Quote from Timothy Fitzpatrick on April 16, 2022, 17:48

By Lenta.ru
April 6, 2022 Anno Domini

The whole history of modern Russian politics is connected with the name of Vladimir Zhirinovsky . For more than 30 years, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party remained in the center of attention of society and the press - he scandalized, swore, not embarrassed in expressions, went through everything and everything that he did not like. The leader of the Liberal Democrats stigmatized both liberals and democracy, spoke from the pages of Playboy about hundreds of women and surrounded himself with young party members. On February 2, Zhirinovsky was admitted to the hospital after being infected with the omicron strain of the coronavirus and spent more than two months there. They could not help the elderly politician - on April 6 he died. For what Vladimir Volfovich was loved and hated - in the material "Lenta.ru".

Law abiding citizen

Once, a man in a fur hat and a sheepskin coat with an unremarkable appearance appeared on Soviet television screens. Standing next to the door of a typical Soviet institution, he gave an interview in which he calmly talked about the right things - about the law, about democratic elections, about the situation in the country - calmly and completely toothless, within the framework of the conjuncture of the moment and the then party line. The same one - the Communist, Soviet Union. Perhaps it would be difficult for Vladimir Zhirinovsky from the 2020s to recognize that Zhirinovsky from the late 1980s.

And even at the first congress of the LDPSS in 1990, boring words like “a certain justification”, “we are direct successors”, “moderately centrist direction” and other phrases from which you start to yawn sounded from his lips. He must have understood that too.

Zhirinovsky was drawn to big politics - back in the late 1980s, Vladimir Volfovich joined the coordinating council of the Democratic Union, but he did not stay there for long and later joined the initiative group of politician Vladimir Bogachev .

By that time, Zhirinovsky had already written his program, which was first called the "Program of a Candidate for People's Deputies of the USSR", and then the "Program of the Social Democratic Party of Russia." It also became the program of the Liberal Democratic Party of the Soviet Union created by Bogachev. Two things that changed in it - the words "social democratic" were replaced by "liberal democratic", and leader Bogachev was replaced by leader Zhirinovsky. Bogachev also became the coordinator of the party.

After that, Zhirinovsky suddenly began to receive remarkable attention from the state press and television. There were rumors that the LDPSS was a KGB project, but the party leader vehemently denied this, both then and subsequently. Nevertheless, precisely because of this, on October 6, 1990, at the II Extraordinary Party Congress, Bogachev raised the issue of expelling Zhirinovsky, but two days later Vladimir Volfovich himself expelled Bogachev. So he staked out for himself the right of absolute leadership.

Rumors of cooperation with the KGB were fueled by Zhirinovsky’s unexpected support for the GKChP during the August 1991 putsch - then the members of the committee (including high-ranking security officials) removed Gorbachev and tried to seize power in order, as they believed, to save the USSR. As the philosopher and historian Pyotr Ryabov said in an interview with Lente.ru , then he “for the first and last time” saw a man who actively supported the putschists. According to him, the leader of the LDPSS climbed onto the balcony of a hotel near Manezhnaya Square in Moscow and loudly shouted slogans in support of the State Emergency Committee.

When the dust settled and the putschists were captured, Zhirinovsky’s party received a warning from the Ministry of Justice for supporting Zhirinovsky’s actions of the GKChP, and immediately the LDPSS flogged itself in a revealing way: members of the Supreme Council, headed by Vladimir Volfovich, reprimanded themselves. Nevertheless, later the party leader never expressed regrets that he supported the putschists, arguing that the State Committee for the State of Emergency was created in accordance with the law, which means that for a law-abiding Soviet citizen, support for this formation was completely justified.

Russian from the Eidelstein family

In 1992, after the collapse of the USSR, for obvious reasons, the LDPSS was renamed the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR). And it was in the early 1990s that its ideology finally took shape. The program theses quite clearly stated that its main task is "the revival and strengthening of the Russian state within the borders of the USSR for 1977." It was also mentioned there about the “world conspiracy against the Slavic people”, according to which they plan to surround Russia with “Chinese, Muslims, Germans, Balts”, and then “completely put an end to the Russians”.

The policy statement of Zhirinovsky himself was his book “The Last Throw to the South”, published in 1993, in which he described the need for a “peacekeeping campaign” of the Russian army to the Indian Ocean in order to “cut through” the threat lurking in the Middle East and show everyone the geopolitical significance "great power" - that is, Russia.

Such statements in those years were perceived by the liberal public quite negatively, it came to the point that Zhirinovsky was called "Hitler in a cap", since it was this headgear that became his signature accessory, like, say, Lenin's cap.

Nevertheless, the society, tired of both the communists and the liberals, quite liked the bravura and ridiculously contradictory rhetoric of the LDPR leader. And if so, why not vote for such a cheerful comrade - at least we'll laugh. And the people voted: in 1993, Zhirinovsky's party received 22.92 percent of the vote, becoming the largest in the first convocation of the State Duma .

The leader of the Liberal Democratic Party perfectly felt the moment and realized that shocking, populist statements on the verge of a foul and absurd statements, and not only about politics, but also about himself, work much better than a well-thought-out and consistent policy (thought-out and consistent for 70 years, the Russians have eaten).

One of them was recalled to Zhirinovsky during Alexander Lyubimov 's TV show "One on One" by politician Boris Nemtsov , who in 1995 was the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region . Nemtsov opened a Playboy magazine in front of the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, in which an interview with the leader of the Liberal Democrats was published. Nemtsov pointed to lines that said that Zhirinovsky slept with 200 women, after which he promised to cure him of syphilis with "two injections." At the same moment, Zhirinovsky grabbed a glass of juice and splashed Nemtsov in the face. A fight almost started, but Lyubimov managed to separate the opponents.

