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25.10.07
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The Unsinkable Vladimir Volfovich
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By Alexander Kolesnichenko
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“Novye Izvestiya”, special to Russia Profile
The LDPR Leader Remains Popular Despite – or Because of – his Antics
President Vladimir Putin’s decision to head United Russia’s election list complicates things for Vladimir Zhirinovsky and for his grossly misnamed Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR). If LDPR makes it into the Duma, United Russia might not have a constitutional majority – two-thirds of the 450 deputies. Nevertheless, the leader of the LDPR, which was founded in 1989 during the last years of the Soviet Union, has been afloat in the world of politics long enough to have already outlasted two presidents – Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin – and he may outlast a third one. Zhirinovsky regularly starts brawls in the Duma, hands out money during rallies and demonstrations and promises, among other things, to decrease the price of vodka and find a “personal man” for every single woman. And he invariably gets sent back to the Duma, bringing along with him a group of shady businessmen who obviously paid for their spots on the party list. Political scientists explain LDPR’s success by the fact that voting for this party has become a form of protest against a regime that has forgotten about its citizens.
“Zhirinovsky’s voters are those who want to spit in the face of the whole political class,” says Alexei Makarkin, Deputy Director of the Center for Political Technologies, a Moscow-based think tank.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky became involved in politics in 1988 at the age of 42. At that time, he headed the legal department of Mir Publishers, and, unlike the majority of Russia’s political figures, was not a member of the Communist Party.
“I always used to hate my jobs. First it was the Committee for Defense of Peace. I had to deal with old hags from abroad who fight for peace. Then it was the Trade Union Movement School, then a law firm – property claims, alimony payments. And, finally, Mir Publishers. Four jobs – and all four were unloved,” he says.
Then, in 1989 Gorbachev launched multi-candidate regional elections, and Zhirinovsky, who was not a party member, finally got his chance. The first election in his life ended in a fiasco: in the race for the post of director of Mir Publishers, Zhirinovsky received only 30 votes out of 600. He went on to lose in elections to the national Congress of People’s Deputies, the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies, even to the congress of deputies of a district soviet. At that point, the man with a last name so comical that he did not even give it to his son, realized that he couldn’t get anywhere alone, and started looking for a team. First he participated in the constituent assembly of Valeria Novodvorskaya’s Democratic Union, which was created by dissidents and those fighting against the Soviet regime. He left them for the Society for Jewish Culture. He abandoned the Jews to join the National Monarchists, and from the National Monarchists he ran to the Social Democrats; and then, finally, in the end of 1989, he joined a group initiative to found the Liberal Democratic Party.
Zhirinovsky quickly became the party’s sole leader. He shocked the Soviet philistines by screaming from the rostrum and insulting journalists during press conferences; he even beat up a female journalist once. Soviet newspapers printed readers’ letters demanding that he be examined in a psychiatric clinic. In June 1991, Vladimir Zhirinovsky entered the presidential election with campaign slogans advocating strengthening the Soviet Union and bringing down vodka prices. He managed to win 8 percent of the vote, which left him in third place after Boris Yeltsin and Communist Party candidate Nikolai Ryzhkov. And in 1993, he became the principle victor in Russia’s first State Duma elections – his party received 23 percent of the vote, 1.5 times more than was earned by the pro-government liberal block, Russia’s Choice.
“Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s victory in the 1993 Duma election was aided by the ‘wandering electorate,’ the people who had become disappointed in both the Communists, who were pulling the country back into the past, and the reforming democrats,” says Alexander Oslon, director of the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM).
Since then, the LDPR has been a fixture in the parliament. In the State Duma, Vladimir Zhirinovsky distinguished himself by participating in at least one fight every session. Deputies from the LDPR faction and their aides regularly fell victim to assassination attempts, because many of them were connected to the criminal world and needed the Duma seats only to obtain the immunity privilege granted to deputies.
