Zhirinovsky, Vladimir Volfovich

ZHIRINOVSKY, VLADIMIR VOLFOVICH

(b. 1946), founder and leader of the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia, deputy speaker of the State Duma.

Born in Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan, Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky was the son of a Jewish lawyer from Lviv and a Russian woman. After his father's death he was raised by his mother. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1969, then served in the army in Tiflis, where he worked in military intelligence. From 1973 to 1991 Zhirinovsky worked at various jobs in Moscow and at night attended law school at Moscow State University. In the 1980s he directed legal services for Mir publishing.

With the coming of perestroika Zhirinovsky began his political career. In 1988 he founded the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), the second legal party registered in the Soviet Union. In 1991 he ran for the presidency of Russia and received 6 million votes. Emphasizing populism and great-power chauvinism and denouncing corruption, he built up a loyal party organization. In the December 1993 parliamentary elections, Zhirinovsky

parlayed discontent with Boris Yeltsin into a plurality in the State Duma. In the complex election system for individual candidates and party slates, the LDPR received 23 percent of the total vote, fifty-nine of the party seats in the Duma, and five individual seats.

In the December 1995 Duma elections, the LDPR vote fell sharply to 11.1 percent, and the party won only fifty-five seats in the parliament, well behind the resurgent Communist Party. In 1996 Zhirinovsky ran for president again, but this time he finished fifth (5.7 percent) in the first round of voting and was eliminated.

In the Duma elections of 1999 the LDPR drew6.4 percent of the vote and got nineteen seats. Zhirinovsky was elected deputy speaker of the Duma. In the 2000 presidential election he ran again and drew only 2.7 percent of the vote, or a little more than 2 million out of the 75 million who voted. Zhirinovsky supported both the first and the second Chechen War. An acute student of mass media, he remained in the national spotlight by combining outlandish behavior, populist appeal, and authoritarian nationalism. His antics included fist fights on the floor of the Duma and throwing orange juice on Boris Nemtsov during a television debate. He made headlines by threatening to take Alaska back from the United States and to flood the Baltic republics with radioactive waste. Zhirinovsky has called for a Russian dash to the south that would end "when Russian soldiers can wash their boots in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean."

See also: liberal democratic party

bibliography

Fraser, Graham, and Lancelle, George. (1994). Absolute Zhirinovsky: A Transparent View of the Distinguished Russian Statesman. New York: Penguin Books.

Kartsev, Vladimir, with Todd Bludeau. (1995). Zhirinovsky! New York: Columbia University Press.

Kipp, Jacob W. (1994)."The Zhirinovsky Threat." Foreign Affairs 73 (3):72-86.

Zhirinovsky, Vladimir. (1996). My Struggle: The Explosive Views of Russia's Most Controversial Public Figure. New York: Barricade Books.

Jacob W. Kipp