Encyclopedia of Russian History

Born in Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan, Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky was the son of a Jewish lawyer from Lviv and a Russian woman. After his father’s death he was raised by his mother. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1969, then served in the army in Tiflis, where he worked in military intelligence. From 1973 to 1991 Zhirinovsky worked at various jobs in Moscow and at night attended law school at Moscow State University. In the 1980s he directed legal services for Mir publishing.

With the coming of perestroika Zhirinovsky began his political career. In 1988 he founded the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), the second legal party registered in the Soviet Union. In 1991 he ran for the presidency of Russia and received 6 million votes. Emphasizing populism and great-power chauvinism and denouncing corruption, he built up a loyal party organization. In the December 1993 parliamentary elections, ZhiriENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY novsky parlayed discontent with Boris Yeltsin into a plurality in the State Duma. In the complex election system for individual candidates and party slates, the LDPR received 23 percent of the total vote, fifty-nine of the party seats in the Duma, and five individual seats.

In the December 1995 Duma elections, the LDPR vote fell sharply to 11.1 percent, and the party won only fifty-five seats in the parliament, well behind the resurgent Communist Party. In 1996 Zhirinovsky ran for president again, but this time he finished fifth (5.7 percent) in the first round of voting and was eliminated.

In the Duma elections of 1999 the LDPR drew 6.4 percent of the vote and got nineteen seats. Zhirinovsky was elected deputy speaker of the Duma. In the 2000 presidential election he ran again and drew only 2.7 percent of the vote, or a little more than 2 million out of the 75 million who voted. Zhirinovsky supported both the first and the second Chechen War. An acute student of mass media, he remained in the national spotlight by combining outlandish behavior, populist appeal, and authoritarian nationalism. His antics included fist fights on the floor of the Duma and throwing

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ZHORDANIA, NOE NIKOLAYEVICH

orange juice on Boris Nemtsov during a television debate. He made headlines by threatening to take Alaska back from the United States and to flood the Baltic republics with radioactive waste. Zhirinovsky has called for a Russian dash to the south that would end “when Russian soldiers can wash their boots in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.” See also: LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fraser, Graham, and Lancelle, George. (1994). Absolute Zhirinovsky: A Transparent View of the Distinguished Russian Statesman. New York: Penguin Books. Kartsev, Vladimir, with Todd Bludeau. (1995). Zhirinovsky! New York: Columbia University Press. Kipp, Jacob W. (1994).“The Zhirinovsky Threat.” Foreign Affairs 73(3):72-86. Zhirinovsky, Vladimir. (1996). My Struggle: The Explosive Views of Russia’s Most Controversial Public Figure. New York: Barricade Books.

JACOB W. KIPP

ZHORDANIA, NOE NIKOLAYEVICH

(1868-1953), Menshevik leader; president of Georgia.

The most important leader of the Georgian Social Democrats (Mensheviks), Noe Nikolayevich Zhordania was born in western Georgia to a petty noble family. Educated at the Tiflis Orthodox Seminary (just years before Josef Stalin entered that institute that bred so many revolutionaries), Zhordania went on to Warsaw for further education and there was introduced to Marxism. His writings in the Georgian progressive journal kvali (trace) in the early 1890s inspired young radicals soon to be known as the mesame dasi (third generation). Zhordania combined a Marxist critique of Russian autocracy and the Armenian-dominated capitalism of his native Georgia with a patriotism that appealed broadly to workers, students, and peasants. By 1905 he had affiliated with the more moderate wing of Russian Social Democracy, the Mensheviks, and took the bulk of Georgian Social Democrats along with him. Radicals like the young Stalin were isolated in the Georgian party and eventually made their careers outside the country.

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During the first Russian Revolution in 1905-1906, the Mensheviks dominated Georgia, essentially routing tsarist authority in the country, but brutal repression restored the rule of the government. In 1906 Zhordania was elected to the first State Duma, the new parliament conceded by the tsar. But within a few months the tsar dissolved the duma, and Zhordania and other radicals signed the Vyborg Manifesto protesting the dissolution. Zhordania was forced into the political underground, writing for clandestine newspapers and sparring in print with Stalin over the question of non-Russian nationalities.