Miller! It's been a minute...
My boss in the Kremlin was Putin's version of the American ideologue
I wish I could write thoughtful, somber essays like “I’ve witnessed the fall of democracy in Russia—here’s my warning.” But that would sound off-brand for someone who gave that falling democracy a little push, just to make sure.
Okay, in reality, there was never a “democracy” in that sad country called Russia; just varying types of authoritarianism, with short chaotic transitions that some mistook for the establishment of democratic institutions. Happens to everyone. Still, I’m not the guy who warns about the end of democracy (it’s ending, by the way), and my experience doesn’t give me the moral authority to lecture anyone on freedom. I can, however, lecture you on those trying to take that freedom away. For everything else, please see the many brave Russian dissidents and their thoughtful think pieces on what it means to fight the regime—often paying the ultimate price.
In 2025 America, I see some familiar faces. I don’t know Kash or Pam or Bobby or J.D., but I know them. I worked for their Russian equivalents. I was even friends with some of them. That was back in my Kremlin days, when I worked for Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s first deputy chief of staff and the architect of managed democracy—the man who turned autocracy into an aesthetic. The Russian Stephen Miller.
Surkov was cultured, subtle, deliberate. His task was to make dictatorship look democratic, to let pluralism bloom just enough to serve the Kremlin. He wrote essays on Juan Miró and controlled all TV. He quoted Borges and created the concept of “system opposition”—opposition created within the system to enable debates on non-critical issues and make tyranny feel modern. When that act started producing real protests in 2011, he was exiled from domestic politics into the darker “Russian World”—the occupied territories, the proxy republics, the permanent state of war. He became a war criminal just like the rest of them.
Stephen Miller is Surkov without the poetry. Surkov staged democracy as art; Miller doesn’t build illusions—he goes straight for the jugular: radicals, terrorists, and threats to our great republic. He doesn’t write essays on painters, but he wants retweets as much as he wants a white America. So far, he’s getting both. Mostly because we’re giving it to him.
Miller doesn’t even face the minimal friction Surkov had to deal with. He’s not an ethnic minority (Surkov is Chechen), he doesn’t have to engage with opposition or intellectuals, and he’s perfectly comfortable openly advocating unconstitutional measures. He’s more frightening than Surkov because he draws his inspiration from the early 20th century, as opposed to Surkov’s fascination with the Renaissance. In the time it took Surkov to make a deal with an “independent” governor, Miller can move troops, start abductions, and fire up engines for an unmarked flight to El Salvador.
But Miller’s brand of free-roaming authoritarianism breeds arrogance. And what I’m seeing is a man who already considers himself to be infallible. That gives me hope, because while I don’t expect people to grow a conscience, I do expect people without one to make grave mistakes.
But maybe America is different, and you can do stuff and break things—or whatever it is that Silicon Valley likes to say. Or maybe citizens everywhere just fold faster than the Kremlin expected, and people like Surkov wasted effort building a system of illusions when they could have just sent in the troops.
Andrew Ryvkin
PS
Another familiar type of face: young awkward men whose inability to attract women leads them to sucking up to older men in hopes of climbing the power ladder and—you guessed it—attracting women. I’ve had vodka with these proto-tech-bros in Moscow. In today’s Russia, they’re running modern digital propaganda for the Kremlin. Vladimir Tabak and his Operation Doppelgänger is one. This ALX guy certainly looks like he’ll be working for Trump 2028. Let’s see if I’m right.