“A spot on the LDPR party list in the 1995 Duma election cost $1 million. And according to my information, one person even paid $1.5 million,” says Alexander Vengerovsky, who was first deputy chairman of LDPR during 1994-1996.
Now the prices have increased.
“A year ago I was offered a spot in the future LDPR Duma faction for $3 million dollars,” admits Anton Bakov, a current Duma deputy in the United Russia faction.
Zhirinovsky denies selling spots on LDPR lists. “We never sold anything. We don’t call anyone to join us. Our party activity strictly follows all the world standards,” he said.
Economically, LDPR is organized much like a family business. Vladimir Zhirinovsky is personally in charge of all party financial transactions, and all the party property is registered in his name or the name of one of his relatives.
“Vladimir Volfovich’s sister owns 300 UAZ vehicles all over the country. And I don’t remember how many apartments and cars I own already. We have branch offices in every town, in every district, and in every location we need offices and transportation. We can’t register it all in the names of simple party members, can we?” admits 35-year-old Igor Lebedev, Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s son, who has been the head of the LDPR faction in the State Duma since 1999.
Igor Lebedev is not a public figure. He rarely takes the floor during State Duma sessions and, unlike his father, has never participated in such activities as dancing onstage or ice swimming. The only thing known about him is that he has never worked anywhere except in the LDPR machinery and that he collects expensive German cars, which his family’s income luckily allows him to do.
“Vladimir Zhirinovsky has become the highest-paid performer in the country, except for, maybe, Alla Pugacheva,” says political scientist Dmitry Oreshkin.
Calling the LDPR leader a performer is not accidental. While other politicians attract voters by promising to improve their lives, Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s speeches and appearances are always a show.
“If a Slavic man today has one wife and three lovers, one of whom is a prostitute and another is a single mother, it is much worse than when a man openly supports two, three or four families,” said Zhirinovsky, advocating a proposal to allow polygamy in Russia. When the country was threatened with an epidemic of the avian flu, the LDPR leader suggested arming the country’s male population who would then shoot all the migrating birds. Later this speech was used to create a music video. And on the day of the last State Duma elections in 2003, he almost started a fight with the chairman of a local election committee, who asked him to leave the polling station and speak to journalists outside. In reply, Zhirinovsky asked the chairman to show some identification, and when he failed to present any document, Zhirinovsky called him an impostor.
“Zhirinovsky is more a performer than a politician. The most important thing for him is to put on a nice show, to make the average citizen look up at the TV screen, attracting him by some unexpected act that suddenly changes the gray everyday routine, if only for a few minutes,” says Yana Dubeykovskaya, director of the Center for Applied Psychoanalysis. “The psyche of the masses is full of problems and suppressed by fears. People look for figures that are able to pull all the negative projections to themselves. And this is when Zhirinovsky appears, always ready to act out and get in trouble.”
“I am not an actor or a performer; I am in no way connected to art and culture. I don’t have any craving to become a singer. It is the actual performers who envy me, because I can react so quickly and create a whole discussion. They have endless rehearsals, and still their shows are a flop. And to me, everything comes naturally. I speak in public, and people start crying or applauding and come to ask me for an autograph. And when a professional entertainer walks down the street, nobody recognizes him,” says Zhirinovsky.
Although the name of Zhirinovsky’s party includes the words “liberal” and “democratic,” it has nothing to do with either liberalism or democracy in the Western sense of those words. Zhirinovsky’s followers call themselves “democrat patriots,” while the party’s platform is just as contradictory as its chieftain’s speeches. In particular, the LDPR proposes changing the title of Russia’s leader from “President” to “Supreme Ruler”; they also advocate reuniting the territories of the Soviet Union; eliminating ethnic autonomous regions; restoring a planned economy; distributing free land to anyone who wants it; eliminating entrance exams to colleges and universities; and entering into a military alliance with Iran, Libya and China against the United States.
