Kremlinology 101: All the Kremlin’s Men
“All the Kremlin’s Men,” a new book detailing the fifteen-year Putin era by former TV Rain editor-in-chief Mikhail Zygar, offers perhaps the most detailed look yet into the inner workings of the Kremlin. Based on hundreds of interviews with top Kremlin officials and powerbrokers over more than a decade, the book is meant to give readers a better sense of what motivates Putin and his inner circle.
What makes “All the Kremlin’s Men” particularly noteworthy is that it’s the first insider account of the Putin years that doesn’t specifically focus on Vladimir Putin. Instead, it is more of an account of the insiders within the court of Putin — all the image-makers, powerbrokers, yes-men and ideologues — who have helped shape the Putin regime. Each chapter begins with a brief psychological sketch of one of the key players in the Kremlin — everyone from Dmitry Medvedev to Ramzan Kadyrov - and then proceeds to show how that individual influenced Putin. Collectively, they are “Putin” — the face of the Russian government.
As such, it’s required reading for any Kremlinologist trying to make sense of the inner workings of today’s Kremlin. While the book is set up as a chronological account of the years 2000–2015 (in an attempt to show changes in Putin’s governing style), it’s better read as a Machiavellian-style primer along the lines of “The Prince” on how to get ahead in Russian politics. Here are just a few of the lessons:
1 — What appears to be a grand strategy from the Kremlin is really nothing more than the reaction to events or just happenstance
Time and time again, the Kremlin is forced to react to external events beyond its control. There is only one fundamental logic: the status quo must be preserved. Zygar makes this point in the introduction — what many in the West see as a bold plan to recreate a bold, imperial Russia is nothing more than a haphazard response to events that seems to have an internal logic of its own. It’s the ultimate victory of tactics over strategy:
It is logic that Putin-era Russia lacks. The chain of events… reveals the absence of a clear plan or strategy on the part of Putin himself or his courtiers. Everything that happens is a real-time response to external response to external stimuli devoid of an ultimate objective.
That was the case over and over again, especially in the case of Ukraine and in foreign policy events along Russia’s periphery.
And it was even the case in Russian domestic politics. Take the example of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, which many have seen as an example of a tsarist delusion of grandeur. But when the idea was first pitched to Putin, he wasn’t entirely convinced it would work. So the aides around him who wanted the Olympics came up with a grand idea — they would figure out his favorite path to get to the Kremlin from his personal residence, and then buy ads on the billboards along the path of the motorcade. Every day, Putin would see all the ads supporting the Olympics, and decide that the Russian people must want the Olympics:
It is said that [Dmitry] Peskov proposed a low-cost advertising campaign focused on one man: Vladimir Putin. The bid committee produced billboards and radio spots advertising the Sochi bid. Peskov gave clues as to the route that the president’s motorcade took to the Kremlin, as well as what radio stations he listened to while on the move and at what times, and the media buys were targeted accordingly.
2 — All signs of weakness will be ruthlessly exploited
It’s not just within the Russian power elite that this rule is observed — it’s also the basis for how the Kremlin deals with foreign leaders. There’s one particularly illuminating example within the book in which Putin begins to admire the power and prestige of George H.W. Bush, viewing him as the “military emperor of the world,” able to act anywhere in the world with astounding power.
But then something strange happened — he saw what happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, when Bush seemed to lose the vote of confidence in the American people overnight, just as Putin had lost the confidence of the Russian people with the Kursk disaster ten years earlier. From that time on, Putin stopped thinking of Bush as the “military emperor” of the world:
[Bush] was unable to counter the charges of inefficiency, shift the blame onto someone else, change the agenda, or distract the public’s attention with some other event. Bush, whom Putin believed to be a far stronger leader than himself, turned out to be a weakling. This gave Putin huge confidence and radically changed the tone of Russia’s negotiations with the United States. He realized that he was dealing not with a military emperor but with a lame duck.
And the way Russia treated American delegations began to change. When then foreign policy advisor Condi Rice goes to Moscow for a personal meeting with Putin, she finds herself in a room full of Russian powerbrokers getting drunk on Georgian wine and ignoring her. She is powerless to make things stop. “We’ve got some top-secret materials for you,” they tell her, pointing at bottles of Georgian wine.
And it’s much the same fate, even for Kremlin insiders such as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. The Kremlin does nothing when the hashtag #pathetic starts getting used to describe Medvedev, and seems positively delighted when the political establishment starts to move against Medvedev and actively undo his actions. Time and time again — whether it was his response to Georgia or Libya, he was seen as weak and compromising, something that simply isn’t tolerated in today’s Russia.
