Russian politician (1946–2022)
Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky (, , né Eidelstein, ; 25 April 1946 – 6 April 2022) was a Russian right-wing populist politician and the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) from its creation in 1992 until his death in 2022. He had been a member of the State Duma since 1993 and leader of the LDPR group in the State Duma from 1993 to 2000, and from 2011 to 2022.
He served as a deputy chairman of the State Duma from 2000 until 2011. He also worked as a delegate in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from 1996 to 2008. During his lifetime, Zhirinovsky ran in every single Russian presidential election apart from in 2004.
He was known for many controversies, as well as staunch advocacy for Russian military action against NATO.
Early life and background.
Zhirinovsky was born in Alma-Ata, the capital of the Kazakh SSR, modern-day Almaty, Kazakhstan. His father, Volf Isaakovich Eidelshtein, was a Ukrainian Jew from Kostopil in western Ukraine, and his mother, Alexandra Pavlovna (née Makarova), was an ethnic Russian from Mordovia. Zhirinovsky inherited his surname through Andrei Vasilievich Zhirinovsky, Alexandra's first husband. His paternal grandfather was a wealthy industrialist in Kostopil, who owned the largest sawmill in present-day Ukraine and was head of the local Jewish community. His grandfather's mill today has an income of $32 million a year, and over the years Zhirinovsky demanded that successive Ukrainian governments return it to him.
In July 1964, Zhirinovsky moved from Almaty to Moscow, where he began his studies in the Department of Turkish Studies, Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University (MSU), from which he graduated in 1969. Additionally, he studied law and international relations at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. Zhirinovsky entered military service in Tbilisi during the early 1970s and worked at posts in state committees and unions. He was awarded a Dr.Sci. in philosophy by MSU in 1998.
Although he participated in some reformist groups, Zhirinovsky was not well known in Soviet political developments during the 1980s. While he contemplated a role in politics, a nomination attempt for a seat as a People's Deputy in 1989 was quickly abandoned. In 1989, he served as a director of Shalom, a Jewish cultural organization; unknown in Jewish circles before, he is thought to have been invited to join by the Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public, but subsequently forcefully opposed its influence in the group.
Jewish heritage.
Four of Zhirinovsky's relatives were murdered during the Holocaust. Zhirinovsky's parents separated while he was still an infant. Abandoning the family, Zhirinovsky's father, Volf Eidelshtein, immigrated to Israel in 1949 (together with his new wife Bella and his brother), where he worked as an agronomist in Tel Aviv. Zhirinovsky's father was a member of the right-wing nationalist Herut party in Israel, and died in 1983 when he was run over by a bus near Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv.
Zhirinovsky did not find out the details of his father's life in Israel, or even the fact that he had died until many years later. Zhirinovsky said that he was an Orthodox Christian. In 1994, Zhirinovsky was presented with a birth certificate indicating his original name as Eidelshtein; he claimed that the document was faked.
Zhirinovsky denied his father's Jewish origins until "Ivan Close Your Soul", published in July 2001, in which he described how his father, Volf Isaakovich Eidelshtein, changed his surname from Eidelshtein to Zhirinovsky. He then wrote, "Why should I reject Russian blood, Russian culture, Russian land, and fall in love with the Jewish people only because of that single drop of blood that my father left in my mother's body?"
According to Zhirinovsky, "[His] mother was Russian and [His] father was a lawyer". Zhirinovsky later retracted the statement after researching his father's life in Israel. Discussing the statement, Zhirinovsky says: "Journalists mocked me: for saying I was the son of a lawyer. And I am really the son of an agronomist."
Discussing his father, Zhirinovsky said with tears in his eyes, "All my life I was looking for him. I believed that he was alive. I believed that someday he would find me... But there is a silver lining. I tried to imitate him... And I was able to achieve a certain position in life even without the support of my father."
Zhirinovsky's Israeli relatives included an uncle and cousin, meeting and befriending them for the first time only after discovering more about his family's story in Israel. Zhirinovsky's Israeli family did not know that he was a politician in Russia but responded warmly to his invitation to stay with him in Moscow.
Founding of the Liberal Democratic Party and 1991 presidential campaign.
In April 1991, Zhirinovsky, along with Vladimir Bogachev, took initiatives which led to the founding of the Liberal Democratic Party of the Soviet Union, which was the second registered party in the Soviet Union in 1990 and therefore the first officially sanctioned opposition party. According to the former CPSU Politburo member Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, this party started as a joint project of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) leadership and the KGB.
Yakovlev wrote in his memoirs that KGB director Vladimir Kryuchkov presented the project of the puppet LDPSU party at a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev and informed him about the selection of the LDPR leader. According to Yakovlev, the name of the party was chosen by KGB General Philipp Bobkov. Bobkov, however stated that he was against the creation of "Zubatov's pseudo-party under KGB control that would direct the interests and sentiments of certain social groups".
Zhirinovsky's first political breakthrough came in June 1991, when he came third in Russia's first presidential election, gathering more than six million votes (7.81% of the vote). Zhirinovsky's populist platform included promises to voters that if he elected, free vodka would be distributed to all. Similarly, he once remarked that if he were made president, underwear would be freely available during a political rally inside a Moscow department store.
1990s political career.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the party was renamed the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. In 1992 Zhirinovsky made contact with Jean-Marie Le Pen, the then-leader of France's Front National (FN). Eduard Limonov of the National-Bolshevik Party introduced the two men to each other and the FN later "provided logistical support [to the LDPR], including computers and fax machines". Zhirinovsky suggested establishing the International Centre of Right-wing Parties in Moscow and invited Le Pen to visit Moscow.
