What to do? We have lost our way.
From afar, the Demon cries out,
He is leading us astray.
-- Alexander Pushkin
When it comes to expressing his feelings, Vladimir Zhirinovsky is not exactly bashful. After flying last week from Moscow to the city of Nizhni Novgorod, Russia's bad-boy politician was dismayed to be confronted at the airport by demonstrators calling him a fascist. The chairman of Russia's Liberal Democratic Party does not brook such displays of disrespect. With an entourage of 20 people, including several menacing bodyguards, he paid a visit to the office of the region's most prominent politician, Boris Nemtsov -- only to be informed that the governor was out of town.
Undaunted, the group barged into Nemtsov's office and began rifling through his drawers and filing cabinets. Then Zhirinovsky plopped down in the governor's chair and put in several calls on Nemtsov's hot line to the federal authorities in Moscow to complain about his unfriendly reception. No one would accept the calls, but before he left, three hours later, Zhirinovsky made sure his visit wouldn't be forgotten. He threatened to have the governor's entire staff imprisoned or executed. The week, however, was still young. On Thursday night, Zhirinovsky claimed he had escaped "an assassination attempt" on a highway south of the capital, in which one "terrorist" was killed. Major General Vladimir Fyodorov, the chief of Russia's traffic police, denied the story and insisted that Zhirinovsky had been involved only in an "ordinary road accident." Fyodorov also claimed that a few hours later in Moscow, Zhirinovsky attacked a policeman after he had tried to ticket one of the politician's bodyguards. According to Fyodorov, Zhirinovsky twisted the guard's arm, ripped up the ticket and then tried to tear the epaulets off the officer's uniform.
While such theatrics might seem acceptable from a road-touring rock band, they are usually enough to scuttle the career of most politicians. But Zhirinovsky is no ordinary politician. In the three years since this obscure Moscow lawyer careened into the national spotlight, his career has combined the shrewd manipulation of an instinctive demagogue with the abandon of a swinging Sybarite. Zhirinovsky has slugged fellow lawmakers in the halls of parliament, hobnobbed with ex-Nazi storm troopers in Austria and posed, au naturel, for photographers while cavorting in a steam bath in Serbia. He has been kicked out of or denied access to nearly half a dozen European countries. He has threatened to restore Russia's imperial borders, annex Alaska, invade Turkey, repartition Poland, give Germany "another Chernobyl," turn Kazakhstan into a "scorched desert" and employ large fans to blow radioactive waste across the Baltics.