Copyright 1998 ABC-CLIO, Inc.  
Kaleidoscope

COUNTRY: Russia

PERSON: Vladimir Zhirinovsky

HEADLINE: Biographies

 


The leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) since 1991, Vladimir Zhirinovsky rose to political prominence as a demagogue promising redress for Russia's fall from superpower status. In angry rhetoric, he has vowed (among other things) to restore Russia's imperial borders, take back Alaska from the United States, conquer Turkey, repartition Poland, and purge minorities as "America did with the Indians and Germany did with the Jews."  


Born on Apr 26, 1946 in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan to an attorney and a cleaning woman, Zhirinovsky endured a childhood of poverty and neglect, according to his autobiography. But other sources contradict Zhirinovsky's remembrances (suggesting a calculated cult of personality campaign) and point to a childhood of relative privilege in the backwater Soviet republic where the young Zhirinovsky spent 11 years at a prestigious school subsidized by top Soviet Communist Party functionaries and the KGB (secret police). In 1964 he attended the Oriental Languages Institute at Moscow State University, where he studied Turkish and English, then traveled to Turkey in 1969 for a job as a translator. He was expelled from Turkey that same year on suspicion of being a KGB agent. After a short stint in the Soviet Red Army, he returned to Moscow in 1972 and held a series of jobs as a lawyer and legal adviser to a publishing company until he launched himself into politics in 1987 under the democratic reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev. By 1991 Zhirinovsky registered the LDP as his own party, effectively coopting the name from a fledgling party of which he had been elected chairperson and from which he was expelled in 1990.  


Zhirinovsky placed third in presidential elections held in 1991, capturing just under 8% of the vote. In a shocking upset to reform-minded moderate parties, the ultranationalist LDP secured 64 of 225 party preference seats in the State Duma in December 1993 legislative elections, more than any other party. In June 1996 presidential elections, he placed fifth behind the liberal reformer Grigory Yavlinsky. While often painted as a buffoon or clown by his many critics, it is clear that Zhirinovsky commands an undeniably popular mandate as he and his LDP have gathered mainstream backing from young businesspeople and postcommunist apparatchiks in addition to his core support from military officers, veterans, and former communists.  


[Sources: Newsmakers; The New York Times; Time]

LOAD-DATE: February 18, 1998
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