Literature and geopolitics go hand in hand in one of the most powerful publishing phenomena in recent years. The Wizard of the Kremlin, whose Spanish and Catalan versions have just been published (Seix Barral and Edicions 62), has sold half a million copies in France. Giuliano da Empoli (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1973), a Swiss and Italian political consultant, has drawn a psychological and sociological portrait that helps to understand post-Soviet Russia, the Vladimir Putin regime and the reasons for the war in Ukraine. “My mother speaks Russian and she forced me to read Russian novels when I was little, even though she didn't understand them,” explains the author. That was my first relationship with Russia.”
Goncourt finalist –after a controversial tie-break– and winner of the French Academy and Balzac prize, the novel recreates the story of a close Putin adviser, Vladislav Surkov (in fiction Vadim Baranov). He finished it before the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and did not touch it up because "the war does not change anything in my book, it only changes the reading that is done." Da Empoli was an adviser to Matteo Renzi when he headed the Italian government. We ask him if he was the magician of the Chigi palace (the seat of the prime minister) and he laughs. “Given the results, I wouldn't say it; there was not so much magic, ”he replies, alluding to the ephemeral mandate of his boss.
After writing many essays, it is his first novel. Better fiction in this case?
I have not written a novel to get away from reality but to get closer to it. I prepared the book as if it were an essay, with a lot of research, but an essay has a limit and you have to stop. The novel is the only instrument to try to enter the head of the characters.
Do you know if Putin has read it?
No, I think you have other things to do in Moscow.
What would you think if you read it?
I don't think he would like to appear as a pure power animal. A great writer, Elias Canetti, author of Mass and Power, said that the man of power is someone who, deep down, wants to outlive everyone and the only way to do that is to kill everyone, including the people closest to him. he. For me, that is a bit of the representation of Putin that I give in my book. I don't think he would like that.
In the book it is said that the Russians have a holistic concept of power. Can you explain it?
It means that everything is mixed up. We separate the various spheres, the public, the private, business, politics, the exercise of violence. In Russia, everything is mixed up and what really matters, although there is much talk about the new rich, about the oligarchs, is power and proximity to power. The proximity to the Kremlin and to power is the source of everything in Russia. It has been forever. It is also the source of money, of social status, with the violence mixed in there. I'm talking about this.
The wizard of the Kremlin works not only to preserve the monopoly of power but "the monopoly of subversion."
It is the idea that anger must be managed and prevented from building up, but give voice to that anger so that it can be vented, including controlling the forms of contestation and subversion. The magician is helped by the fact that before he had been a man of the theater. He stages a theater in which he not only controls the Government but everything. He creates fake parties, fake opposition or youth movements to channel anger, to manage it so that it doesn't turn against power. It's almost an artistic representation, almost an avant-garde theater.
When Putin speaks, he says that "the Russians ask only two things of the state, order at home and power abroad."
Yes, that is his conception. It's what he thinks and what he does. We see today that the war is not going well, obviously, neither for the Russians nor for Putin, but he tries to justify the sacrifices in the name of Russia's foreign power that he wants to project. And that is something that has already been done in the past in the Soviet Union. At the moment he still allows her to control the country. Even if it goes badly, this war has been Putin's chance to strengthen his dominance at home considerably.
Putin argues that the USSR did not lose the cold war, simply that it stopped because his society overthrew a dictatorship. Do you really think so?
Yes, it's a big misunderstanding. That's why I wrote this book. Our interpretation of the last thirty years and that of many Russians, or at least that of Putin and his circle, is very different. There is a lot of distance. Carl Schmitt said that the winner's mistake is that he is not curious about the loser. Many Russians think, and they are right to do so, that they were not defeated militarily in 1989, that there was a process inside Russia that led to reforms, to tear down the system, to replace it with another, and to the disintegration of the USSR. Observing that point of view is a very interesting experience. That is not meant to justify what they do, to be clear, but it is important to understand.
The work does not give a very positive image of the United States. His conduct appears cynical, especially with regard to Ukraine. The protagonist and Putin say it. Do you think so too?
No. I explain it a bit in the book when I say that Putin was engaged in counterintelligence. He wasn't just a spy. The spy looks for truthful information, while the counterspy sees plots everywhere. Putin only sees a part of reality. Is there any kind of American activity in Ukraine to get it away from Russia? Yes, it's clear. But there is also a democratic aspiration of a majority of the Ukrainian population who wants to decide for themselves and does so spontaneously. Putin only sees one side of reality.
The protagonist does not like that he has been prohibited from traveling to the West. It is the situation today of people who have money in Russia. You use the concept of “reverse exile”. Do you think that this can weaken Putin and be dangerous for him?
Unfortunately I think that is exactly what Putin wanted. He couldn't stand that even people close to him had a life in London, in the south of Spain. He wanted everyone in his bunker with him. He wants the Russian elites to be locked in that bunker and forced to align with his position. So far the operation has worked. We'll see if it will last.
The end gives a rather pessimistic vision, not only of Russia but in general, due to the absolute power of machines, robots, transhumanism. What does it mean?
My book is not just a book about Russia. Above all, it is a book about power in general and its evolution. I believe that, in effect, those technologies of military origin that we use, such as the Internet, GPS and soon artificial intelligence, are control technologies in their primary function. The risk of the future is not so much that the machines rebel against man, but that he obeys the orders of the machines too much. Even a dictator must reach an agreement with his generals, with a part of the population. But to govern a society with machines, it is not necessary to obtain the agreement of anyone. That's what scares me.
