Vladislav Surkov
Encyclopedia
Vladislav Yuryevich Surkov (́в Ю́рьевич Сурко́в, born Aslambek Andarbekovich Dudaev; ) (born 21 September 1964) is a Russian businessman and politician. Currently he is a First Deputy Chief of Staff of the President of the Russian Federation and a top aide to Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...

. Vladislav Surkov is widely seen as the main ideologist of the Kremlin
Kremlin
A kremlin , same root as in kremen is a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...

. Allegedly he contributed greatly to the electoral victory of Vladimir Putin in 2004.
Surkov is seen as the main architect of the current Russian political system, often described as "sovereign" or "managed" democracy.

Early years

He was born to Zinaida Antonovna Surkova, his mother (b. 1935), and his father Andarbek (Yuriy) Danil'bekovich Dudayev, both of whom were school teachers in Duba-yurt, Checheno-Ingush SSR
Chechnya
The Chechen Republic , commonly referred to as Chechnya , also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny...

, as Aslambek Dudayev. It is not until 1969 that his name was officially changed to Vladislav Surkov after moving with his mother to the Lipetsk region
Lipetsk Oblast
Lipetsk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia which was formed on January 6, 1954. Its administrative center is the city of Lipetsk...

 shortly after his family had been abandoned by his father.

Having completed his secondary school studies, Surkov entered Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys
Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys
National University of Science and Technology "MISIS" is Russia's primary technological university in the field of steelmaking and metallurgy. It was established in 1918 as a part of the Moscow Mining Academy. In 1930, it became independent...

 in 1982, where he made a friend of Vladimir Solovyov
Vladimir Solovyov (journalist)
Vladimir Rudol'fovich Solovyov is a popular Russian TV and radio journalist. He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys and completed post-doc position at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations...

, now a leading pro-government TV journalist, and Mikhail Fridman
Mikhail Fridman
Mikhail Maratovich Fridman is a Jewish Russian businessman. Mr. Fridman graduated from Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys in 1986. In 1988 Fridman started his career in trading and financial services before founding Alfa Group Consortium in 1989...

, now an oil tycoon, but failed to graduate as he had been conscripted into the military service, which around that time had become compulsory in USSR even for students. He served from 1983 – 1985 in a Soviet artillery regiment in Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

, according to his official biography, or, as the former Russia's Defence Minister
Defence minister
A defence minister is a person in a cabinet position in charge of a Ministry of Defence, which regulates the armed forces in some sovereign nations...

 Sergey Ivanov claimed in a TV interview on 12 November 2006, in the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU)
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...

http://lenta.ru/lib/14159273/full.htm.

After his military training Surkov was accepted to Moscow Institute of Culture for a five-year program in theater direction, but spent only three years there. Surkov graduated from Moscow International University with a master's degree in economics long after that in the late 1990s.

Business career

Meanwhile, in the late 1980s he started as a businessman as the government lifted the ban against private businesses. He became a head of the advertisement department of Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky is a Russian prisoner, considered by some - such as Amnesty International - to have been imprisoned for political reasons, jailed until 2016 and a former Russian oligarch and businessman...

's businesses. During the 1990s he held key managerial positions in advertisement and PR departments of Khodorkovsky
Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky is a Russian prisoner, considered by some - such as Amnesty International - to have been imprisoned for political reasons, jailed until 2016 and a former Russian oligarch and businessman...

's Bank Menatep
Bank Menatep
Bank Menatep was a US$29 billion holding company created by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, that had indirect controlling interest in Yukos Oil Company. It was involved in the US$4.8 billion diversion of International Monetary Fund funds.-Scandal:...

 (1991– April 1996) and Rosprom (March 1996 – February 1997) and Fridman
Mikhail Fridman
Mikhail Maratovich Fridman is a Jewish Russian businessman. Mr. Fridman graduated from Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys in 1986. In 1988 Fridman started his career in trading and financial services before founding Alfa Group Consortium in 1989...

