Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky , 1946-, Russian politician, b. Kazakh SSR (now Kazakhstan). Born into a poor family, he had a mediocre record as a student in Moscow and as a lawyer. In 1989 he was a founder of the Liberal Democratic party, an extreme right-wing Russian nationalist group that has advocated restoring Russia to its previous imperial borders (including Finland and Alaska), and the following year he became its chairman. In 1991 he and his party finished a distant third behind Boris Yeltsin in the Russian Republic's presidential election. Zhirinovsky later defended the failed... Read more