Vladimir Zhirinovsky

Vladimir Zhirinovsky emerges as a loud, audacious Russian nationalist politician whose campaign turned grievance into spectacle—and whose electoral success offered Eduard Limonov a route into parliament that he chose not to take. The book presents him both as a force in post-Soviet politics and as a revealing counterpoint to Limonov’s insistence on leading his own movement.

Political Image and Milieu

In the Moscow political scene Limonov was trying to enter, Zhirinovsky stood out for a style compared to that of Jean-Marie Le Pen: loudmouthed, audacious, and direct. The comparison is treated as apt, though Zhirinovsky is described as even more extreme. He appears among a loose collection of nostalgic Communists and hard-line nationalists with whom Limonov associated while searching for a political group capable of representing the nation’s vital forces.

That milieu did not amount to a coherent alliance. Its members had tangled histories, simple or hazy programs, fleeting partnerships, and bitter clashes. Zhirinovsky’s presence helps establish the range of political company Limonov considered before building his own organization: not a disciplined common platform, but a crowded field of personalities and competing appeals.

Campaign and Promises

A BBC documentary by director Pawel Pawlikowski follows Zhirinovsky campaigning among people angered by the reforms. His promises were deliberately extravagant: free vodka, restoration of the empire, full support for the Serbs, bombing Germany, Japan, and the United States, reopening the Gulag, and imprisoning the new Russians, members of the Memorial Society, and other people he denounced as CIA-paid traitors. The campaign’s force came from its capacity to give anger a blunt, memorable form, even when its proposals were fantastic or threatening.

Limonov’s own political stock-in-trade is described as not far removed from Zhirinovsky’s. Yet Limonov struggled to explain why voters should choose him instead. When he presented himself as an independent, his listeners did not understand the distinction. His nationalist catechism could draw agreement from impoverished, mostly elderly audiences, but their practical question was still whom he supported: Boris Yeltsin or Zhirinovsky. The passage sets the appeal of a recognizable political brand against the difficulty of making independence persuasive.

Limonov’s Rejected Offer

Zhirinovsky was willing to run alongside Limonov and bring him into parliament. The offer made the cost of Limonov’s independence concrete: with Zhirinovsky’s electoral support, Limonov could have become a member of parliament. Instead, he preferred to head a party of three than to serve beneath a politician with millions of supporters. His refusal was not a result of there being no route to influence; it followed from his unwillingness to accept a subordinate place in someone else’s movement.

The elections went to Boris Yeltsin and Yegor Gaidar, while Zhirinovsky nevertheless received a quarter of the vote. Limonov was so certain of the outcome that he returned to Paris before the results were announced, furious and humiliated. Zhirinovsky’s success therefore sharpens the contrast between electoral reach and the kind of personal command Limonov wanted: the larger following was available to join, but not at the price of giving up leadership.

Later Political Contrast

When the book turns to a later presidential contest, it recalls Zhirinovsky as a buffoonish alternative, set against the unexpected prospect of a strong Communist vote. The contrast marks a change in the political landscape: the earlier nationalist spectacle no longer represented the most consequential alternative to the government. Zhirinovsky remains a reference point for Limonov’s failed effort to turn a similar vein of anger into an independent electoral force, as well as for the trade-off he repeatedly rejected between popular scale and personal authority.