The Wizard of the Kremlin (Le Mage du Kremlin)

Since Vadim Baranov stepped down as advisor

to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the Tzar,

the legends about him haven't waned, they've multiplied.

Most men of power get their aura from the position they hold.

When they lose it, it's like a plug has been pulled.

Baranov was a different breed.

Some say he retreated to a monastery in Mount Athos.

Others swore they saw him in Ibiza, surrounded by coked-up models.

Still others insist they spotted him on the front line in Donbas.

Vadim Baranov went through life in a swirl of enigmas.

The sole certainty was his influence on the Tzar.

In his fifteen years of service,

he contributed decisively to the growth of the Tzar's power.

He was known as the Wizard of the Kremlin,

the New Rasputin.

He would show up unannounced at the President's office

in the middle of the night to handle urgent matters.

Perhaps the Tzar himself would call him in

on his personal line.

Occasionally the two of them were joined by

a prominent minister or the CEO

of some state-owned conglomerate,

but these witnesses never shed any light on the Tzar

and his advisors' nightly activities.

When I returned to Moscow a few years after his disappearance

Baranov's memory still loomed large.

The press persisted in attributing to him

the most baffling measures taken by the Kremlin.

As for me, I had just published an essay in Foreign Affairs

that created something of a stir.

It was called: "Vadim Baranov and the Invention of Fake Democracy".

Laurance Rowland.

If you need anything, just dial 9.

Thank you.

-Have a good day, Mr. Rowland. -You too.

I took a year's sabbatical from Yale

to write the first biography of Yevgeny Zamyatin,

one of Russia's great writers

and an early antagonist of Stalin's communist regime.

I walked in the pale winter light,

leafed through old books.

Zamyatin became my obsession.

He was a visionary, and not just when it came to Stalin.

All subsequent dictators as well.

From Silicon Valley oligarchs to China's one-party state,

from Mark Zuckerberg to Xi Jinping.

His dystopian novel We

inspired George Orwell's 1984 .

Just outside the city gloomy,

never-ending woods stretched all the way to Siberia.

I felt a mix of curiosity and apprehension.

In Russia, things generally go pretty well.

But when they go bad, they go really bad.

[door opens, creaks

Good morning.

Good morning.

Please follow me, Mr. Rowland.

May I take your coat?

I will bring you some tea. Thank you.

Thank you.

I didn't know you collected old books.

I don't collect them, I read them.

There's a major difference.

So you're a reader of Zamyatin.

I have something to show you that you will truly appreciate.

Do you know what this is?

A letter Zamyatin wrote to Stalin.

Asking permission to leave the USSR.

"Dear Iosif Vissarionovich,

"just as the Christians created the Devil

"as a convenient personification of all evil,

"so the critics have transformed me

into the Devil of Soviet literature."

Zamyatin understood too much, too quickly,

and made the rash decision to write about it.

Please,

have a seat.

- You read it? - Of course.

You even took the time to make notes.

I'm honored.

Let's not get carried away.

However, compared to the others, you did understand something.

Not much, but something.

Thank you.

You said you consider yourself an artist.

Let's just say I played a supporting role.

I'm retired now.

You don't miss the adrenaline?

Trust me, there is no greater joy

than waking up every morning,

having coffee and taking your daughter to school.

How did the others take it?

My leaving?

Badly, of course.

Courtiers forgive everyone: thieves, murderers, traitors.

But not deserters.

"What? You don't want what we're willing to kill for?"

And the Tzar?

The Tzar is a different story.

My father feared this library.

It belonged to my grandfather.

Custine, Gracián,

Machiavelli...

The skeptics, the disillusioned.

Hardly the Soviet doxa.

But to his credit, he never tried to deny me any of them.

Your father?

He ended up director of the Academy of Social Sciences

for the Communist Party.

His one goal in life was to avoid

being awakened at dawn by the KGB banging on his front door.

In his position, he shouldn't have had to worry about that.

No one was safe in the Soviet Union.

No one is safe in Russia, period.

Not me.

Not even you.

When I was growing up, the most sought after privilege in Moscow

was the Kremlyovka,

a food basket reserved for the Communist Party's senior officials.

What are we eating today?

Salmon piroshki,

lamb cutlets...

Ultimately, my problem is that I had a happy childhood.

And in Russia, that's not normal.

All the Russian elite experienced Soviet poverty

before they gained access to villas on the Côte d'Azur.

They still haven't gotten over it.

Even the Tzar:

"Me, the kid who grew up in a shoddy kommunalka

"in a gloomy courtyard in Saint Petersburg.

"Now I'm invited to Buckingham Palace!"

-Things have changed. -Not that much.

For you Westerners, money is essential.

What matters in Russia is your proximity to power.

The Soviet system was based on privilege, not cash.

Yesterday there wasn't any. Tomorrow, who knows, so...

you might as well just blow it all.

Do you know what a vertushka is?

It was a telephone without a dial

that allowed Party leaders to communicate directly with you.

Having one meant you'd made it.

Look. This is a vertushka.

Gray, like everything Soviet.

You think Moscow's gray, try Washington.

God, they're not gray there, they're dead.

Anyway, I'm banned from entering the USA and Europe.

-Is your father still alive? -No.

He might have subsisted in this world for a long time.

But then along came Gorbachev and his glass of milk.

Glass of milk?

You don't have to listen Gorbachev to know that

he was about to destroy the Soviet Union.

It was enough to look at him.

He took to the rostrum, they handed him a glass of milk.

And he proceeded to double the price of vodka.

And try to get everyone on milk.

In Russia!

Can you imagine?

No wonder everything spun out of control.

That was it for communism and for my father.

He lost everything.

His job, privileges, reputation.

What about you? What did you do in those times?

My father wanted me to be a diplomat.

But I was never keen on studying.

I did odd jobs.

Found television sets, cassette decks, and resold them.

Business was good.

I started to make more money than my father.

A lot more than my father.

I was just a know-nothing kid.

That's why I was better suited to the new world.

In the early '90s,

Moscow was a dynamic city.

The place was filled with hope for a few years. Just a few.

Banned books were coming out every week.

Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak, Bulgakov...

Art magazines and literary revues were selling in the millions.

The Russian appetite for freedom was insatiable.

So I enrolled in the Russian Institute

of Theater Arts in Moscow

and began living the messy life of a thespian.

We were barely 20 and a whole new world

had opened up to us

just as we were finally strong enough to conquer it.

Hey!

Open the door!

Open this fucking door or I'll bust you up!

You! Fuck off!

Bitch! Fuck you!

Oh. Come here.

Perfect.

You really impressed me.

Yeah?

I had to tell you because it doesn't happen often.

Okay, well...

That's interesting, um...

Guess you must be pretty important.

-What exactly impressed you? -You.

Your performance.