VLADIMIR ZHIRINOVSKY TURNS SIXTY-FIVE TODAY

VLADIMIR ZHIRINOVSKY 

b. April 25, 1946 

LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY LEADER 

VLADIMIR ZHIRINOVSKY 

at the moment after his December 1993 triumph 

still in the Duma on his sixty-fifth birthday 

-- indeed, vice speaker -- 

(though no longer a member of the 

Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) 

"Boris Yeltsin had been the leader who 'gives us hope'; now in late 1993, in the winter of the Russians' discontent, it was Vladimir Zhirinovsky who, it seemed, inspired hope among the dispossessed and the disadvantaged, but tumult and despair among the political class.   ... 

"The long-feared specter of 'Weimar Russia' appeared suddenly to have the possibility of real content – or rather, a face and form, and frizzy, short-cropped hair." 

from RUSSIA REDUX, Chapter 11 

VLADIMIR ZHIRINOVSKY b. April 25, 1946: "STRONG HANDS" OF RUSSIA? I

"STRONG HANDS" OF RUSSIA? I

VLADIMIR ZHIRINOVSKY

b. April 25, 1946

Leader of the Liberal Democratic Party

Photographed in Moscow

in the Winter of 1993

when he seemed to

strike fear into the hearts of

the political establishments of

Russia and the "West" alike