The Wizard of the Kremlin

 

The Wizard of the Kremlin by Giuliano Da Empoli (2022, 2023, Pushkin Press) may not be the current century's  greatest historical novel, but it packs a contemporary punch nonetheless. Ostensibly an account of Putin's accumulation of autocratic power as related by his (fictional) Machiavellian advisor Vodam Baranov, this tale plunges the reader into a series of ice-baths, such is the shock of remembered political moments when told from an insider's point of view.

Take the intimidation of Europe's most respected leader, for instance:

"Using the Labrador was not my idea. But you have to admit it was brilliant― if a little brutal, like most of the tsar's stratagems. The chancellor had prepared for a normal meeting. She turned up impeccably dressed, in a black pantsuit and ankle boots, purchased at a discount store, as usual, and carrying no papers. Because she always studied up ahead of time: the meticulous files that her team produced, the notes with headings from the different ministries, and memos on plain paper generated by the Federal Republic's security services. She spent whole days and nights absorbing data and gaming out geopolitical scenarios, with the same precision she'd used in carrying out laboratory experiments in her days as a university researcher. Consequently, the chancellor always arrived at meetings fresh and self-assured, ready to boss everyone around because she knew she could afford to, with the geometric power of the accumulated Lander and Konzerne behind her. That day, however, nothing could have prepared her for what she'd find on entering the meeting room. Koni. The tsar's huge Labrador retriever.

..............

So imagine the scene in the Kremlin that day. Actually, you don't even need to imagine it, because the photos are online. The chancellor smiling glassily while Koni stalks around her, his coat brushed to a high gloss. The chancellor petrified in her chair while Koni approaches playfully, looking to be petted. The chancellor on the verge of a nervous breakdown when Koni thrusts his snout in her lap, eager for a sniff of his new friend. The tsar, sitting next to her, is smiling and relaxed, his legs spread wide: 'Are you sure the dog isn't bothering you, Chancellor Merkel? I could put her outside, but she's such a good dog. I hate to be separated from her'.

The Labrador. That's the moment when the tsar decided to take his gloves off and start playing the game the way he'd learned it in a Leningrad schoolyard, where you'd barely get your foot on the ball before someone would have already kneed you in the groin ... the only way to get respect is to use your knee."

(pp 203 - 205)

Exploiting Angela Merkel's phobia for dogs (acquired when she was 8 years old and savagely mauled by a neighbour's Rottweiler) may seem a relatively benign form of bullying, but the people of Moscow are in no doubt about their tyrant's absolute authority. Nothing translates 'dictator' quite like open contempt for the 'team'.

"The tsar had no affection for others, at best he grew used to them. At a certain point, he lost the habit of seeing me. At his dacha in Novo-Ogaryovo, he had the forest cleared for three kilometres in every direction. He would rise late in the morning ...then exercise in his gym watching the news on a screen ... After that he would swim a kilometre in the pool. The first visitors of the day ― ministers, advisors, or corporate CEOs, who'd been summoned the night before ― would wait patiently on the pool deck for the tsar to emerge from the water so they could hand him his robe ...

Only in the early afternoon would the presidential motorcade head for the Kremlin. The streets were closed to traffic a half hour ahead of time, and a police car at every crossing ensured that tsar's solitude would not be breached. Traveling from Novo-Ogaryovo to the Kremlin, Putin crossed almost the entire capital, which froze to a halt while he passed through ...

One man didn't sleep at night, and he'd trained all those who counted for anything in Moscow to share his vigil until three or four in the morning. Knowing the leader's nocturnal habits, a hundred or so ministers, high officials, and generals stuck around, waiting for his call. And each kept a small squadron of assistants and secretaries on hand. So the lights in the ministries stayed lit, and Moscow's powerful again lost their sleep, as they had in Stalin's time.

The one true obligation at court is to be present. Being there, always, each time there's even a faint possibility that the sovereign's gaze might fall upon you."

(pp 266-267)

Unfortunately the author's chilling imagination of the making of President Putin, "the tsar", falls away in the final pages. Da Empoli abandons his compelling vision of peculiarly Russian power being reproduced in the murderous reigns from Ivan the Terrible through to Comrade Stalin. He forgets that the lust for power is a singularly human dimension and ends up promoting the mechanical nightmares of Israeli huckster Yuval Noah Harari. This is a surprising, awkward and totally unsupported conclusion to Da Empoli's otherwise engaging text.