Intermission 3

Last sideline on hold

Lyubov Popova, Stage design for The Magnanimous Cuckold, 1922. This model was constructed in 1967.

Update: The great Oliver Bateman has provided a PDF link to the Surkov text. The link in this post has been changed, but I’m not rewriting the whole thing.

This summer has been incredibly productive for me, albeit not on this blog. I fear I have to admit a touch of writer’s block. However, I will return to the sideline pieces in August. For now, I leave you not with an essay but two awkward recommendations.

Texts, 1997-2010 by Vladislav Surkov is a collection of essays, interviews, and speeches written by the author during his time working on the construction of the Russian Federation’s political system alongside Vladimir Putin.

In this very short collection of texts, he discusses controlled pluralism, sovereignty in designing democratic institutions, the need for stability over revolution, Russia as a separate civilization from Europe, and Surkov’s most influential concepts, politics as theater. On its own, it is impressive in its structure. Surkov lays out the chronology of modern Russia and the steps he believed were necessary to create the state that it is. With context (such as the knowledge that Surkov deliberately created subcultures opposed to United Russia’s leadership), it is all the more impressive. Many of the seeds of Russia’s present geopolitical aims and political function can be found within these pages. It is at once a postmodern and deeply modernist text, and modern politics the world over is easier to understand when viewed through some of Surkov’s unique lenses.

However, it is an awkward recommendation because it is completely out of print. Used copies appear rarely and there is no online PDF that I have been able to find. Columbia University’s library has copies in circulation, but there are only 3. I purchased my copy from Amazon for $14.95 some five or six years ago, back when it was still in print.

An easier find would be Unrestricted Warfare by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. The full PDF is linked above but a hard copy can also be found on Amazon and other retailers. It is a military doctrinal text outlining the shape of 21st century warfare; namely, that war will no longer be contained by the usual parameters of combat (conventional or asymmetric warfare), but will expand into every sphere of life out of necessity. In the West, the concept is also known as hybrid warfare. The thesis is thus: The United States proved during the Gulf War that its military was an unstoppable force by conventional means. Its technology, logistics, and combined arms tactics were unparalleled, and even small resistance forces would eventually bend to its might. In order to compete, rival nations would need to be willing to view the rest of society as a battlefield: psychology, economics, technology, logistics, politics, and more would all need to be viewed as valid theaters of combat in order to undermine the US’s ability to project power militarily. Each state engaged in this competition is in a state of total war even during peacetime. Published in 1999, it is a necessary text for demystifying the world’s many escalating crises, though now partially outdated thanks to addenda penned by Russian and American strategists, and by real-world events in the last 27 years.

What makes this recommendation awkward is that it is fairly lengthy, though the translation is of exceptional quality and the writing is extremely clear. Though occasionally calling back to certain events in Chinese history, only a scant amount of context is necessary.

Thank you for reading.