MAD VLAD WAITS FOR YELTSIN TO FAIL

           The following is from a recent edition of Christian
            Crusade Newspaper, P.O. Box 977, Tulsa, OK 
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            copyright 1993 Christian Crusade Newspaper.
            All rights reserved. 

from CHRISTIAN CRUSADE NEWSPAPER
by Dr. Billy James Hargis, publisher
Keith Wilkerson, editor
     
      Time magazine calls him ÒEuropeÕs worst nightmare.Ó
      The New Republic magazine calls him ÒRussiaÕs David 
Duke,Ó after the Louisiana Ku Klux Klansman and 
political hopeful.
      ÒIf you ever wonder how bad things could get if the 
Soviet economy fails to revive,Ó says Fortune magazine, 
Òpeer into the face of Vladimir Wolfovich Zhirinovsky, 45. 
His modest proposal for fixing the economy? Reconquer 
Eastern Europe. ÔI shall threaten with arms, even nuclear 
arms,Õ he vows. If that fails, ÔI shall send one and a half 
million troops into the former East Germany. Then there 
will be an abundance of goods.ÕÓ
      ÒZhirinovsky is a fascist,Ó bluntly declares LondonÕs 
Economist magazine. The Washington Times calls the 45-
year-old Moscow lawyer a Òneo-fascist.Ó
      His nickname among American news correspondents 
in Moscow? ÒMad Vlad.Ó
      Moscow lawyer Vladimir Wolfovich Zhirinovsky is the 
self-declared Òanti-CommunistÓ who came in third in the 
1991 Russian presidential election, which Boris Yeltsin 
won.
      In total seriousness, Zhirinovsky tells crowds of 
restless Russians that he wants to resume the Cold War.
      Bitter about how the news media persistently 
compares him with Adolph Hitler, he recently lashed out 
at his critics: ÒAdolf was an illiterate corporal, whereas I 
have graduated from two higher educational 
establishments and have the command of four languages.Ó 
      How comforting.
      He campaigned against Yeltsin promising cheaper 
vodka and threatening to poison the newly independent 
Baltic republics with nuclear waste. He says that if the 
Japanese give Russia any more trouble about the Kiril 
Islands east of Siberia, then Moscow should drop a couple 
of nuclear bombs on key Japanese cities, to help Tokyo 
remember the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
      Zhirinovsky has told Western journalists that he is 
completely serious in his declarations that the way to fix 
the Soviet economy is to invade Germany and hold it 
hostage until the West pays Russia billions of dollars to 
withdraw its troops.
      ÒHis fanaticism has made him mainly a vulgar 
curiosity,Ó says journalist James Carney. However, given 
the unrest in Russia, Òa person with a program like 
ZhirinovskyÕs could be dangerous,Ó warns Russian 
economist Lev Timofeyev.
      Indeed, the deeper that Russia sinks into economic 
collapse and regional conflict, Zhirinovsky says, the better 
are his chances of political success. 
      He heads RussiaÕs Liberal Democratic Party, a small 
and poorly funded organization that is neither liberal nor 
democratic. He wants to be a dictator, he says, to re-
establish a powerful political police, to rebuild RussiaÕs 
military might and to re-establish Russia as a super-
power. 
      When he ran for the Russian presidency, he won about 
7 million votes, which was only 16 percent of the vote. 
However, statistically, he did better than H. Ross Perot did 
against Bill Clinton.
      How he even got on the ballot demonstrates either 
that he is a political genius or is getting behind-the-scenes 
help from hardliners determined to see Yeltsin fail.  
      Russian legislators had sought to screen out frivolous 
contenders in the first popular election of a national 
leader in the 1,000-year history of the Russian state. They 
did so by requiring potential entrants to submit 
signatures from at least 100,000 supporters Ñ impossible 
for all but five candidates. 
      Zhirinovsky became the sixth official contender, 
however, when he side-stepped the 100,000-signature 
hurdle and joined the race through a little-known 
provision in a recently enacted election law that granted 
entry to anyone who could secure backing from at least 20 
per cent of the Russian parliamentÕs legislators. 
      Yeltsin partisans angrily charged his candidacy was 
simply a KGB-engineered plot to divert votes from  Yeltsin 
Ñ particularly after the legislatureÕs Communist bloc 
quickly endorsed Zhirinovsky, although he was a political 
unknown. 
