Vladimir Zhirinovsky
Vladimir Zhirinovsky
The Russian people have become the most humiliated nation
on the planet. I will raise Russia from her knees.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, 1995
Part I. The Lawyer
Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky was born on April 25, 1946,
in the city of Alma-Ata. In 1969, he graduated from
Moscow State University
(Oriental Languages). His army service (1970-1973) took
place in Tbilisi, Georgia. Between 1973 and 1991, Zhirinovsky
held a sequence of jobs. First, he worked for the Soviet
Committee for Defense of Peace as a reviewer. Then, while working for
Injurcollegia, Zhirinovsky graduated from
Moscow State University
night school to become a lawyer. Later, he held the position
of a prorector (vice-president) at the Higher School of the Trade Union Movement.
After that, he became Chief of the Legal Service at "Mir"
Publishers. Zhirinovsky is married and has a son.
Part II. Political Career
Vladimir Zhirinovsky started his political career in 1988,
and quickly went on to become a founder of the Liberal Democratic
Party. The first Congress of this party took place in
March, 1990. The LDP became the second party officially
registered in the USSR. (The first one was the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union that got disbanded by Yeltsin
in 1991.) The LDP was eventually transformed into the Liberal Democratic
Party of Russia (LDPR).
The stunning success of the LDPR
in the December 1993 parliamentary elections lifted its leader
Vladimir Zhirinovsky to international fame.
He has been a visible contender in
the campaign for the elections to the State Duma. Having
captured nearly one quarter of the vote in 1993,
Zhirinovsky had predicted even greater success for his
party in 1995. In fact, his party finished second in the
party list vote (11.18%) and won 51 Duma seats (11.33%)
in the December, 1995, parliamentary elections, so the LDPR now has the third
largest Duma faction (behind the Communist Party of the Russian
Federation and Our Home Is Russia).
Zhirinovsky's success in the December 1993 parliamentary elections
astonished both Russian and Western observers. Polls had discerned a late
surge in support for the LDPR, but the scale of
Zhirinovsky's victory was
staggering. Although it did not gain an absolute majority in any region of
the Russian Federation, the LDPR received more votes than any other party
in 64 out of 87 regions (the government of Chechnya refused to hold
elections, while an "unofficial" boycott in Tatarstan kept turnout well
below the 25% required for valid elections). In Pskov Region,
the LDPR won
43% of the vote, with the second-place party (
Yegor Gaidar's
Russia's
Choice) gaining just 10%. Capturing roughly 23% of the vote nationwide
(12.3 million votes in all), the LDPR was allocated 59 out of the 225 State
Duma seats chosen from party lists. Although Zhirinovsky's party
won only
five out of the 225 seats contested in single-member constituencies, its 64
deputies made it the second-largest Duma faction, after
Russia's Choice.
Zhirinovsky was not unknown in Russia going into the 1993
campaign. He gained about 6 million votes (7.8%) in the June 1991
presidential elections, finishing third (behind Boris Yeltsin
and Nikolai Ryzhkov). Surveys carried out before and
shortly after the 1993 elections indicate that support for the LDPR was
highest in towns with a population of fewer than 100,000 (where support was
estimated at 40%). Zhirinovsky gained about a quarter of the vote in rural
areas and cities with up to 1,000,000 residents. Between 1991 and 1993, the
fear of unemployment and the uncertainty generated by the collapse of the
USSR and the Gaidar
economic reforms rose substantially in such areas.
Part III. The Man Ahead of His Legend
Zhirinovsky's campaign effectively
exploited the LDPR's niche, offering voters a "third path" between pre-1991
communists and and post-1991 liberal reformers. While criticizing the
Communist legacy, he boasted that the LDPR did not include any former
dissidents. With regard to the October 1993 events, he praised neither
those who barricaded themselves in the parliament nor those who ordered the
shelling of the building. Zhirinovsky found broad support among
"contra" voters: that is, the LDPR electorate did not so much vote for
Zhirinovsky as against the other political parties. Of the 13 parties on
the ballot, the LDPR was by far the best positioned to capitalize on such a
mood of protest.
But as the saying goes, you make your own luck, and Zhirinovsky's
skillful campaign contributed a great deal to the late swing in support for
his party. After the June 1991 presidential elections,
Zhirinovsky embarked
on a series of tours around the country between 1991 and 1994. Typically,
regional LDPR workers would inform him about corruption in the local
administration, so that he could denounce the most hated bosses by name,
demonstrating to audiences that he understood their problems.
Zhirinovsky
spoke to voters in "ordinary" language, and his rhetoric ingeniously
combined universally popular ideas such as lower-priced vodka with vague,
passionate appeals, side-stepping the more controversial aspects of his
party's program.
