NYR Daily Reviews Almost Zero, Inpatient Press's English Translation of a Novel by Putin's Right Hand
This is a winner that you can–we believe–wrap your mind around. Inpatient Press of Brooklyn has published a novel rumored to be authored by Putin's former deputy chief of staff, Vladislav Surkov. Translated by Nino Goji and Nastya Valentine, this English-language edition of Okolonolya (Almost Zero) was, in its 2009 Russian edition, written by an unknown named Natan Dubovitsky. Almost Zero is reviewed for the NYR Daily, by Barry Yourgrau. "Centering on a poetry-loving gangster-cum-book publisher wracked by Hamletian perplexities over a possible snuff film, it unloaded a darkly absurdist, but caustically knowing, satire on the corruptions and machinations of post-Soviet Russia, with a whirligig of literary remixes and references." More:
Even in government, Surkov found time to write essays praising Bollywood movies and Joan Miró in the pages of Russian Pioneer, a glitzy intellectual magazine—which went on to publish Almost Zero in a special edition. He composed lyrics for the Russian rock band Agata Kristi (whose lead singer later sued a critic for calling him “a trained poodle for Surkov”). Famously an admirer of Tupac Shakur, Surkov can also quote Allen Ginsberg’s poetry by heart, albeit in heavily-accented English (there’s a cringe-making recording online of him reciting Ginsberg’s “Supermarket Sutra” in full). In his spacious Kremlin office, photos of Putin and Medvedev hung beside the likenesses of Jorge Luis Borges and John Lennon, Che Guevara and a young Joseph Brodsky, together with Tupac in a hoodie, Obama looking pensive, and Bismarck looking “Iron Cross.”
Tall, in tailored Zegna charcoals, with looks suggesting a dashing upgrade of Rowan Atkinson, the shadowy Surkov was considered a creative genius. Especially by himself. His tragedy, wrote journalists Zoya Svetova and Yegor Mostovshchikov in a seminal profile in Russia’s New Times magazine, was to imagine himself smarter and better than his bosses—even though “he is always in supporting roles.”
In 2005, Surkov’s persona gained a new layer of complexity when he revealed in an interview with Der Spiegel that his father was Chechen. Contrary to his official biography, Putin’s gray cardinal had lived his first five years in a village near Grozny. He was born Aslambek Dudayev in 1962 (or 1964); his Russian mother renamed him with her maiden name soon after his father deserted the family in Chechnya, and mother and son moved to western Russia. Identity-shifting came early to the future puppet-master. Duba-Yurt, the village where he spent those first five years, was later bombed into oblivion during Russia’s ferocious wars against Chechen separatists. It is a typically Surkovian paradox that he would go on to become the main advocate in Putin’s circle for Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen strongman and former rebel leader who has turned into a crucial ally of Moscow, keeping Islamist extremism in check in the Caucasus region he rules with an iron fist. A 2007 appraisal of Surkov by the global intelligence firm Stratfor called him “utterly ruthless and extraordinarily and pathologically opportunistic.”
Meanwhile, Surkov denied being Natan Dubovitsky in Russian Pioneer itself, when the allegations of authorship arose, and coyly denies it to this day—even though his wife Natalya’s maiden name is Dubovitskaya. Such apparent, almost obvious pranking (some commentators suggested Surkov was himself the source of the anonymous tip to Vedomosti) brings to mind what Adam Curtis sees as a feature of Surkov’s political tactics: that he let it be known what he was doing—for instance, officially backing human-rights NGOs even as he guided and funded anti-NGO, pro-Putin youth groups—“which meant that no one was sure what was real or fake,” as Curtis put it in his 2016 documentary HyperNormalization.
Read more about these literary intrigues at NYR Daily.