      In the streets of Moscow, pro-democracy activist 
Nikolai Travkin listened to Zhirinovsky proclaim a rabble-
pleasing pledge to halve the price of vodka, then 
exclaimed to a western journalist, ÒThis nomination is 
sheer clownery.Ó
      However, as Shakespeare noted: ÒThough this be 
madness, yet there is method in it.Ó 
      Russian and foreign journalists alike discounted 
ZhirinovskyÕs chances of success. But he proved himself a 
compelling and effective campaigner. He struck a chord 
with ordinary people. Soft-pedaling his university degrees 
and fluency in English, Spanish, German and French, 
Zhirinovsky presented himself as an average man. ÒI am 
one of you,Ó he repeatedly told the voters. ÒI am an 
ordinary Russian who lives in a two-room apartment and 
earns 200 rubles a month.Ó
      When the ballots were counted, Yeltsin drew about 47 
million votes to win handily over his nearest rival, former 
Soviet prime minister Nikolai Ryzhkov. But ZhirinovskyÕs 
surprising third-place caught everyone off guard. 
      During recent months, as RussiaÕs economy has 
shrunk by at least 12 per cent, Zhirinovsky has 
maintained his self-proclaimed status as RussiaÕs Òczar-in-
waiting.Ó He is without question its most outrageous 
politician. 
      The Moscow daily newspaper Izvestia says of him: 
ÒZhirinovsky offers an attractive, comprehensible and 
concrete objective for everyone. For the poor: to loosen 
the purses of the rich. For business people: the 
opportunity to deal. For the military: to return honor and 
dignity. For pensioners: a peaceful life in old age.Ó
      Zhirinovsky promises the discontent Russian military 
full-alert status of the Cold War era, an end to nuclear 
disarmament, no more personnel cuts and, indeed, 
reinforcements of the 300,000-member Soviet force that 
is still stationed in barracks located in eastern Germany. 
Such an undertaking would clearly damage relations 
between Russia and the West. But Zhirinovsky says that 
such a setback in diplomacy is certainly preferable to 
RussiaÕs current status as an international charity case.
      Georgy Satarov, the director of Moscow city councilÕs 
political research center, dismisses Zhirinovsky as a 
marginal figure who did well in the presidential election 
only because Yeltsin was competing against an otherwise 
weak field of opponents. 
      But Boris Kurashvili, a senior researcher at the 
Moscow Institute of State and Law, worries about how 
Zhirinovsky has been shrewd enough to cast himself as a 
populist battling such members of the old Soviet elite as 
Yeltsin and Gorbachev. 
      Zhirinovsky admits he is waiting for Yeltsin to fail and 
says he is counting on hunger, violence, and instability to 
bring him to power. 
      ÒHungry people will vote for me,Ó he told Time 
magazine. He says he has strong support from the 
thousands of Russian refugees forced out of the Baltics by 
new citizenship laws. ÒIn a rich country my program 
would not go down well,Ó he admits. ÒBut in a poor, 
embittered country like Russia, this is my golden hour.Ó 
      Like the neo-Nazi skinheads who have been attacking 
Turkish immigrants in Germany, ZhirinovskyÕs supporters 
are mostly young, male, blue-collar and willing to engage 
in confrontation against their opponents. Like their 
German counterparts, they worry aloud about the future 
of ÒEuropean civilization.Ó They also express concern 
about the ÒJewish question.Ó ZhirinovskyÕs press secretary, 
Andrey Arkhipov, says that the main aim of ZhirinovskyÕs 
party is Òto preserve white civilization.Ó
      ÒBetween meetings Zhirinovsky is quiet, almost 
sullen,Ó reported Paul Quin-Judge, The Boston GlobeÕs 
Moscow correspondent. ÒHe stares into space, shrugging 
off questions about his policies. But as the time for a 
meeting approaches, he slowly cranks up. As you listen to 
him it becomes clear that he is counting on Russia 
repeating the collapse of the Weimar Republic. [Germany 
before the rise of Hitler] Though he expresses mild hurt 
when people compare him to Hitler, his political rhetoric 
sounds very much like the Nazis in the early Õ30s.
