Faithful to his form, he shared the contempt for Ukraine and other former Soviet republics that became the hallmark of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2014, shortly after the overthrow of pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych by a nationalist pro-Western coup, Zirinovsky called all Ukrainians “nymphomaniacs” and urged two of his aides to “violently rape” a pregnant journalist. . a question he did not like. Two years later, he threatened former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who had become governor of the Ukrainian city of Odessa. “We will shoot all your governors, starting with Saakashvili, and then they will be scared. “And there will be a different situation in Europe and Ukraine … Let us target Berlin, Brussels, London and Washington,” he said. Despite such similar savage and insulting remarks, Zirinovsky was largely tolerated as a member of parliament because there was no way he or the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia could ever take power. The origin of his party was blurred. It was the first party to register after the change of the Soviet constitution in 1990 to abolish the monopoly of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. There was evidence that the KGB had formed the party and elected Zirinovsky as its leader in order to divide the electorate and prevent the real reformist parties from becoming the main opposition to the ruling Communists. Zirinovsky ran in the 1991 Russian presidential election and won 7% of the vote. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, center, in Russian army uniform at the unveiling of a memorial statue of Marshal Georgy Zhukov in Moscow, 1995. Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP In the 1993 election to the Russian parliament, the Duma, Zhirinovsky’s party did better. It needed a little less than 23% of the vote, emerging as the strongest party. By then, Zirinovsky’s role had changed. The Soviet Union had collapsed and Boris Yeltsin, the new Russian president, had introduced market economy reforms. Zirinovsky’s goal was to get votes from the Communists, who threatened to make a political comeback and defeat Yeltsin. Zhirinovsky denounced the economic reforms that Yeltsin and his ministers had said needed shock therapy to end food subsidies and state-owned industry, but that had led to a decline in the living standards of most Russians. He also attacked the rise of a new class of the super-rich, the oligarchs, in favor of Yeltsin. He portrayed himself as a populist “third force” who could offer the Russians hope where the first communists under Gorbachev and later the reformists under Yeltsin had failed. In addition to his political message, Zirinovsky’s earthly qualities appealed to many Russians. On TV he was fast and smart in contrast to Yeltsin’s slow and boring dictionary, which often became more hesitant as a result of excessive vodka consumption. His rise as a political star, if never a serious holder of power, was astonishing, especially since his father, Wolf Isaakovich Eidelstein, was a Jew from Kostopil in western Ukraine. It was rare for Jews to become politicians in the Soviet Union. His mother, Alexandra Pavlovna (younger Makarova), was of Russian descent from the Mordovia region. The couple divorced when Vladimir was still an infant and in 1949 his father immigrated to Israel, where he worked as an agronomist. Vladimir then took the surname of his mother’s first wife, Andrei Vasilyevich Zirinovsky, who had died a little over a year before she married Eidelstein. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, addressing members of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, in Moscow, 2020. Photo: Alexander Nemenov / AFP / Getty Images In 1964, Zirinovsky became a student of the Department of Turkish Studies at the Institute of Asian and African Studies of Moscow State University. After graduating in 1969, he completed his compulsory military service in Georgia. He later received a law degree and worked in various positions for state committees and trade unions. In 1989, he served as director of Shalom, a Jewish cultural organization. It is unclear why he was chosen to lead Russia’s new Liberal Democratic Party. He downplayed his Jewish origins, telling reporters with a smile: “My mother was Russian and my father was a lawyer.” He described himself as an Orthodox Christian. He dealt with the anti-immigration case, expressing concern that people from the Caucasus were deporting Native Russians to Russian cities. He wanted all the Chinese and Japanese expelled. During a television interview during a visit to the United States in 1992, he called for “the preservation of the white race” and warned that white Americans were in danger of surrendering their country to blacks and Hispanics. His views on foreign policy were designed to shock. He described them in a 1995 book, The Last Break Southward. Russia should expand its reach to the shores of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, he wrote. Russia would rule the region “from Kabul to Istanbul.” “This is really the solution for the salvation of the Russian nation,” he wrote. He later backed the US-led invasion of Alaska, which would later become “a great place to put the Ukrainians”. He called on the Russians to secede from Estonia and Latvia and recommended the use of regular nuclear weapons against Chechnya. In the last 25 years of his life, few people took him seriously as it was clear that he would never be appointed Minister of Government. He was survived by his wife, Galina Lebedeva, and three children, Igor, Oleg and Anastasia. Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky, politician, born April 25, 1946. died April 6, 2022