Conversely, it’s strength that’s revered by Putin and the Kremlin insiders. After Ukrainian President Yanukovych calls Putin to tell him that he’s fleeing the revolutionary mobs of the Maidan, Putin allegedly told people, “I never imagined that he was such a cowardly piece of sh*t.”
3 — Loyalty is more important than experience, which is more important than talent
It’s now almost a cliché but all of Putin’s inner circle share some special personal bond with Putin — they are either old friends from St. Petersburg, former KGB/FSB colleagues, or have somehow proven their loyalty to Putin in very concrete ways. The best way to prove loyalty, according to Putin, is not to make any brazen grab for power. The next best way to prove loyalty is to become a useful tool in the image-making machine around Putin — someone who is indispensable for making Putin look good to the Russian people.
This can take many forms — like the Russian oligarchs who rush to form political parties at the drop of a hat in order to please the Kremlin, which wants to preserve the notion that some form of democracy exists in Russia. One of the examples is billionaire oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov (yes, the same guy who owns the Nets), who dallies in Russian politics as a way of showing his loyalty to the Kremlin. But then he starts to panic when he realizes that he could be replaced at the last minute.
Perhaps the most hilarious anecdote in the entire book involves former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who at one time was a close personal friend of Putin (given his fluency in German and work abroad in East Germany). Apparently, Schroeder is a frequent visitor to St. Petersburg and enjoys hanging out at a tsarist estate with Putin. In exchange for this perk, Putin has engaged Schroeder in a little game — whenever a foreign delegation visits St. Petersburg, Putin informs Schroeder, who shows up and hangs out in the wine cellar of the estate at just the moment when the delegation is passing through:
Once, during a CIS summit, Putin was showing his guests, the leaders of the former Soviet republics, around his residence near St. Petersburg, Constantine Palace. Putin took them to the wine cellar, where, as if by chance, they stumbled upon Gerhard Schroeder. Putin beckoned to the German leader, asking him to propose a toast, and then let him go…
On the foreign stage, perhaps the best example of this loyalty principle at work is the current example of Syrian leader Bashar Assad. Putin apparently is fond of quoting FDR, who allegedly said of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza: “He may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard.” It’s his way of saying that he may not particularly like Assad, but at least he can control him.
4 — All personnel moves are made to maximally dilute power, in what Zygar refers to as Putin’s own system of “checks and balances”
One way to get the ear of Putin is to alert him of potential plots or conspiracies that would threaten either his power or the power of Russia as a nation. As a result, the book is filled with examples of Putin’s inner circle, trying to figure out who is plotting against whom. Usually, this happens around any election cycle, when the insiders who have power jealously guard their power against those who do not have it. But, essentially, it can happen anytime a rival threatens to become too powerful.
You simply gather together a dossier on your rival and make sure that the more outrageous parts of the file make their way onto Putin’s desk. But Putin only listens to the recommendation of who should take the place of the discredited individual — but appoints someone completely different, so as to avoid anyone (or any rival clan) gaining too much power.
5 — Access and proximity to the President is more important than wealth or prestige, for it is only access and proximity that can guarantee wealth and prestige
One of the terms that emerges from the book is “the body” — it’s what people refer to the physical presence of Putin. While anyone in Russia can feel connected to Putin by means of his ubiquitous appearance on state-run TV, it is only physical proximity to Putin that guarantees success. That’s because, as Zygar points out, all wealth and prestige are essentially perks handed out by Putin to guarantee loyalty. They are not the result of hard work or career diligence. As a result, they can be taken away just as easily.
There’s a hilarious anecdote about Putin’s inner circle, debating what to do about the anti-Russian sanctions. They briefly consider rebelling, and demanding Putin to take moves that would appease the West, so as to get the sanctions to be lifted. After all, many have bank accounts and property abroad, and no longer have access to fabulous vacations all over the world, or the ability to send their kids to the best boarding schools in Europe. But they quickly consider otherwise:
None of Putin’s inner circle dared to argue with the president, because they knew that he was the source and guarantor of their wealth. Putin’s good favor was what gave them legitimacy… Presidential opprobrium would harm their well-being. Putin’s wrath was far more dangerous for them than any Western sanctions.
