The Wizard of the Kremlin by Giuliano da Empoli

Author:Giuliano da Empoli [da Empoli, Giuliano]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2023-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

17

IT WAS THAT HOUR of night when death comes into the world, and I felt, as I walked the long white halls of the Kremlin, that I was in the only place in Russia not sunk in total darkness. The Senate Palace, which houses Putin’s office, has none of the icy grandeur of the palace of the tsars. Power does not glide over the mirrors of useless drawing rooms there and disperse, but comes to a head, instead, and takes action. Lenin made it the seat of his government for this reason, and the fate of the most gigantic country on earth has ever since been decided in these small, perfunctorily furnished rooms.

Arriving in the president’s antechamber, I nodded my usual greeting to the portraits of the tsars and the statue of the Japanese samurai that Putin had picked to reinforce the flesh-and-blood youths of his security guard. The chief of staff waved me through; the president was expecting me. As the door closed behind me, I found him seated at his worktable rather than on the couch where he normally chose to conduct our private conversations. Bad sign. The big bronze chandelier had for once been turned off. Only the tsar’s desk was lit by a small lamp, creating an atmosphere of studious reflection. I sat in one of the two awkward armchairs facing his desk.

The tsar was reading a document and said nothing for several minutes. Then, without lifting his eyes from the sheet in front of him, he spoke: “Where are my approval ratings, Vadya?”

—At approximately sixty percent, Mister President.

—Right. And do you know who’s ahead of me?

—There’s no one, sir. Your nearest rival is at about twelve percent.

—Not true, Vadya. Think again, there’s a Russian leader who’s more popular than I am.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Stalin is more popular at this moment than I am. If we were to go head-to-head in an election, Russia’s ‘Little Father’ would trounce me!”

The tsar’s face had assumed a stony consistency that I had learned to recognize. I refrained from making any comment.

“You intellectuals think it’s because people have forgotten. You think they don’t remember the purges, the massacres. That’s why you keep publishing book after book, and article after article, on the events of 1937, on the gulags, on the victims of Stalinism. You think Stalin is popular in spite of the massacres. Well you’re wrong, he’s popular because of the massacres. Because at least he knew how to deal with thieves and traitors.”

The tsar paused.

“Do you know what Stalin did when there was an uptick in Soviet train wrecks?”

—No.

—He took von Meck, the man in charge of railroads, and had him executed for sabotage. It didn’t resolve the railroad problem, in fact it may have made it worse. But it provided an outlet for anger. The same thing happened each time the system fell short. When meat grew scarce, Stalin arrested the people’s commissar for agriculture, Chernov. When they tried him, lo and behold,

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