Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an ultranationalist Russian politician who imitated a political opposition to Vladimir Putin for decades while playing the court jester in Russia’s parliament, has died aged 75.
The cause appeared to be complications from Covid, a disease against which Zhirinovsky claimed to have been vaccinated eight times.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the chair of the State Duma, said that Zhirinovsky had died after a “difficult and long illness”. His death had already been reported and then refuted twice this year.
A six-times presidential candidate and an MP in Russia’s parliament since 1993, Zhirinovsky was famous for his grotesque antics and fiery speeches from the rostrum in which he appeared to reveal Russia’s darker ambitions out loud.
He openly advocated dictatorship and suggested that Putin should run the country until death. “I have clean hands,” he once said of his own ambitions. “But they will be covered in blood if I become president.”
Outlandish and irreverent, Zhirinovsky was laughed off by many as a clown and a chief member of Russia’s “pocket opposition” that the Kremlin managed over decades to maintain a veneer of democracy.
But sometimes Zhirinovsky’s dark prophecies proved fearfully close to the truth, as when he nearly predicted the date and time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine months before it took place.
“At 4am on 22 February you’ll feel [our new policy],” he said in one of his final appearances before MPs last December. “I’d like 2022 to be peaceful. But I love the truth, for 70 years I’ve said the truth. It won’t be peaceful. It will be a year when Russia once again becomes great.”
On 22 February Russia recognised the independence of two territories that it controlled in south-east Ukraine. Two days later, the Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine, beginning a new chapter in Russian history.
Zhirinovsky will hardly be needed in that chapter, when the token ultranationalist has been overtaken by dozens of Russian officials openly calling for war with the west and a return to the autarkic policies of the Soviet Union.
But he was an outspoken voice of ethnic nationalism in the 1990s when, as a candidate in the country’s presidential elections, he said he “dreamed that Russian soldiers would wash their feet in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean”.
Zhirinovsky, who was born in the capital of Soviet Kazakhstan in 1946, emerged on to the post-Soviet political scene in 1991 with a surprise third-place finish in presidential elections. His Liberal Democratic Party of Russia party won 23% of the vote in parliamentary elections two years later.
“He was, as we now understand, the first populist of the ‘Trumpist’ type, a pioneer. But in the 1990s he seemed to be a classic far right, close to semi-fascist views,” said Andrei Kolesnikov of the Moscow Carnegie Centre. “And in the circumstances of the political confrontations of that time, this was the case.”
Over a period of three decades, Zhirinovsky created a personal cult around himself, surrounding himself with a posse of young men from the LDPR and earning a reputation as a straight-talking brawler that led to descriptions of him as “Russia’s Trump”.
He gained international notoriety for flinging a glass of orange juice at opposition politician Boris Nemtsov during a television appearance in 1995 and personally provoked and took part in fistfights in the Duma. He also regularly made antisemitic and sexist comments, as when he suggested during a press conference that his aides should rape a pregnant journalist.
But Zhirinovsky, who came under Putin’s sway early during his time in power, played an important role in attracting rightwing voters who could be tempted into real opposition if they did not have a candidate who spoke to them. Gennady Zyuganov, the longtime Communist party leader, has played a similar role on the left.
“During the Putin years he performed, along with Zyuganov, the most important function: if Zyuganov ‘sterilised’ and kept the votes of leftwing voters in the legal field, Zhirinovsky did the same with the ultra-right votes,” said Kolesnikov.
That was Zhirinovsky’s main legacy for the Kremlin, which viewed him as a reliable spoiler in any of the country’s elections.
“His identity is so large that it is difficult to imagine the history of modern Russia’s political system without him,” said Volodin, a top Putin ally. “The best assessment of his deeds is the unwavering support of voters.”
