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1994-05-09
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<text>
<title>
Japanese Paper Says Zhirinovskiy Funded by German Party
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
Foreign Broadcast Information Service, December 22, 1993
Japanese Paper Says Zhirinovskiy Funded by German Party
</hdr>
<body>
<p>[Sergey Agafonov report: "Where Zhirinovskiy Gets His Money"]
</p>
<p> [Text] Tokyo--After the staggeringly unexpected results of
the Russian elections the Japanese public, with unconcealed
curiosity mingled with peculiarly oriental squeamishness, has
been trying to probe the Russian political quagmire in the light
of the new historical turn of events. Understandably, the main
attention is focused on the daring man in the bow tie who has
made an unprecedentedly powerful dash from the ranks of
political "also-rans" to the heights of television, photographic,
and all kinds of other fame.
</p>
<p> However, Japanese assessments of the "Zhirinovskiy
phenomenon" will scarcely seem fresh and original--they chime in
with the general Western view and even show greater restraint in
their choice of epithets and definitions regarding the Liberal
Democratic leader. Japanese emotions about his remarks and views
cannot be described as out of the ordinary either--the natural
worried reaction to an adventurist making a successful bid for
the political heights in an adjoining country. On the other hand
Japanese knowledge about Zhirinovskiy is based on facts that
Vladimir Volfovich is himself clearly reluctant to recall.
</p>
<p> A couple of days ago SANKEI SHIMBUN, a newspaper known for
its conservative sympathies, published a big feature about
Zhirinovskiy whose "highlight" was a piece by Maeda, the paper's
Berlin correspondent. The piece is short but it sheds some light
on the "mystery of the century"--the sources of funding for the
Russian LDP's [Liberal Democratic Party's] election campaign.
According to SANKEI, much of the money came into the Liberal
Democrat coffers from Germany, specifically from a right-wing
nationalist German party, the DVU [German People's Union], with
which Zhirinovskiy maintains both close political and close
commercial relations.
</p>
<p> SANKEI drew attention to the fact that Zhirinovskiy granted
one of his first interviews after the Russian elections to the
party's press organ, and the questions were put not by an
ordinary reporter but by party leader Gerhard Frey. According to
SANKEI, Zhirinovskiy's last foreign trip before the elections was
also connected with his German fellow militant nationalists--in
October the head of the Russian LDP was a guest at the party
congress in Munich, where he promised to restore Russia's
friendly ties with Prussia and to repartition Poland together
with his German friends. As SANKEI's Berlin correspondent, who
obviously has a substantial file on Zhirinovskiy's German
connections, notes, in a number of public speeches in recent
months Gerhard Frey has mentioned as a major achievement the
swift development of contacts with Zhirinovskiy's party and has
openly said that the DVU is giving active financial assistance
to its new friends.
</p>
<p> Another discovery by the Japanese mass media on the
"Zhirinovskiy theme" is also worth noting. It has been disclosed
by the Moscow correspondents of a number of Japanese
publications, who did plenty of work on personnel of their
beloved Japanese Embassy in Moscow. It transpires that the
extremely ardent Russian patriot in a bow tie has by no means
always been so irrepressibly ardent and categorical. For
instance, just two years ago, in a conversation in June with
Japanese Ambassador to the USSR Mr. Edamura, Zhirinovskiy
advocated...the return to Japan of the four disputed islands of
the South Kurils. The details of this episode according to the
Japanese account are as follows: Zhirinovskiy personally called
the Japanese Embassy several times seeking a meeting with the
ambassador; his persistence paid off, and Vladimir Volfovich,
accompanied by two comrades, obtained an audience with the
ambassador; during the conversation, which was punctiliously
minuted by Japanese diplomats, Zhirinovskiy criticized
Gorbachev, described the territorial problem in bilateral
relations as a legacy of Stalin's diplomacy, described the lack
of a peace treaty between the two countries as abnormal, and
called for a cardinal improvement in relations, which should be
promoted by the unconditional return of the "northern
territories" to Japan.
</p>
<p> Local newspapers write that Japanese diplomats recalled this
visit and were greatly astonished when in the fall of 1992
Zhirinovskiy turned up outside the embassy on a demonstration by
the public committee in defense of the Kurils. The surprise has
developed into something more now that the LDP leader has fully
unfolded his approach to the territorial problem and is
declaring that no such problem exists at all and Russia has no
superfluous lands. Zhirinovskiy is no longer seeking to be
received by the Japanese ambassador and is promising the
Japanese Hiroshima all over again because of their persistence
in the territorial suit--in this connection pragmatic Japanese
analysts are wondering: Is the top Liberal Democrat losing sleep
at night over his former declarations?
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>