      ÒHe has, for example, dusted off an updated stab-in-
the-back theory. Russia was reduced to its present state of 
degradation by the treachery of the present leadership, he 
says. They are carrying out the instructions of Ôthe 
international centerÕ Ñ by which he apparently means the 
leaders of the United States and the West.Ó
      In one of his favorite stump speeches, Zhirinovsky 
likes to thunder that the West fears a powerful Russia, and 
every thirty to forty years has to take steps to weaken it. In 
1917, he tells the crowds, the West inflicted Bolshevism 
on Russia Ñ which resulted in decades of confusion, 
decline and murderous purges. Then came World War II 
Ñ also a plot of the West manufactured purely to keep 
Russia down. 
      Finally, he says, the West finished of RussiaÕs empire 
with GorbachevÕs perestroika. 
      Today, shouts Zhirinovsky, a weakened Russia is under 
threat from every side. From Asia comes zheltaya 
opasmost, which roughly translates to Ôthe yellow peril.Õ 
From the South, he says, hundreds of millions of Muslims 
are massing on RussiaÕs borders. And from the West, he 
rages, there is America Ñ still armed to the teeth with 
nuclear weapons that threaten the safety of every Russian 
citizen.
      Zhirinovsky says that Russia does not need democracy. 
Instead, the nation needs a period of stability, led by a 
strong dictator who will straighten out the economy, 
reassert RussiaÕs international standing as a super-power, 
and who will not hesitate to restore the Soviet borders. 
Zhirinovsky repeatedly recommends moving militarily 
against Finland, Poland and Germany.
      ÒWarnings of a coming dictatorship have been as 
common in Moscow this winter as street-corner 
complaints about high prices,Ó reported Time magazine 
last December. ÒDown through RussiaÕs history, 
authoritarianism has been the rule, reform and 
democracy the rare Ñ and brief Ñ exception. For that 
reason alone, the odds seem to dictate that President 
Boris YeltsinÕs efforts to install a new system will founder 
and the strong hand will follow. Even Yeltsin has raised 
the specter. ÔI have faith in our reforms,Õ he said on a visit 
to France last month. ÔBut if they fail, I can already feel 
the breath of the Brownshirts on our necks.ÕÓ
      Brownshirts were the street thugs who catapulted 
Hitler into power in the chaos of 1930s Germany.
      ÒWe may try to dismiss Zhirinovsky Ñ who has 
threatened to take Finland and Poland back into the 
Russian empire Ñ as a bit of a clown,Ó said Russian 
authority Walter Laqueur in a recent interview with U.S. 
News and World Report editor Jeff Trimble, Òbut he is a 
successful clown. As he likes to point out, he got as many 
votes in the 1991 Russian presidential election as the 
population of Switzerland. In a way the current situation 
resembles Germany in 1920, where there was a great deal 
of resentment on the extreme right, but only small 
organized groups Ñ until a single man appeared on the 
scene who pulled it all together.Ó
      One of ZhirinovskyÕs slogans is: ÒA common front 
against America, from Dublin [Ireland] to Vladivostok 
[Siberia].Ó Is he saying that Russia should conquer 
Europe?
      His people also like to say: ÒWe have a great deal in 
common with the Germans. DonÕt take all this nonsense 
about the democratization of Germany seriously. If the 
two of us get together, weÕll rule the world.Ó 
      Russian political observer Peter Kenez in an American 
Labor Conference on International Affairs publication a 
few weeks ago called Zhirinovsky Òthe Russian MussoliniÓ 
and said his Òsanity is very much in doubt.Ó
      ÒThe risk remains that Yeltsin will lose control of the 
situation,Ó says Fortune magazine. ÒThe West will wake up 
one morning to find an anti-Western tyrant at the helm of 
a country that covers one-sixth of the globeÕs land area. 
Just how bad can it get? Zhirinovsky is campaigning for 
YeltsinÕs job. Vowing to forcibly reunite the 15 former 
Soviet republics into a Great Russian empire, he would 
also throw out most foreign businessmen in his first 100 
days as President. ÔWe donÕt need your Marlboros,Õ he says. 
ÔWe will raise ourselves up by ourselves.Õ
      ÒWill the zealots win?Ó asked Fortune. ÒBy re-creating 
a mythical Great Russia, will they plunge the world back 
into a Cold War, or worse? Much depends on how well 
Boris Yeltsin is able to maneuver.Ó
      Meanwhile, Zhirinovsky is maneuvering.
      Since the election, he has kept himself in the public 
eye through such acts as unsuccessfully challenging 
Leningrad Mayor Anatoly Sobchak to a duel over an insult 
that Sobchak denies. 