During the last State Duma election campaign, the LDPR’s slogan was: “We are for the poor, we are for the Russians,” but this did not stop Vladimir Zhirinovsky from bringing Dagestani billionaire Suleiman Kerimov, one of the richest men in Russia, into the parliament. The party’s slogan for the upcoming election is: “When the Russians are well – everyone is well.”
According to Makarkin from the Center for Political Technologies, Zhirinovsky is only playing to his audience. “Zhirinovsky’s voters are irritated marginals who are equally disgusted by all other politicians,” he says. “Zhirinovsky uses their stereotypes and phobias, such as the fear of the West, insulted pride and the desire to live in a strong, powerful state. He is also the political choice of provincial youth, who think that the LDPR leader is the coolest and funniest guy out there.”
Anton Nosik, a Russian Internet mogul who writes about the political situation, mostly agrees. “Zhirinovsky’s main rhetoric technique is simultaneous declaration of mutually exclusive, yet always very radical slogans; thus every non-critical thinker, whether he’s an anti-Semite, a Cypriot Greek or a Seljuk Turk, can find something consonant to his internal delirium,” says Nosik.
Zhirinovsky explains his political success by the fact that he is a natural-born politician while all other party leaders are people who ended up in politics by accident.
“They never planned to become politicians; they were average bureaucrats. And politics was a dream for me. I’ve dreamed about it since childhood, although I realized that my dream would not be possible under the Soviet regime. A deputy’s job is the most interesting one out there. You travel around the country. Every day you meet new people, you find new projects, you go through all your emotions. I step out of the State Duma building and people come up to me with letters and complaints. And there’s a huge rally, or it’s just some disabled man who stopped me in the street – this is exactly what my job is,” says the LDPR leader.
In the last State Duma election, LDPR won 11.5 percent of the vote. However, all the surveys carried out by the Public Opinion Foundation and the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) in the last few months have shown that only 5 percen of voters are likely to choose the LDPR - a major problem since a party needs at least 7 percent to enter the Duma. Recently the LDPR faction has been abandoned by former presidential candidate Oleg Malyshkin; Yegor Solomatin, the deputy head of the LDPR Duma faction; and by one of the Russian Nationalist leaders Nikolai Kuryanovich. Kerimov “transferred” to United Russia. And just recently, at the end of the summer, Alexei Mitrofanov, who was always unofficially considered as the second most important person in the LDPR, joined Just Russia. Mitrofanov declared that the time of small parties has passed, and he considers the LDPR to be one of them.
“Mitrofanov’s actions are a reaction to ongoing Kremlin discussions about whether we need the LDPR in the next State Duma. This party used to serve as a counterweight to the communists, but now, with the new Just Russia, the LDPR is no longer necessary,” says Andrei Ryabov, a member of the Carnegie Moscow Center’s expert council.
However, not everyone agrees with this prognosis.
“It’s too early to write LDPR off. Only this party and United Russia were able to increase their popularity ratings in August,” says Valery Fedorov, the general director of VTsIOM.
Meanwhile, Zhirinovsky has managed to surprise the public once again, naming Andrei Lugovoi, a businessman, former FSB officer and a suspect in the Alexander Litvinenko murder, as one of the top three people on the LDPR party list.
Zhironovsky justified the decision by saying: “He is a lone hero who is being attacked by the whole country. They order him to come to Britain so that they can certainly convict and imprison him there. The patriotically inclined voters will support him.”
Zhirinovsky is also optimistic about the results of the upcoming election.
“We expect to end up with 15 percent. In 1993, we had 23 percent, but the situation is changing. We do not have enough finances, new parties are appearing on the scene, and people vote for them because they hope for at least some change,” he says.
A few weeks ago, a 5-foot-tall statue of Vladimir Zhirinovsky was installed in the LDPR waiting room in the State Duma. Some call it the smaller version of the monument to himself he plans to install in the center of Moscow when he becomes the president of Russia – or should we say, Supreme Ruler.
Alexander Kolesnichenko is a political correspondent for Novye Izvestia. |
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