Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky (Russian: Владимир Вольфович Жириновский, IPA: [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr ˈvolʲfəvʲɪtɕ ʐɨrʲɪˈnofskʲɪj], né Eidelstein, Russian: Эйдельштейн; 25 April 1946 – 6 April 2022) was a Russian right-wing populist politician who served as the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) from its creation in 1992 until his death in 2022.
Zhirinovsky served as a deputy chairman of the State Duma from 1993 to 2000 and from 2011 until 2022. He also worked as a delegate in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from 1996 to 2008. During his lifetime, Zhirinovsky ran in every single Russian presidential election except for the 2004 election.
Zhirinovsky was known for many controversies, as well as staunch advocacy for Russian military action against NATO.
Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky was born in Alma-Ata, the capital of the Kazakh SSR (modern-day Almaty, Kazakhstan). His father, Volf Isaakovich Eidelshtein, was a Ukrainian Jew from Kostopil in western Ukraine, and his mother, Alexandra Pavlovna (née Makarova), was an ethnic Russian from Mordovia. Zhirinovsky inherited his surname through Andrei Vasilievich Zhirinovsky, Alexandra's first husband. His paternal grandfather was a wealthy industrialist in Kostopil, who owned the largest sawmill in modern Ukraine and was head of the local Jewish community. His grandfather's mill has an income of $32 million a year as of 2015, and over the years Zhirinovsky demanded that successive Ukrainian governments return it to him.
In July 1964, Zhirinovsky moved from Almaty to Moscow, where he began his studies in the Department of Turkish Studies, Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University (MSU), from which he graduated in 1969. Additionally, he studied law and international relations at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. Zhirinovsky entered military service in Tbilisi during the early 1970s and worked at posts in state committees and unions. He was awarded a Dr.Sci. in philosophy by MSU in 1998.
Although he participated in some reformist groups, Zhirinovsky was not well known in Soviet political developments during the 1980s. While he contemplated a role in politics, a nomination attempt for a seat as a People's Deputy in 1989 was quickly abandoned. In 1989, he served as a director of Shalom, a Jewish cultural organization; unknown in Jewish circles before, he is thought to have been invited to join by the Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public, but subsequently forcefully opposed its influence in the group.
Four of Zhirinovsky's relatives were murdered during the Holocaust. Zhirinovsky's parents separated while he was still an infant. Abandoning the family, Zhirinovsky's father, Volf Eidelshtein, emigrated to Israel in 1949 (together with his new wife Bella and his brother), where he worked as an agronomist in Tel Aviv. Zhirinovsky's father was a member of the right-wing nationalist Herut party in Israel, and died in 1983 when he was run over by a bus near Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv.
Zhirinovsky did not find out the details of his father's life in Israel, or even the fact that he had died until many years later. Zhirinovsky said that he was an Orthodox Christian. In 1994, Zhirinovsky was presented with a birth certificate indicating his original name as Eidelshtein; he claimed that the document was faked.
Zhirinovsky denied his father's Jewish origins until Ivan Close Your Soul, published in July 2001, in which he described how his father, Volf Isaakovich Eidelshtein, changed his surname from Eidelshtein to Zhirinovsky. He then wrote, "Why should I reject Russian blood, Russian culture, Russian land, and fall in love with the Jewish people only because of that single drop of blood that my father left in my mother's body?"
According to Zhirinovsky, "[His] mother was Russian and [His] father was a lawyer". Zhirinovsky later retracted the statement after researching his father's life in Israel. Discussing the statement, Zhirinovsky says: "Journalists mocked me: for saying I was the son of a lawyer. And I am really the son of an agronomist."
Discussing his father, Zhirinovsky said with tears in his eyes, "All my life I was looking for him. I believed that he was alive. I believed that someday he would find me... But there is a silver lining. I tried to imitate him... And I was able to achieve a certain position in life even without the support of my father."
Founding of the Liberal Democratic Party and 1991 presidential campaign
In April 1991, Zhirinovsky, along with Vladimir Bogachev, took initiatives which led to the founding of the Liberal Democratic Party of the Soviet Union, which was the second registered party in the Soviet Union in 1990 and therefore the first officially sanctioned opposition party. According to the former CPSU Politburo member Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, the party started as a joint project of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) leadership and the KGB.
Yakovlev wrote in his memoirs that KGB director Vladimir Kryuchkov presented the project of the puppet LDPSU party at a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev and informed him about the selection of the LDPR leader. According to Yakovlev, the name of the party was chosen by KGB General Philipp Bobkov. Bobkov, however, stated that he was against the creation of "Zubatov's pseudo-party under KGB control that would direct the interests and sentiments of certain social groups".
Zhirinovsky's first political breakthrough came in June 1991, when he came third in Russia's first presidential election, gathering more than six million votes (7.81% of the vote). Zhirinovsky's populist platform included promises to voters that if he elected, free vodka would be distributed to all. Similarly, he once remarked that if he were made president, underwear would be freely available during a political rally inside a Moscow department store.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the party was renamed as the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. In 1992, Zhirinovsky made contact with Jean-Marie Le Pen, the then-leader of France's Front National (FN). Eduard Limonov of the National-Bolshevik Party introduced the two men to each other and the FN later "provided logistical support [to the LDPR], including computers and fax machines". Zhirinovsky suggested establishing the International Centre of Right-wing Parties in Moscow and invited Le Pen to visit Moscow.
The Liberal Democratic Party was a significant force in Russian politics, particularly in the early 1990s. At the height of its success, the LDPR gathered 23% of the vote in the 1993 Duma elections and achieved a broad representation throughout Russia – it gained the most votes in 64 out of 87 regions. It encouraged Zhirinovsky to once again run for president, this time against incumbent Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin's candidacy seemed seriously challenged by Russian nationalist groups and a rejuvenated Communist Party alarmed many outside observers, particularly in the Western world, who expressed concern that such developments posed a serious threat to the survival of Russian democracy, which was already in a very fragile state. During the 1990s, commentators described Zhirinovsky as fascist, having fascist tendencies, and a neo-fascist.
During a visit to France in 1994, he said: "It's all over for you once you're Americanized and Zionized", and threw stones and dirt at Jewish protesters. Michael Specter, in a piece for The New York Times published in the same year, said Zhirinovsky's "party is not liberal, not democratic, and these days not much of a party". A 1995 BBC documentary showed Zhirinovsky telling the crowd at a campaign rally: "Help us, and you'll never have to vote again! I'm not saying, 'Vote for us and maybe in 20 years' time somebody will do something.' No, these will be the last elections! The last ones!"