's Alfa Bank
Alfa Bank
Alfa Bank, the corporate treasury of the Alfa Group, is the largest private commercial bank in Russia. Headquartered in Moscow, it operates in 7 countries, providing financial services to over 40,000 active corporate customers and 5.3 million retail clients...

 (since February 1997).

In September 2004 Surkov was elected president of the board of directors of the oil products transportation company Transnefteproduct
Transnefteproduct
Transnefteproduct is an operator of oil products pipelines in Russia. It operates more than oil pructs pipelines. On 16 April 2007, pursuant to a presidential decree signed by president of Russia Vladimir Putin, Transnefteproduct became a subsidiary of an oil pipelines operator...

, but was instructed by Russia's PM Mikhail Fradkov
Mikhail Fradkov
Mikhail Yefimovich Fradkov is a Russian politician and statesman who was the Prime Minister of Russia from March 2004 to September 2007. Fradkov has been the head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service since 2007.-Early life:...

 to give up the position in February 2006.

Political career

After a brief career as a director for public relations on the Russian television ORT
Channel One (Russia)
Channel One is the first television channel to broadcast in the Soviet Union. The channel was renamed Ostankino Channel 1 in 1991, after the Soviet Union broke up and the Russian SFSR became the Russian Federation. According to a recent government publication, the Russian government controls 51%...

 channel (1998–1999) he was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff of the President of the Russian Federation in 1999. In March 2004, Surkov was appointed an aide to the president, retaining the official title of Deputy Chief of Staff. He is seen as the "Grey Cardinal", a behind the scenes actor with much influence, the same as Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965, and as unofficial Chief Ideologue of the Party until his death in 1982. Suslov was responsible for party democracy and the separation of power...

. He is also allegedly the main supporter of Ramzan Kadyrov
Ramzan Kadyrov
Ramzan Akhmadovich Kadyrov is the President of Chechnya and a former Chechen rebel.Ramzan is a son of former Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, assassinated in May 2004. In February 2007 Kadyrov replaced Alu Alkhanov as President, shortly after he had turned 30, which is the minimum age for the post...

 in Putin's entourage.

Surkov is widely considered to have inspired creation of some youth pro-government political movements, including Nashi
Nashi (Ours)
Nashi is Vladimir Putin's political youth movement in Russia, which declares itself to be a democratic, anti-fascist, anti-'oligarchic-capitalist' movement. Its creation was encouraged by senior figures in the Russian Presidential administration, and by late 2007, it grew in size to some 120,000...

. He met with their leaders and participants several times and gave them lectures on the political situation.http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/030205RFERL_Putin.shtmlhttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/15054982-8661-11db-86d5-0000779e2340.html

He advocates the political doctrine he calls sovereign democracy
Sovereign democracy
Sovereign democracy is a term that with regard to Russian politics was first used by Vladislav Surkov on the 22nd of February 2006 in a speech before a gathering of the Russian political party United Russia...

, a controversial attempt to counter democracy promotion conducted by USA and European stateshttp://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/2006-212-37.cfm. While some Western media may see the attempt as controversial, this view is not generally shared by Russian media and Russian political elite. Surkov himself sees this concept as a national version of the common political language that is going to be used when Russia is talking to the outside world.

Being the most influential ideologist of «sovereign democracy», Surkov went public with two programme speeches, «Sovereignty is a Political Synonym of Competitiveness» and «Our Russian Model of Democracy is Titled Sovereign Democracy»

On 8 February 2007, the Moscow State University
Moscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...

 marked the 125th anniversary of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

's birthday with high-level conference "Lessons of the New Deal for Modern Russia and the World" attended, among others, by Vladislav Surkov and Gleb Pavlovsky
Gleb Pavlovsky
Gleb Olegovich Pavlovsky is a Russian national, political scientist . He was an adviser of the Presidential Administration of Russia until April 2011. During the Soviet times he was prosecuted as a dissident....

. There Surkov drew an explicit parallel between the U.S. president and Russian president Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...

