Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 15, 1993 TAG: 9312150307
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SERGE SCHMEMANN THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Long
His posters show the 47-year-old lawyer wearing a badly knotted tie and a puffy scowl over slogans such as, "I'll raise Russia from her knees," or "I'll not allow anyone to offend Russians."
His speeches are the stuff of barroom bravado: When he gets Alaska back from the United States, he'll make sure the Americans compensate Russia for the natural resources they used up. Give the Kurile Islands back to Japan? They'll forget about their claim to the land when he sends Russian warships cruising off Hokkaido.
He dreams of Russian soldiers massing for the last great crusade - "The Last Play for the South," as he calls his autobiography published this year - a vast drive to Russia's "predestined" borders on the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
His autobiography reads like a parody of Dostoyevsky's "Insulted and Injured": He remembers every childhood slight, the names of boys who beat him. He describes an unrelentingly miserable childhood in a communal apartment; he seems to revel in describing humiliations.
"I was denied the most elementary family coziness, human warmth," he wrote. "Life itself forced me to suffer from the very day, the moment, the instant of my birth. Society could give me nothing."
Born in Kazakhstan on April 26, 1946, and educated in Moscow, Zhirinovsky spends ardent pages in his book seeking to prove that he is a Russian. "Vladimir" is a Russian name, he says. His town and building were peopled by Russians; all his relatives - except for the husbands of two distant aunts - are Russians. The only problem is the name of the father who died shortly after he was born, Volf. The name, Zhirinovsky acknowledges, is "not so familiar to a Russian ear."
It is from such defensive nationalism and remembered slights that Zhirinovsky shaped the world view that met with so powerful a response from a confused, humiliated and impoverished nation.
It was a woefully familiar pattern in the 20th century, and shouts of "fascist!" quickly sounded from the ranks of democrats.
"A situation similar to that in Weimar Germany" confronts Russia's tender democracy, bemoaned Deputy Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, whose front-running Russia's Choice Party, loyal to President Boris Yeltsin, was humiliated by Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party.
"Fascism and communism are not synonymous," warned Gaidar. "Fascism is what comes after disappointment in communism. This historic risk cannot be underrated."
It is too early to judge whether Zhirinovsky qualifies as a fascist, but his party is neither liberal nor democratic. It was formed in 1990, one of the very first political parties to register legally in the Soviet Union. But before long, it became purely a platform for Zhirinovsky and his menu of quick solutions, nationalist bluster and alluring promises.
One paper called it "autocratic populism." He was the little man bashing the big guys. He played to deep-seated resentments of the Communists who had enslaved Russians, of the "democrats" who had impoverished them, of the Americans who were exploiting them, of the Georgians who were robbing them.
He promised protection for the poor, security for the rich, honor and dignity for the military, bread for the hungry, a peaceful life for the old, and holidays in Cuba for all.
He vowed to make Russia great, feared and respected again. His symbol was a falcon over a Russia that extended from Alaska to Finland. He would reconstitute a Russia stretched to its imperial borders. He would stop closing down military industries and would resume exporting arms to old clients such as Iraq.
In fact, while President Boris Yeltsin was acquiescing in the American-led economic sanctions against Iraq, Zhirinovsky traveled there and met with President Saddam Hussein.
"I am a moderate in all things. Only on the question of statehood am I firm," he declared in his book.
It was the stuff Russians increasingly wanted to hear as their world fell apart. The first sign of Zhirinovsky's appeal came in Russia's presidential race in 1991, when he came in third, behind Yeltsin and the former Soviet prime minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov.
The confusion and dislocation of Gaidar's economic reforms turned out to be a gold mine. Zhirinovsky lay low when Yeltsin disbanded the old Congress of People's Deputies, but when the campaign for a new Parliament began, he emerged with an ample war chest and probably the best understanding of the potency of television.
His rapid-fire delivery and unambiguous pledges drew more attention than the academic and stilted speeches of his opponents, and his ratings soon began to rise.
No demographic study has yet been published that maps out his followers. But interviews and samplings showed strong support among soldiers and sailors, among disaffected youths, pensioners, workers in military industry - among those, who, like the young Zhirinovsky, felt rejected, abused, humiliated and impotent as their country tumbled from great power to economic cripple.
"How do I see Russia?" Zhirinovsky wrote in his book. "I do not see Russia weeping. I see Russia proud, Russia in which the proud traditions of her army will be again realized, where again talented Russian engineers and businessmen will create the latest technology."
Cox News Service contributed information to this story.
\ ZHIRINOVSKY\ WHAT HE'S SAID
IMPERIAL RUSSIA: "The Liberal Democratic Party stands for the restoration of the Russian state in the borders of the former U.S.S.R." - From his party's platform.
DICTATORSHIP: "I say it quite plainly: When I come to power, there will be a dictatorship. I will beat the Americans in space. I will surround the planet with our space stations so that they'll be scared of our space weapons. I don't care if they call me a fascist or a Nazi. Workers in Leningrad told me, `Even if you wear five swastikas, we'll vote for you all the same. You promise a clear plan.' There's nothing like fear to make people work better. The stick, not the carrot. I'll do it all without tanks on the streets. Those who have to be arrested will be arrested quietly at night. I may have to shoot 100,000 people, but the other 300 million will live peacefully. I have the right to shoot these 100,000. I have this right as president." - Remarks made in late 1991 at the Kremlin.
NUCLEAR WASTE: "I'll start by squeezing the Baltics and other small nations. I don't care if they are recognized by the U.N. I'm not going to invade them or anything. I'll bury radioactive waste along the Lithuanian border and put up powerful fans and blow the stuff across the border at night. I'll turn the fans off during the day. They'll all get radiation sickness. They'll die of it. When they either die out or get down on their knees, I'll stop it. I'm a dictator. What I'm going to do is bad, but it'll be good for Russia. The Slavs are going to get anything they want if I'm elected." - Remarks made at a parliamentary session at the Kremlin shortly after the August 1991 Soviet coup.
THE UNITED STATES: He called it the "empire of evil" earlier this year.
IRAQ: "Interference in Iraqi affairs is inadmissible. . . . We are very favorably disposed to everything that is going on in Iraq."
YUGOSLAVIA: "We side with the Serbs. Our position is clear. The Serbs must be saved. They are our Orthodox brethren."
by CNB