Zhirinovsky also demonstrated his temper in the State Duma, loudly blaming everyone in a row for everything. His speeches often ended with exclamations like "Scum! Scoundrels!”, and his cry “Definitely!” became a cliché. It was enough for any comedian to say this word, and it immediately became clear to everyone who was being parodied.

Zhirinovsky was so loud that he was noticed in the West. There, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party was predicted the future of the dictator of Russia. They feared that such a person would certainly unleash a third world war. He was (and still is) called a “fanatic Russian nationalist,” and his image formed the basis of Russian nationalist dictator Dmitry Arbatov, who, in the 2001 video game Ghost Recon, written by writer Tom Clancy , executes almost all of Zhirinovsky’s plans.

Calling him a Russian nationalist is, of course, quite ridiculous, because the name of Vladimir Volfovich's father is Eidelstein. Zhirinovsky was never shy about his Jewish roots, although he did not advertise. According to him, he really uttered the famous phrase that his mother was Russian and his father was a lawyer, but he clarified that he simply answered a question from the audience, written on a piece of paper, where he was asked about the nationality of his mother and his father's profession.

Till the last breath

The fears of those who were afraid that in the person of Zhirinovsky Russia would soon receive, if not a new Hitler, then definitely Mussolini, did not come true. Already in the elections of the State Duma of the second convocation, the leadership in it was seized by the Communist Partyof the Russian Federation , and only 11 percent of voters voted for the Liberal Democratic Party. However, Zhirinovsky and his party occupied their niche and have never lost it since then, hovering around the ten percent mark.

Most likely, this suited Vladimir Volfovich quite well: he definitely did not live in poverty and, as a shocking person, always remained the object of close attention of the public.

At the same time, Zhirinovsky did not change himself - that is, his statements did not become softer. Rather, on the contrary. A hit was a video from an episode of his visit to Baghdad in 2002, where he, clearly in a very high spirits, delivered a message to US President George W. Bush , urging the "cowboy" not to joke with the war.

There are other guys here. This is not Germany, this is not Afghanistan. George, your soldiers will be torn to pieces here. 250,000 hand-picked Iraqi soldiers! They will destroy everything. They will cover the entire desert in one hour!

The leader of the Liberal Democratic Party generously flavored all this bravado with obscene language.

He did not miss the opportunity to pin up his past and current political opponents. In addition to ritual references to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation for any reason and statements that the communists are to blame for any trouble, Zhirinovsky always found an opportunity to talk about the first president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin , a native of the Urals.

“The morons live there. From Perm to Yekaterinburg , it's terrible. This population is retarded. It may be healthy, but if you take it by intellect, then it is stupid to the point, ”the politician said in a 2012 interview with the Top Secret channel. Later, of course, he said that he had in mind not all the inhabitants of the Urals, but only specific individuals, but you can’t erase words from a song, and the Internet remembers everything.

Zhirinovsky regularly put forward his candidacy for the presidency of Russia, but in this field he did not achieve any success. At no time have voters cast more than 10 percent of the vote for him. However, during the presidential campaigns, he came off to the fullest, suffice it to recall his stupid commercials of 2012, in which he, sitting in a fur coat on a sleigh, with force beats a sad donkey harnessed to them with a whip. The politician compares the animal with Russia and promises to replace the "lousy little donkey" with a daring troika.

In recent years, Vladimir Volfovich found himself as a guest on various political talk shows, where he made completely absurd statements that no one else could afford, and the competition here is fierce.

One of the last chords in Zhirinovsky's career was an extremely sad video in which the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party sends a four-year-old girl Dasha a toy - an interactive dog. Looking sternly at the screen, he says: “Dasha, isn't it too early for you to dream about an interactive toy? I didn’t have such a dog - not even a plush one. ” It is not necessary to quote the further content of this tirade, it is enough to mention that the grandmother, Little Red Riding Hood, Zhirinovsky's deputy Vasily Vlasov , a single picket, a paddy wagon and a wedding appear there.

The politician loved life, but most of all he advertised his trips to the bathhouse and beach holidays with young people from the LDPR party activists. One of the few who dared to say directly how strange it looks was the journalist Yuri Dud . But Zhirinovsky rejected all suspicions: these are not boys, but future deputies from the largest active youth party organization in Russia.

With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Vladimir Volfovich's energy turned to this topic. The politician repeatedly boasted about how many COVID-19 vaccinations he had given himself. On the eve of the new year 2022, he reported that he had been vaccinated for the eighth time.

So I made eight injections and did not get sick. And if I had done four, then perhaps I would have been taken somewhere

Zhirinovsky continued to plan to be vaccinated, live and lead the Liberal Democratic Party. In March 2021, when Mikhail Gorbachev , the first and last president of the USSR, turned 90 years old, the leader of the Liberal Democrats said that he had written a statement in which he asked to be relieved of all his posts from May 1, 2036 - when he himself turns 90 years old .

Alas, fate decreed otherwise. On February 2, 2022, the politician was hospitalized with lung damage caused by infection with the omicron strain of coronavirus. Zhirinovsky underwent intensive therapy at the Central Clinical Hospital of Moscow, for a long time the LDPR continued to report that their leader was stable and even read the news about the special operation in Ukraine, which he “predicted”.

But Zhirinovsky could not overcome the disease. Vladimir Volfovich's heart stopped on April 6.

Mikhail Karpov

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