, praising the legacy of Roosevelt's New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

, and between the US of the 1930s and present-day Russia. Gleb Pavlovsky called on Putin to follow Roosevelt in staying for the third presidential term.

Although President Medvedev repeatedly stressed the need for Russia to open up and modernise its political system Surkov warned in October 2009 that that could result in more instability and that more instability "could rip Russia apart".

In September, 2011, Mikhail Prokhorov
Mikhail Prokhorov
Mikhail Dmitrievitch Prokhorov is a Russian billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the American basketball team, the New Jersey Nets. After graduating from the Moscow Finance Institute he made his name in the financial sector and went on to become one of Russia's leading industrialists in the...

 quit the party Right Cause, which he had led for five months. He condemned the party as a puppet of the Kremlin and named the "'puppet master' in the president’s office" as Surkov, according to a report in The New York Times. Prokhorov hoped that Surkov would be fired from service from the Kremlin, although his own political career would be at an end. Sources from within the Kremlin tell that Surkov would not disappear from the political stage.

In a profile of Surkov, Reuters reported that he was one of the most powerful men in the Kremlin and considered a close ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin

Businessman and politician Mikhail Prokhorov has harshly criticised Surkov's role in Russian politics, describing him as a puppet master.

Private issues

Besides his political and business activities, he has been engaged in song composition and is the author of some recent texts of the Russian rock group Agata Kristi
Agata Kristi
Agatha Christie is a Russian gothic rock band led by brothers Vadim and Gleb Samoylov, that was established in Sverdlovsk in 1988. It is named after English detective writer Agatha Christie. According to Gleb Samoylov, it's the band playing art-rock and rock'n'roll, and with texts infiltrated by...

.

Surkov speaks English. Data on his private life is controversial. He was married to Yulia Vishnevskaya, the sister of Anatoly Chubais
Anatoly Chubais
Anatoly Borisovich Chubais is a Russian politician and business manager who was responsible for privatization in Russia as an influential member of Boris Yeltsin's administration. From 1998 to 2008 he was the head of the state owned electrical power monopoly RAO UES. The 2004 survey by...

's wife. Vishnevskaya holds a renowned puppet collection. Surkov and Vishnevskaya have a son, Artyom, who either lives in London with his mother or is a student of the Moscow State University
Moscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...

, according to different sources. He married a second time in a civil ceremony in 1998 to Natalya Dubovitskaya, a former employee of Menatep
Bank Menatep
Bank Menatep was a US$29 billion holding company created by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, that had indirect controlling interest in Yukos Oil Company. It was involved in the US$4.8 billion diversion of International Monetary Fund funds.-Scandal:...

 bankhttp://lenta.ru/lib/14159273/full.htmhttp://www.anticompromat.ru/surkov/surkbio.html. Mr Surkov and Natalya Dubovitskaya have two children.

In June 2005 it became public for the first time after an interview with him was published in the German Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...

 magazine. that his father was an ethnic Chechen
Chechen people
Chechens constitute the largest native ethnic group originating in the North Caucasus region. They refer to themselves as Noxçi . Also known as Sadiks , Gargareans, Malkhs...

 and he spent the first five years of his life in Chechnya in Duba-yurt and Grozny
Grozny
Grozny is the capital city of the Chechen Republic, Russia. The city lies on the Sunzha River. According to the preliminary results of the 2010 Census, the city had a population of 271,596; up from 210,720 recorded in the 2002 Census. but still only about two-thirds of 399,688 recorded in the 1989...

. The remark, meaning that he knew his place, was apparently made to sidestep dangerous speculations he had presidential ambitions. Follow-up articles published in Russian newspapers ( http://www.vokruginfo.ru/news/news14072.html ) said that his father's name was Andarbek Dudayev (though not closely related to Dzhokhar Dudayev). Surkov's birth name was Aslambek Dudayev, born in Shali. After his parents separated, his mother moved to Lipetsk
Lipetsk
Lipetsk is a city and the administrative center of Lipetsk Oblast, Russia, located on the banks of the Voronezh River in the Don basin, southeast of Moscow.-History:...

 and changed his name to the Russified version — Vladislav Surkov. His official biography still lists Surkov as name and Solntsevo village of Lipetsk province as birthplace.