The Liberal Democratic Party was a significant force in Russian politics, particularly in the early 1990s. At the height of its success, the LDPR gathered 23% of the vote in the 1993 Duma elections and achieved a broad representation throughout Russia – it gained the most votes in 64 out of 87 regions. This fact encouraged Zhirinovsky to once again run for president, this time against incumbent Boris Yeltsin. The fact that Yeltsin's candidacy seemed seriously challenged by Russian nationalist groups and a rejuvenated Communist Party alarmed many outside observers, particularly in the Western world, who expressed concern that such developments posed a serious threat to the survival of Russian democracy, which was already in a very fragile state. During the 1990s, commentators described Zhirinovsky as fascist, having fascist tendencies, and a neo-fascist.
During a visit to France in 1994, he said "It's all over for you once you're Americanized and Zionized", and threw stones and dirt at Jewish protesters. Michael Specter, in a piece for "The New York Times" published in the same year, said Zhirinovsky's "party is not liberal, not democratic, and these days not much of a party". A 1995 BBC documentary showed Zhirinovsky telling the crowd at a campaign rally: "Help us, and you'll never have to vote again! I'm not saying, 'Vote for us and maybe in 20 years' time somebody will do something.' No, these will be the last elections! The last ones!"
The LDPR was less successful in the December 1995 legislative election.
While some observers believed that Zhirinovsky's controversial statements were efforts to drum up nationalist support as electoral fodder meant for domestic consumption, there was considerable dismay when in February 1996 (months before a presidential election) Zhirinovsky placed second in opinion polls, behind the Communist Party's Gennady Zyuganov and ahead of Yeltsin. In the election, Zhirinovsky placed fifth, with a 5.7% share in the first voting round.
In 1999, his party (running as the "Zhirinovsky Bloc") fared worse than it had in the previous election.
Putin-era political career.
Zhirinovsky ran in the 2000 presidential election.
His party's fortunes stabilized. In the 2003 election seeing an LDPR vote share of 11.7%, nearly double its 1999 vote share.
In 2004, Zhirinovsky declined to be nominated by the party, leaving that role to Oleg Malyshkin, who received 2% support from voters.
Zhirinovsky ran in the 2008 presidential election, promising a "police state" with summary executions.
Zhirinovsky again ran in the 2012 presidential election. On 6 February 2012, Zhirinovsky released a 30-second election video on the Internet that featured him on a sleigh harnessed to a black donkey representing the country. The video was widely discussed on the Internet, and received mostly negative reactions from Russian users. Organizations like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the World Society for the Protection of Animals (now known as World Animal Protection), as well as Russian animal rights activists, accused Zhirinovsky of cruelty to animals. He responded by saying that similar treatment is commonplace in the Arab world and that the donkey had been treated "better than many people".
Zhirinovsky was sanctioned by the UK government on 12 September 2014 in relation to actively supporting the use of Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea.
Zhirivinsky ran for president a final time in the 2018 election.
Views.
Zhirinovsky expressed admiration for the 1996 United States presidential election candidate Pat Buchanan, referring positively to Buchanan's comment labelling the United States Congress as "Israeli-occupied territory." Zhirinovsky said that both the United States and the Russian Federation were "under occupation" and that "to survive, we could set aside places on U.S. and Russian territories to deport this small but troublesome tribe."
Buchanan strongly rejected this endorsement, saying he would provide safe haven to persecuted minorities if Zhirinovsky were ever elected Russia's president, which elicited a harsh response by Zhirinovsky: "You soiled your pants as soon as you got my congratulations. Who are you afraid of, Zionists?"
Scholars of Russia consider him to have a neo-Eurasianist outlook. In addition expressing his concern for Turks and Caucasians displacing the Russian population from their settled territory, Zhirinovsky also advocated for all Chinese and Japanese people to be deported from the Russian Far East. During his 1992 visit to the United States, Zhirinovsky called for "the preservation of the white race" on television and warned that the white Americans were in danger of turning their country over to Black and Hispanic people.
In 2004, Zhirinovsky spoke at the City Court of Saint Petersburg, in reference to the assassination of Galina Starovoytova. After accusing Starovoytova of having worked for foreign intelligence, he said "I have always said openly that for democrats of pro-Western orientation there are only three roads: prison, the grave, and emigration."
On 23 August 2014, Zhirinovsky said Russia should abolish political parties, instead favouring an autocratic system in which the leader would be chosen by the "five to six thousand wisest people" in the country. He also proposed returning to the Imperial flag and anthem. The proposals were rejected by Putin.
In September 2016, inspired by Donald Trump's signature border wall proposal, Zhirinovsky proposed building a border wall and banning Muslims from entering Russia.
"The Last Break Southward".
In "The Last Break Southward" (1995), Zhirinovsky described his worldview, which is as follows: "Since the 1980s, I have elaborated a geopolitical conception—the last break southward, Russia's reach to the shores of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean." This is "really the solution for the salvation of the Russian nation ... It solves all problems and we gain tranquility.", Russia would rule the space "from Kabul to Istanbul," and the United States would feel safer with the Russian rule in the region because wars would cease. Perhaps some people in Kabul, Teheran, or Ankara would not like it, but many people would feel better. "The Persians and Turks would suffer a bit but all the rest would gain."
The "bells of the Orthodox Church must bell from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean,"