Comment: The following essay was recently published in Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Russian-American author Dmitry Orlov has translated it, as published here on The Saker.
The essay's author is Vladislav Surkov. If Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin is mischaracterized in the West as "Putin's brain," then Surkov is similarly mischaracterized "Putin's éminence grise." Surkov was Deputy Chief of the Russian Presidential Administration from 1999-2011, during which time he apparently played a role in the transition from Yeltsin to Putin and later developed the concept of sovereign democracy, which is arguably 21st century Russia's 'state ideology'.
Surkov also served as Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Modernisation from 2011-2013, and has since remained an aide to Putin, apparently with the specific brief of handling Russia's relationships with Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Ukraine. When Western elites went apoplectic because Crimea joined the Russian Federation in 2014, Surkov was one of the first names on Obama's sanctions list. Asked how he felt about no longer being able to travel to the US, Surkov responded:
"The only things that interest me in the US are Tupac Shakur, Allen Ginsberg, and Jackson Pollock. I don't need a visa to access their work."As Western actors hurl invective, sanctions, cyberattacks, political subterfuge and proxy wars at Russia - all apparently with a view to 'correcting' its policy decisions in the short-term, and thus its developmental trajectory in the long-term - Surkov ignores the screamers to describe the nature of modern Russian governance, a unique system developed by Vladimir Putin, which, Surkov argues, has become - whether they realize it or not - the new standard-bearer for all countries to follow...
[Hyperlinks to Wikipedia and other sources concerning historical events/actors referenced by the author are ours, as are the endnotes]
The illusion of choice is the most important illusion, the centerpiece of the Western way of life in general and Western democracy in particular, which has for a long time now adhered more closely to the ideas of P.T. Barnum than to those of Cleisthenes. The rejection of this illusion in favor of the realism of predestination has led our society first to reflect upon its own special, sovereign version of democratic development, and then to completely lose interest in any discussions on the subject of what democracy should be like and whether it should exist even in principle.
Comment: How about that for a Kremlin come-back to the petabytes of lies?!
Not that many in the West will hear it.
They're too busy screaming about how evil Russia is.
But they doth protesteth too much, and signal merely the noisy preamble to the nations of the world embracing Putinism.