The authorities were unwitting accomplices to Zhirinovsky's late
surge, running a counterproductive negative campaign against the LDPR
leader in the state-owned media. This ill-fated strategy culminated in the
now notorious decision to broadcast a long documentary about
Zhirinovsky on
national television on the eve of the elections.
Zhirinovsky appreciated
this factor. He said, "I have told them that if you want to
ruin me, praise me every day. They are cursing me instead. People do
not like this life, and they hear who are criticizing.
And they begin to understand that I am the very person they need. Too much
negative information often has a positive effect."
Zhirinovsky thus gained far more media exposure than he could
afford to buy for himself. A study of 1993 campaign coverage carried out by
the Russian-American Press and Information Center showed that
the LDPR
spent less money on paid political advertising than each of the following
parties:
Russia's Choice, Sergei
Shakhrai's Party of Russian Unity and Concord,
Arkady Volsky's Civic
Union, and Anatoly Sobchak/Gavriil Popov's
Russian Movement for Democratic
Reforms. Yet the LDPR won nearly as many votes as all
of those parties combined.
Zhirinovsky praised Adolf Hitler's ideology of
National-Socialism in an
Izvestia article. One of his books, "The Last Thrust to
The South", advocates military aggression against Russia's
Southern neighbors as a way of achieving political stability
in the region. Vladimir Zhirinovsky made headlines by
threatening to take Alaska back from the United States, nuke
Japan, and flood Germany with radioactive waste.
The LDPR believes the strength of the Russian Armed
forces must be 3.5 million people, state
security bodies 1 million people, and Interior Forces 1 million people.
Zhirinovsky disagrees with those who assert that "Russia has no
adversaries," saying "Russia always has an adversary, today these are
the United States, NATO, China, and Turkey." In his April 26 interview
to an Estonian newspaper, Zhirinovsky promised to take
away independence of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. "You are
standing in our way to the seaports", Zhirinovsky said.
Part IV. Friends Abroad
Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia
has put more effort into explaining its foreign policy position than any other party, publishing a 63-page pamphlet on the
subject entitled Spitting on the West. In it, Zhirinovsky argues that
Russia should
focus on North-South relations rather than on East-West ties. He also suggests a new division of the globe into
spheres of interest among the great powers and insists that Iraq is a key strategic ally for Russia.
Zhirinovsky set aside campaign activities in order to be in Iraq during
an October 15, 1995, referendum on
Saddam Hussein's presidency.
Hussein
greeted the
LDPR leader at the airport, and Zhirinovsky later claimed that he came "to
support the democratic process" in Iraq
(Hussein
gained more than 99.9%
support in the referendum). (Earlier, during the Iraqi
occupation
of Kuwait, Zhirinovsky sent several volunteers from the
group known as "Falcons of Zhirinovsky" to Iraq to help
Saddam survive the
"Desert Storm".)
On October 20, 1995, while in Belgrade,
Zhirinovsky
signed a cooperation agreement between the LDPR and
Vojislav Seselj's Serbian Radical Party.
In February, 1996, Vladimir Zhirinovsky hailed
Pat Buchanan's
victory in the New Hampshire presidential primary.
He wrote a letter to
Buchanan, saying: ``You say that
Congress is 'Israeli-occupied territory.' We have the same
situation in Russia. So, to survive, we could set aside
places on U.S. and Russian territory to deport this small
but troublesome tribe.'' Zhirinovsky called
Buchanan
a ``brother in arms'' and wished him a ``convincing victory'' in
November's U.S. presidential ballot.
Buchanan rejected
Zhirinovsky's endorsement. Zhirinovsky then changed tone.
"I thought you were really defending the interests of your nation,"
said the letter, the text of which was released by Zhirinovsky's
office. "And you've turned out to be just like
Clinton and other corrupt politicians,
moved by greed and vanity, not by love for the fatherland."
Part V. The Campaign
The LDPR's "unique
uncorrupted status" among Russia's political parties remains a constant
theme in Zhirinovsky's speeches. His outburst during a Duma
delegation visit to
Kaliningrad was typical: "Everyone is corrupt, everyone is linked to
foreign intelligence services, mafias and so on. I am the only one clean."
With the advent of
Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's bloc Our Home is Russia,
Zhirinovsky has modified his approach: he now presents
the LDPR as the
"fourth force," the first three being the "radical democrats"
(Yegor Gaidar,
Grigory Yavlinsky,
Boris Fedorov), the "nomenklatura bloc" (Our Home Is
Russia), and "left-wing forces" (the Communist and
Agrarian parties). The LDPR leader called on women
to "Persuade your
husbands, friends and lovers to make the right choice in December. Your
intuition will help you to choose the only political party in Russia which
has never been splattered with blood."