      He also led a small group of protesters to the walls of a 
Moscow prison holding the leaders of the coup against 
Gorbachev: ÒThey were trying to restore order,Ó declared 
Zhirinovsky. ÒSo am I.Ó
      Although he declares himself to be Òanti-communistÓ 
and claims that he never belonged to the Communist 
Party, last March, he met with 150 former deputies of the 
now-defunct Supreme Soviet legislature Ñ most of them 
hard-line Communists. 
      The former Soviet lawmakers had been unable to 
muster a quorum of anything close to half their old 2,250-
member parliament. Because Russian authorities had 
banned them from meeting in the Kremlin, they gathered 
in the auditorium of a state dairy farm, about 30 miles 
south of Moscow. 
      Zhirinovsky attended and told CanadaÕs MacleanÕs 
magazine: ÒThe congress organizers invited me to be a 
guest because we share the same goal: to restore RussiaÕs 
greatness.Ó
      The meeting was less than dramatic. At one point, five 
busloads of delegates got lost en route to the farm. TV 
cameras caught Zhirinovsky on a highway shoulder 
arguing with traffic policemen as he tried desperately to 
find out which way the deputiesÕ convoy had gone. But the 
flamboyant lawyer did manage to get himself on the 
evening news. Reports in the Russian media featured his 
furious charges that authorities had done everything they 
could to disrupt the session Ñ including shutting off the 
heat and lights in the auditorium, forcing deputies to 
meet in the dark. 
      ÒGetting noticed is a big part of the continuing battle 
that Zhirinovsky is waging to wrest the Russian 
presidency from Boris Yeltsin and return the country to 
its imperial greatness,Ó says MacleanÕs writer Malcolm 
Gray. 
      During the next presidential election, Zhirinovsky 
declares, 60 million Russians will vote for him. After that 
victory, he added, he will replace the chaos and disorder of 
the pro-democracy forces with an authoritarian regime. 
ÒIf I win,Ó he declared, ÒI will do everything possible to 
ensure that the borders of Russia correspond to those of 
the Soviet Union. The Baltic states, for instance, are 
Russian territory.Ó
      His message is crude and violent.
      It targets the fears and nightmares of some of the 
most vulnerable segments of the Russian population. 
Many blue-collar workers voted for Yeltsin not because he 
was the standard-bearer of democracy but because  he 
would restore order. Instead, order has collapsed.
      Zhirinovsky appeals to the millions of workers in the 
defense industries, and the hundreds of thousands of 
military officers whose futures are in doubt. 
      ÒItÕs either me or civil war,Ó he kept repeating to 
listeners in Volgograd.
      ÒSince the 1991 election, won by Boris Yeltsin, Mr. 
Zhirinovsky appears to have consolidated his support 
among Russians disaffected by the Soviet UnionÕs collapse 
and embittered by economic hardship,Ó reports the 
Washington Times.
      Is a nationalist backlash inevitable?
      The collapse of the Soviet Union is without parallel. 
Empires usually collapse in war or because they are 
overextended. The Russian empire collapsed by itself. 
Russians suffered a terrible trauma, losing half their 
country and, in effect, 300 years of their history. The loss 
of Ukraine is especially painful because Kiev is the cradle 
of Russian culture.
      The stakes for the West could not be higher. Since 
1987, Western investment has totaled almost $1.5 billion 
in Russia, nearly $500 million in 1992 alone. 
      Conditions in Russia have become nearly unbearable. 
The current annual inflation rate of some 2,000 percent 
has wiped out savings.  Railroad stations are also crowded 
with homeless and impoverished people. Crime increased 
40 percent in 1992, according to the Interior Ministry.
      Ultimately, the question is whether Russia is ready to 
accept the kind of changes that Yeltsin offers. Even before 
communists seized power in 1917, RussiaÕs political and 
economic traditions, however, were inherited not from 
John Locke and the Magna Carta, but from Ivan the Great, 
RussiaÕs first czar, who molded fractious bands of Russian 
tribes into an iron dictatorship strong enough to expel 
Mongol invaders. This tradition is poor soil for democracy.
      Will Russia find the strength to cast aside its primitive 
political culture and join the community of civilized 
nations? Or will the zealots win and by re-creating a 
mythical Great Russia plunge the world back into a Cold 
War Ñ or worse? 
      We can only wait and see.
            


WHAT IS CHRISTIAN CRUSADE NEWSPAPER?
      Christian Crusade Newspaper is in its 
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