Gleb Pavlovsky died, the “Jemini Cricket” who built Putin up (and then knew how to criticize him) – Corriere.it

From our correspondent
For each sentence, a quote is written. He’s always scratching his head, waving his hands, and swearing. from his home in Moscow, Gleb Pavlovskywho suddenly disappeared last night in 71 years old Due to natural reasons, he has shown his role as Jiminy Cricket and the invulnerability that came with his past as a character Dissident persecuted by the Soviet Union Based on The father of the Russian webbut above all by its fame “The Man Who Built Vladimir Putin”.

The latter was only a partially correct designation. In 1999, on behalf of Boris Yeltsin, agreed to put himself at the service of the new and little-known Prime Minister. She stayed with him until 2011, overseeing two of his election campaigns, and following him through his first eight years in the Kremlin. He has become a reliable man. So much so that in 2004 Putin gave him a rather delicate assignment, sending him to Ukraine to run the pro-Russian candidacy. Viktor Yanukovych. He did his homework, he said, which made him win, but then those directly involved stood in the way of Maidan’s protests. He was, along with Vladislav Surkovto launch a concept Sovereign democracy On which Putin’s power pillar still stands today.

Putin says he has always remained loyal to the people he feels indebted to. Perhaps that is why for the last ten years Pavlovsky has been allowed to speak against him without the disturbance of a command post Active policy fund, his assembly, a few hundred meters from the Kremlin. He was infuriated by the president’s relay Dmitry Medvedev, which he described as a farce, the suppression of street protests, the end of the liberal delusion that bore his name or pretended not to see some already obvious signs of the direction Russia was taking. Precisely because of this dual role, or because of his seemingly belated transformation into the purest of pretenders, it is curious to read the reactions to his disappearance.

Government agencies speak of her with some respect. Some Telegram channels close to the dissidents even consider him “one of the founders of the regime”. “In the first decade of the new century, I wrote letters to senior management to say that we have to present the news and our choices in a certain way. Television was very boring at that time. Then came a fileUkrainewhich he has presented since 2014 real struggle, which can be displayed, and thus the propaganda of today has been born, which acts on ordinary people and also on those who govern them, in an unstoppable process of self-conviction. When this power paradigm ends, and it certainly will, it will be very difficult to change people’s perception. And for this There will be no sudden changes in power. That is why it will take decades for Russia to be different. ” One of his last interviews with this newspaper ended like this.