Zhirinovsky's speech to the LDPR's
sixth party congress in Moscow on 2 September led some political obervers
to conclude that he had forsaken outrageous statements in favor of a more
sober-headed image.
In the speech, Zhirinovsky called for an end to discrimination on
the basis of
nationality and practically ignored the subject of the war in Chechnya
(though he did repeat his familiar call for expanding
the KGB to a
million employees).
In the closing days of the parliamentary election campaign, Vladimir Zhirinovsky has returned to his favorite theme of a conspiracy
to destroy Russia. On December 14, he told Radio Rossii, "NATO pilots are using the orthodox Serbs as practice for
their military skills...There will be another June 22 [the date on which the German invasion of the Soviet Union was
launched in 1941], when American soldiers will land on our air fields. They have already practiced in Ukraine. U.S.
paratroops landed in Odessa. Novorossiisk will be next . . . They have been studying our airports under the guise of
delivering humanitarian aid." He added: "These elections with their 43 parties are a myth to deceive you . . . There
are only two parties: the LDPR and the rest." He accused
the CIA of trying to kill
President Yeltsin, as part of "a
general, total war against Russia, which is being fought by the West, the USA, the CIA, Israel, and Mossad and our
own fifth column."
The seventh congress of the Liberal
Democratic Party of Russia nominated Vladimir Zhirinovsky
as a candidate in the presidential election of June 1996, Russian
media reported on January 10. In his 45-minute address, Zhirinovsky
asked
President Yeltsin to napalm all Chechen rebel bases and promised
to do so himself by July 1 if elected. He also said the LDPR
was the true winner of the Duma elections, since the apparent victory
of the Communist Party was only its "swan song."
On February 23, Zhirinovsky stated,
"It is possible to end the war in Chechnya within three days by
destroying bands and disarming by force those who do not want to
surrender arms."
Vladimir Zhirinovsky was officially registered on April 5.
The Central Electoral Commission
approved more than 1.4 million signatures of support for
Zhirinovsky. It said he had
registered his 1995 income as almost 29.5
million roubles -- more than $6,000 at the end-of-year rate.
"The LDPR has always been and remains an independent political
force which has spoken both against communists and democrats during
the six years of its existence," Zhirinovsky told an
Interfax parliamentary correspondent in the State Duma
on April 23.
Campaigning in Stavropol, on April 28, Zhirinovsky said that
the coming to power on June 16 of Democrats or Communists will be
"the same evil for the country." This can be avoided, he said, if
he is elected president.
Speaking about other presidential candidates, Zhirinovsky
described them as follows: Boris Yeltsin,
he said, "is tired already and he should have a rest,"
Gennady Zyuganov "is a mere party
functionary who thinks not about Russia but of his own interests,"
Grigory Yavlinsky "has made a grave
mistake in his youth, when he devoted himself to boxing in Lvov
because this affected his ability to think."
Speaking about the settlement of the situation in Chechnya,
Zhirinovsky said that if he is elected president,
he will issue an ultimatum to the militants demanding their full
capitulation within ten days. If they reject
the ultimatum, "Chechen villages and the entire Chechnya will be
covered with blue clouds of smoke from missiles and projectiles."
In his May 12 speech given in St. Petersburg, Vladimir
Zhirinovsky said, "I am the single honest contender for the post
of the president whom it is impossible to buy or to frighten." If
voters prefer Boris Yeltsin,
Zhirinovsky said, "then we are really a country if idiots and there is
nothing to do, this is the final diagnosis."
Zhirinovsky flopped in the first round (6%), finishing
fifth. He is out of the race.
Sources:
Materials by Laura Belin
and Scott Parrish of
Open Media Research Institute.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, The Last Thrust to the South.
S. Plekhanov, Zhirinovsky: Who Is He?
Izvestia
Maximov's
Interfax Daily News Archive.
Links to More Information on Vladimir Zhirinovsky
Russia Today - Zhirinovsky
"Russia's Zhirinovsky Celebrates Birthday in Style"
(Reuter, Apr. 25, 1996).
"Zhirinovsky Joins Russian Presidential Race"
(Reuter, Apr. 5, 1996).
"Zhirinovsky Targets Yeltsin" (Associated Press, Jan. 10, 1996).
"Zhirinovsky Ridicules Yeltsin In Push For
Power" (Reuter, Dec. 6, 1995).
"Retired General, Neofascist Vie To Defeat
Yeltsin" (Chicago Tribune, Dec. 3, 1995). (The
article also discusses Alexander Lebed.)
"Zhirinovsky Says He Will Seek Russian
Presidency" (Reuter, Nov. 28, 1995).
Back to Russian Presidential Elections-96 page.
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