscape where the rules change daily.
At the center of it all is the relationship between Baranov and Putin. It is a bond of mutual understanding, a shared belief in the power of myth. Putin, in da Empoli's portrayal, is not a man driven by grand ideological visions or a desire for conquest in the traditional sense. He is driven by a need to restore order, to create a narrative that makes sense of the chaos. He is a man who grew up in the KGB, an institution that saw the world in terms of friends and enemies, and he applied that binary logic to the entire country. Baranov, the artist, helps him craft the story. He turns the KGB's cold pragmatism into a romantic national epic. He invents the concept of "sovereign democracy," a term that sounds democratic but means something entirely different: a democracy that is immune to external interference, a system where the people vote, but the choices are pre-selected by the state. It is a brilliant piece of political theater, a way to legitimize authoritarianism in the eyes of the international community. But as the novel progresses, the cracks begin to show. The myth starts to consume the man who created it.
The Irrational Heart
The central thesis of The Wizard of the Kremlin is that power, at its core, is irrational. This is a radical departure from the way political science often approaches the subject, treating it as a rational game of incentives and constraints. Da Empoli, drawing on his experience as a political adviser, argues that the heart of power is the heart of the irrational. It is driven by emotion, by paranoia, by a need for validation that no amount of logic can satisfy. "From my point of view, the heart of power is the heart of the irrational," he told the press. This irrationality is what makes the Putin regime so dangerous and so unpredictable. It is not a machine that can be disassembled and understood; it is a living, breathing entity that reacts to the world in ways that defy reason.
Baranov's strategy for the Kremlin's digital influence is based on this insight. "There is nothing wiser than to bet on the madness of men," he says. The idea is to flood the information space with so much noise, so many contradictions, that the truth becomes irrelevant. This is the strategy that would later be used to destabilize democracies around the world, to sow confusion and distrust. It is a strategy that works because it exploits the human tendency to retreat into tribalism when the world becomes too complex to understand. The novel suggests that this was not just a tactical decision but a philosophical one. For Baranov, and for the men he advised, the world was a stage, and the audience was the world. If the audience believed the lie, then the lie became the truth.
The publication of the novel in April 2022 coincided with the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This timing was not accidental, nor was it a coincidence. The book had been submitted in January 2021, but the pandemic delayed its release. When it finally appeared, it was immediately recognized as a key to understanding the conflict. The novel depicts the relations between Russia and Ukraine since the Orange Revolution, tracing the roots of the conflict in the Kremlin's obsession with control and the fear of losing influence. For Alexandra Schwartzbrod of Libération, it is "a story of great literary and historical force that must be read if you want to understand what, from here, seems incomprehensible." For Yannick Vely of Paris Match, the book "allows us to understand the causes of the Ukrainian conflict." The invasion of Ukraine was not a sudden outburst of madness; it was the logical conclusion of a system built on the belief that the world could be controlled through myth and force. The war was the ultimate test of the "vertical of power," and it was a test that the system failed, but not before causing immense suffering.
The Human Cost
It is crucial to remember that behind the high-level maneuvering and the philosophical debates about power, there are real human beings paying the price. The novel does not ignore this. It acknowledges the civilian casualties of the wars in Chechnya, the victims of the terrorist attacks, the families torn apart by the repression. The sinking of the Kursk is not just a strategic blunder; it is a tragedy that killed 118 sailors, many of whom were young fathers and sons. The storming of the theater in Moscow resulted in the deaths of over 130 hostages, including children, who were caught in the crossfire between the state and the terrorists. The war in Ukraine, which the novel foreshadows, has already claimed tens of thousands of lives, with entire cities reduced to rubble and millions displaced. These are not abstract numbers; they are the consequences of the decisions made in the Kremlin, the decisions that Baranov helped to shape.
Da Empoli acknowledges the difficulty of writing such a book in the current climate. "I would have a harder time identifying with that type of character today," he admits. "I was able to get inside a Russian's head at a time when the atrocious conclusions of the Putin regime were not yet fully visible and unfolding. I don't know if I would have been able, or wanted, to write this book after the war in Ukraine." This admission adds a layer of poignancy to the novel. It is a record of a time when the full horror of the regime had not yet been revealed, a time when the myth was still potent, when the line between the artist and the assassin was still blurred. The novel is a testament to the power of storytelling to shape reality, but it is also a warning of the dangers of that power when it is wielded without moral constraints.
A Timeless Warning
Despite its roots in specific historical events, The Wizard of the Kremlin is a book that transcends its time. Macha Séry of Le Monde notes that while the novel "undoubtedly sheds a penetrating light on the current geopolitical situation," it "will continue to be relevant after the situation has changed due to its unrelenting lucidity and sparkling style." The themes of the book—the manipulation of truth, the construction of myths, the irrationality of power—are universal. They are not unique to Russia; they are challenges that every democracy faces in the twenty-first century. The novel serves as a mirror, reflecting the fragility of our own institutions and the ease with which they can be undermined.
The critical reception of the book has been overwhelmingly positive. Frédéric Beigbeder called it "the best first novel I've read since Les Bienveillantes by Jonathan Littell." Jérôme Garcin praised its "certain well-tempered formulas" that recall the great French moralists of the seventeenth century, like La Rochefoucauld. Patricia Martin of Le Masque et la Plume described it as "an absolutely extraordinary novel, very romantic," noting that "we have the impression that we are sitting on a sofa next to Putin, that we are in Putin's head." Paul Vacca of Les Echos saw it as "a frozen and burning novel at the same time," driven by "burning topicality" but possessing "the timeless grace of a classic." These accolades are a testament to da Empoli's achievement. He has managed to create a work of fiction that is as accurate as history and as compelling as a thriller.
The novel ends not with a resolution, but with a lingering sense of unease. The war in Ukraine has shattered the myth, but the irrational heart of power remains. The characters of Baranov and Putin are left to grapple with the consequences of their actions, the realization that the monster they created may have escaped their control. The novel leaves the reader with a profound question: Can a system built on lies ever sustain itself? Can a leader who rules through fear and manipulation ever find peace? The answers are not clear, but the questions are essential. The Wizard of the Kremlin is not just a book about Russia; it is a book about the nature of power in the modern world. It is a warning that we ignore at our peril. The war in Ukraine has shown us the cost of ignoring it. The novel reminds us that the battle for truth is not just a political struggle; it is a moral one, and it is a struggle that we must all be prepared to fight.
In the end, the novel is a testament to the power of literature to illuminate the darkest corners of the human experience. It is a story of ambition, of betrayal, of love, and of loss. It is a story that reminds us that behind every headline, every statistic, every political maneuver, there are human beings with dreams and fears, with hopes and regrets. It is a story that demands to be read, not just for its historical accuracy, but for its moral urgency. The Wizard of the Kremlin may be a fictional character, but the world he created is all too real. And as long as that world exists, we must keep watching, keep reading, and keep remembering the human cost of the games played in the shadows.