Vladislav Surkov - Political Career

Political Career

After a brief career as a director for public relations on the Russian television ORT 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. He is also allegedly the main supporter of Ramzan Kadyrov in Putin's entourage.

Surkov is widely considered to have inspired creation of some youth pro-government political movements, including Nashi. He met with their leaders and participants several times and gave them lectures on the political situation.

He advocates the political doctrine he calls sovereign democracy, a controversial attempt to counter democracy promotion conducted by USA and European states. 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 marked the 125th anniversary of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's birthday with high-level conference "Lessons of the New Deal for Modern Russia and the World" attended, among others, by Surkov and Gleb Pavlovsky. There Surkov drew an explicit parallel between the U.S. president and Russian president Putin, praising the legacy of Roosevelt's New Deal, and between the US of the 1930s and present-day Russia. Pavlovsky called on Putin to follow Roosevelt in staying for the third presidential term.

Although President Dmitry 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 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 then-Prime Minister Putin.

On 28 December 2011, it was announced that Medvedev had reassigned Surkov to the role of "Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Modernisation" in a move interpreted by many to be fallout from the controversial Russian parliamentary elections of 2011.

After his reassignment, Surkov described his past career as follows:

I was among those who helped Yeltsin to secure a peaceful transfer of power; among those who helped President Putin stabilize the political system; among those who helped President Medvedev liberalize it. All the teams were great. —Vladislav Surkov