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In the middle of the conversation, the L.D.P. leader suddenly had a brainstorm. On a recent trip to Yugoslavia, he said, he made valuable contacts with Serb businessmen who could be of use to his district. His Serb friends could be persuaded to put up a mini-bakery or mini-dry-cleaning service in Shchelkovo. "What you need are little things which are of immediate use to the people," he explained. "A mini-bakery would bake excellent bread." He turned to his chief of staff, Gennadi Kazantsev, and said, "Put it all down!"
A woman bureaucrat timidly asked, "How much will it all cost?" Zhirinovsky seemed insulted. "We're not talking about money. It's all for free! I saved the Serbs from bombing, so they can't do enough to show me their appreciation."
Later that day, Zhirinovsky made a token visit to a factory, walking through a deserted mill with endless rows of silent weaving machines. As a German television crew watched, he delivered one of his patented anti-Western tirades. "This factory stands idle because of Western interference in our affairs!" he shouted, shaking his finger directly at the German camera. "You have worked to ruin this country."
Despite the showboating and snake-oil promises, the Zhirinovsky whirlwind offered something new for the people of Shchelkovo. His listeners seemed genuinely charmed by his sense of humor, his flair for dramatic gestures, his bravado. This is, after all, the first time many of them had actually seen their elected representative, and the notion that he seemed to be taking an interest in their affairs clearly disarmed them.
If there is an explanation for Zhirinovsky's unique appeal, perhaps it is to be found in the parallel between the young boy who grew up feeling rejected, humiliated and despised and a nation that has just emerged from seven decades of dictatorship feeling abused, deprived and defeated. Little wonder that ordinary Russians respond to this man; his feelings of persecution, which he has honed to an exquisitely raw edge, reify their own dislocated sense of what has happened to their country and their lives. And by projecting the angers and fears of his dysfunctional childhood onto the national stage, Zhirinovsky has managed to transform his personal antipathies into a political world view that resonates throughout an entire country. Says Alexei Mitrofanov, the L.D.P. "shadow" foreign minister: "Zhirinovsky is a mood. He is a state of the soul."
It is difficult to say what may happen once Russians have had a better look at this rabble-rousing politician who is part showman, part shyster. Despite the fact that the country seems to have stabilized during the summer's torpor, there is an underlying sense that the balance of power could shift at any moment. But whatever happens, Zhirinovsky has changed the style and conduct of Russian politics irretrievably. No national political figure has done more to sound the alarm about the fragility of Russia's young democracy, or its vulnerability to irresponsible leadership. As for what that might mean, perhaps the best sense of what lies ahead can be found by turning back to Pushkin's poem:
Skyward soar the whirling demons,
Shrouded by the following snow,
And their plaintive, awful howling
Fills my heart with dread and woe.