At another point, the Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov — yes, the same Kadyrov who recently showed up for Duma elections dressed in medieval chainmail armor — nearly has a nervous breakdown when his personal proximity to the president is removed in 2014. Negative articles in the Russian media start to appear about him, his financial interests in Moscow begin to be compromised and still… no word from Putin. He panics, and starts posting Instagram photos declaring his undying loyalty to Putin.
6 — The Russian “opposition” is a convenient stopover point for many ex-Kremlin insiders who now find themselves to be outsiders
Perhaps the most interesting example is former finance minister Alexey Kudrin, who once was an up-and-coming reformer with the full ear of Putin. By the end of the book, he’s taken up common cause with the Russian opposition — but still maintains his government office in the center of Moscow. Not only that, he still shows up for work for a few months even though he’s been fired, which leads to some referring to him as the “ghost of Hamlet’s father.” No longer able to reach Putin’s ear directly, he begins to resorting to all kinds of unconventional means — such as showing up on a TV show that he knows Putin watches and explaining his economic ideas, hoping that Putin will see him.
The same is true of Mikhail Kasyanov, the current head of the PARNAS political party. Back in 2004, he was summarily tossed out of the government for being one of the perpetrators of a plan to gain control over the Russian government. Needless to say, that didn’t go over well with Putin. And, of course, the same happened to Yukos oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who also broke the unwritten rule of getting too deeply involved in politics.
7 — Conspiracy theories are the favorite currency of Russia’s insiders
There was a point in time — up to about 2004 — when Putin thought that it might be possible to do business with the West and NATO. But time and time again, the Kremlin feels like it was tricked and hoodwinked by the West. Over time, the feeling grew into a generalized conspiracy theory — the West is out to weaken Russia, take away its power, and humiliate it on the global stage.
Perhaps the best example of this is the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, when the Kremlin is doing everything possible to prop up its candidate for President — Yanukovych — and yet, he just can’t seem to win over the Ukrainian electorate. He ends up losing to the reformer Yushchenko. It seems that nothing worked — not all the billions in aid, not the personal appearance of Putin, and not the work of Russia’s political technologists. The only possible conclusion? It must have been the West.
8 — Revenge is a dish best served cold
There’s a sense that every injustice, every perceived slight and every hypocritical gesture made by the West is being secretly catalogued by the Russian leader. At the end of the book, Putin actually gives a long speech at the Grand Kremlin Palace celebrating the annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol, in which he lists all the crimes committed against Russia:
… They have lied to us many times, made decisions behind our backs, placed before us an accomplished fact. This happened with NATO’s expansion to the East, as well as the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders. They kept telling us the same thing: ‘Well, this does not concern you.’ That’s easy to say.
And in one scene back where President Obama innocently asks Putin, “How did we get into this mess?” Putin delivers a one-hour detailed answer, while Obama just listens.
According to Zygar, Putin prefers to act in a way so as to separate cause from effect. Something may anger or displease him, but he rarely acts suddenly on the spot. Instead, he will wait for a time of maximal humiliation. This happens time and time again, when he feels that his trusted aides may have overstepped their authority or when he thinks that the West has humiliated him once again.
9 — The Kremlin is still looking for a message to unite the common people
Throughout the book, there are various incidents and anecdotes that point to the Kremlin’s search for a national idea to unite the people. Unfortunately, the formula that the Kremlin often settles on is often reminiscent of the formula of the ”Gendarme of Europe” in the 1820s — Tsar Nicholas I: “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality.”
For now, the idea of a humiliated nation-state trying to regain its rightful place in the world is the message that Putin has settled on to unite the Russian people. At times, he sprinkles in some Russian Orthodoxy, some nationalism, but it’s all meant to form a “spiritual brace” for the Russian people.
10 — Putin works through a system of “winks and nods” to test loyalty
Another theme of the book is how the Kremlin insiders try to guess and divine the intentions of Putin when he’s not around. He goes missing for a month in 2012, and insiders are completely at a loss of what to do with a controversial new law. They try to contact his closest colleagues, to figure out how to act so as not to arouse his wrath.
It happens again, when they are deciding what to do about the reformer Alexey Navalny. Should they punish him severely? Should they let him go? Should they give him a light sentence but stop his political ambitions in other ways? They go to Putin and ask his advice, but he only answers cryptically: “Do as you think is best.” When his aides finally tell Putin what they have decided (to release Navalny), he gives a sardonic grin and retorts, “What a bunch of ass-lickers.”