Mr Surkov claimed that he earned 3.89 million rubles ($115,000) in 2008. According to public records, his wife, Ms Dubovitskaya earned 16.8 million rubles ($497,000).

Surkov has a portrait of Argentine-born revolutionary Che Guevara in his Kremlin office and is fond of poets such as Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

 of the Beat Generation, Reuters reported.

Quotations

At a news conference held before G8 summit in June 2006, Surkov was quoted as saying "they tell us about democracy while thinking about our hydrocarbons", referring to the criticism on the situation with human rights, freedom of speech and democracy in Russia commonly heard from the West. This was followed by an even more sharp stance towards him taken by some Western media. Critics of Western coverage in Russia quote factual errors in such coverage and purposeful selection of respondents for such coverage that have no credibility at home and who do not represent majority opinion of Russian general public.

At a round table with leaders of most influential political forces in Russia dedicated to discussion of the concept of «sovereign democracy» that was held in August 2006, Surkov was quoted as saying the following on the matter: "We need to have our own voice. I don't think our target is to create some unheard exotics and to tell some self-contained things that our conversational partners would be unable to understand. Of course, not. But we should have our own version of the political language. The one who does not talk he is listening, and the one who is listening he obeys. If we are an independent nation, we should be participating in conversation. If we in Russia do not create our own discourse, our own public philosophy, our national ideology that would be acceptable for the majority of our citizens (at least for the majority, and preferably for all), then they are simply not going to talk to us and reckon with us. What is the point of talking to mute?"

In a 2005 interview with Der Spiegel, Surkov was quoted as saying: "That’s my personal quirk [that a superior’s request is to be interpreted as an order]. Generally speaking, our problem is that the political leadership needs to motivate the bureaucrats more."

In July 2005, Surkov gave a "secret speech" to the "Business Russia" economic forum. The following quotes are from that speech:

"...our project is a commonplace one. I would name it briefly as a “sovereign democracy.” It is not good to add something to democracy because a third way issue appears. But we are forced to do that because liberal politicians consider the sovereignty issue as not actual. "

"I have a friend who says that if you fail to do something in 2 weeks, you will never be able to do it. Those bumpkins who sit there, they do not understand that there is no democracy in this country and bureaucracy is in-eradicable. That’s the problem of lack of patience and failure to take long-term efforts.... I think one has to be more persevering, more patient. And if something goes wrong one should not speak of complete failure, that the country is ruled by mediocrities who don’t understand a thing. This is not exactly so, or maybe, absolutely not so."

They [Russia and Europe] are not enemies. They are simply competitors. So, it is more insulting that we are not enemies. An enemy situation is when one can be killed in a war as a hero if there is conflict. There is something heroic and beautiful in it. And to lose in a competitive struggle means to be a loser. And this is doubly insulting, I thin.

At a meeting of United Russia's 2020 Forum in February 2009, Surkov said: "The system is working, it will cope with the crisis and get through it. If we had entered this zone of turbulence in a more-loosened condition, I assure you, the damage the state and society would have suffered would have been much greater...The crisis is still in its early stages in our country, but we are already prepared to say that we are prepared to revise our institutions and — I have read this myself! – rethink our values."

Surkov warned in an article published in October 2009 that Russia risked collapsing into chaos if officials tried to tinker with the political system by flirting with liberal reforms.

In answer to calls from opponents for democratic reforms to liberalize the political system built under former President Vladimir Putin, Surkov warned that the resulting instability could rip Russia apart.
"Even now when power is rather consolidated and ordered, many projects are very slow and difficult," Surkov was quoted as saying by the Itogi weekly magazine.
"If we add any sort of political instability to that then our development would simply be paralyzed. There would be a lot of demagoguery, a lot of empty talk, a lot of lobbying and ripping Russia to pieces, but no development."

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK