Russia's Not-So-Deep State
The St. Petersburg Gang and Putin's Judo Friends
Most pro-Russia people refuse to acknowledge that there is a Russian Deep State. They seem to think that Russia is run by Putin and the Orthodox Church and the Duma? At least that’s what I get from interacting with well-intentioned but grug-brain peasants on Twitter.
Mostly they don’t think much about the topic at all.
But the fact of the matter is that all modern states have Deep States and hidden power structures that hold the whole system up. These networks are universally anti-democratic, anti-populist, anti-transparency and so on regardless of what the official state ideology is. Spook agencies began the process of taking over literally everything almost a hundred years ago and have been consolidating since. Russia is no different in this general sense. But, from what we can gather, there are key differences in the Russian Deep State that are worth discussing so that we can better understand the otherwise irrational and counter-productive measures that the Russian government takes.
Furthermore, there are also states within states that we have to be aware of.
I refer to this as the Russian Not-So-Deep State. The names that you hear and read about being lambasted in the Liberal media news are mostly the public faces that are considered to be part of Putin’s inner circle. They are his Judo friends, business friends, FSB friends and friends from the 90s. This group does indeed wield more-or-less visible power in Russia because of their business monopolies and/or government positions. But they are NOT the only ones with power in Russia.
The Deeper State is comprised of retired and semi-retired spooks and former inner-party elites that still wield large, but hard to quantify amounts of power and influence, powerful regional governors and FSB department heads, cultural and chinovkin nomenklatura and so on.
Furthermore, there is the Permanent Opposition, which is still quite powerful. They ought to be understood as both enemies to the ruling elite and also second-class elites in their own right. We’ve talked about them before and we will talk about them again soon, probably.
Anyways, it’s actually quite easy to figure out who is who in the Not-So-Deep State because elements of the Permanent Opposition that have been exiled to the West have provided what essentially amounts to a kill list for us. The names on the list are the people that they see as their political rivals. This is one of the enemy lists provided by the exiled Opposition. It is quite extensive. There are pages upon pages of people that hold positions in the government, the economy, state media and so on that would have to be eliminated one way or the other when/if the Permanent Opposition were to take power.
I’m only going to cover the people in the Presidential Administration who have been named because they, among others, are part of Putin’s inner circle. Through simple logic we can deduce that the names not named in the Russian government are not a cause for concern for the Liberal Opposition. In fact, they’re probably more than willing to work with any newcomers should they succeed in seizing political power. They may, as the rumors suggest, already be working with the Permanent Opposition now.
At this point, it should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog that a significant portion of patriotic Russian society is convinced that large parts of their own government is run by enemy agents. But, unlike the organized and well-funded Liberals, the patriotic bloc does not compile and publish comprehensive lists of their enemies. There would, however, be overlap with the kill list of the Permanent Opposition if they did.
In Russia, ideological convictions do not count for much. It is all about patronage networks and “krishas” - political protection rackets. In America, it is the same, but the peasants are simply unable to come to grips with this perennial reality and think that politics is actually a debate about the moral code of the nation. This is because the pernicious idea of American Exceptionalism makes them think they are above the harsh realities of the political power process in general. But all this kind of thinking does is blind Americans to the truth. In contrast, Slavlanders are much more jaded and cynical about such things.
Case in point: Putin’s team is held together not out of any ideological convictions or 5D plans for Russia’s future, but because of a network of intertwined financial, political, blackmail, patronage, debt and even marriage links in some cases.
The Not-So-Deep State began to form during the reign of Anatoly Sobchak as mayor of St. Petersburg. And there is no other way to describe what Sobchak was other than as a consummate crook. He stole huge quantities of Russian money and stashed it in France and other countries in the West with the help of his nice wife, who was half-lawyer on her father’s side and who spends a lot of time condemning Russia and Russians as Fascists from her cozy seat in the State Duma to this day. Their daughter, Ksenia Sobchak, is Russia’s Paris Hilton equivalent and went from doing porn and reality TV to SJW activism over the course of her career. She was basically allowed to run wild for decades and was completely untouchable because she was under the old krisha of the St. Petersburg Gang.
And Putin is literally her godfather.
But things began to change in Russia about a year ago, as I’m sure you’ve heard.
A week after fleeing Russia for the West amid fear of arrest, there are suggestions that Vladimir Putin's 'goddaughter' is soon to return to her homeland.
TV star and opposition politician Ksenia Sobchak, 40, was seen last week walking across the border between Belarus and Lithuania in dramatic CCTV footage.
Her attempt to flee came after her luxury home near Moscow was searched amid reports she was a suspect in a criminal case that could see her jailed for up to 15 years.
She has remained largely quiet since fleeing Russia, having shared only one short message to her followers that read: 'Yes, I am in trouble. Possibly, in big trouble.'
But her mother Lyudmila Narusova, a senator, told a state-run news agency Ksenia is set to return to Russia, saying: 'She will, very soon.'
Narusova confirmed her daughter had used an Israeli passport to flee to Lithuania, noting that 'the constitution of the Russian Federation allows dual citizenship'.
Contrary to earlier fears, Narusova claimed Ksenia was not a suspect in an extortion case against her business partner Kirill Sukhanov and former Russian Tatler editor Arian Romanovsky.
Her lawyers were appealing against the move to search her house, said Narusova, who has been a staunch critic of Putin's war in Ukraine.
Sobchak's desperate dash to Lithuania came amid suspicions she was tipped off by a senior Russian official of moves to arrest her, giving her time to flee.
As you can see, these implacable foes of Putin’s regime appear to have friends who can literally warn them ahead of time about an FSB raid embedded deep in the government.
That should tell us all something.
Anyways, while the Sobchak looting operation was going on in the 90s, Vladimir Putin and Dmitriy Medvedev, among others, joined his team.
Those were strangest of times. Those were the best of times.
I wish we could bring back wearing blazers and track suits together
And it was during that period that the “St. Petersburg Gang” was formed. Afterwards, Sobchak’s people stuck together when they moved up to Moscow and became part of the larger Boris Yeltsin mafia. By the 00s, the gang was pretty much solidified and the only significant additions to it later of any note that come to mind were MoD Shoigu and PM Mishustin in recent years.
This group of “friends” is basically a state within a state in Russia or the Not-So-Deep State as I refer to it.