Vladimir Zhirinovsky

Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky (Владимир Вольфович Жириновский, ; 25 April 1946 – 6 April 2022) was a Russian right-wing populist politician and the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) from its creation in 1992 until his death.

Abandoning the family, Zhirinovsky's father, Volf Eidelshtein, immigrated to Israel in 1949 (together with his new wife Bella and his brother), where he worked as an agronomist in Tel Aviv.

In July 1964, Zhirinovsky moved from Almaty to Moscow, where he began his studies in the Department of Turkish Studies, Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University (MSU), from which he graduated in 1969.

Additionally, he studied law and international relations at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism.

Zhirinovsky entered military service in Tbilisi during the early 1970s and worked at posts in state committees and unions.

Although he participated in some reformist groups, Zhirinovsky was little known in Soviet political developments during the 1980s.

Zhirinovsky's father was a member of the right-wing nationalist Herut party in Israel, and died in 1983 when he was run over by a bus near Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv.

Zhirinovsky did not find out the details of his father's life in Israel until many years later, or even that he had died.

Zhirinovsky said that he was an Orthodox Christian.

While he contemplated a role in politics, a nomination attempt for a seat as a People's Deputy in 1989 was quickly abandoned.

In 1989, he served as a director of Shalom, a Jewish cultural organization; unknown in Jewish circles before, he is thought to have been invited to join by the Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public, but subsequently forcefully opposed its influence in the group.

Four of Zhirinovsky's relatives were murdered during the Holocaust.

Zhirinovsky's parents separated while he was still an infant.

In April 1991, Zhirinovsky, along with Vladimir Bogachev, took initiatives which led to the founding of the Liberal Democratic Party of the Soviet Union, the second registered party in the Soviet Union in 1990, and therefore the first officially sanctioned opposition party.

According to the former CPSU Politburo member Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, this party started as a joint project of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) leadership and the KGB.

Yakovlev wrote in his memoirs that KGB director Vladimir Kryuchkov presented the project of the puppet LDPSU party at a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev and informed him about the selection of the LDPR leader.

According to Yakovlev, the name of the party was chosen by KGB General Philipp Bobkov.

However, Bobkov said that he was against the creation of "Zubatov's pseudo-party under KGB control that would direct the interests and sentiments of certain social groups".

Zhirinovsky's first political breakthrough came in June 1991, when he came third in Russia's first presidential election, gathering more than six million votes (7.81% of the vote).

Zhirinovsky's populist platform included promises to voters that should he be elected, free vodka would be distributed to all.

He had been a member of the State Duma since 1993 and leader of the LDPR group in the State Duma from 1993 to 2000, and from 2011 to 2022.

In 1994, presented with a birth certificate indicating his original name as Eidelshtein, Zhirinovsky said the document was faked.

He also worked as a delegate in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from 1996 to 2008.

He was awarded a Dr.Sci. in philosophy by MSU in 1998.

He served as a deputy chairman of the State Duma from 2000 until 2011.

Zhirinovsky denied his father's Jewish origins until Ivan Close Your Soul, published in July 2001, in which he described how his father, Volf Isaakovich Eidelshtein, changed his surname from Eidelshtein to Zhirinovsky.

He rhetorically asked, "Why should I reject Russian blood, Russian culture, Russian land, and fall in love with the Jewish people only because of that single drop of blood that my father left in my mother's body?"

According to Zhirinovsky, "My mother was Russian and my father was a lawyer".

Zhirinovsky later disowned the statement after researching his father's life in Israel.

Discussing the statement, Zhirinovsky says: "Journalists mocked me: for saying I was the son of a lawyer. And I am really the son of an agronomist."

Discussing his father, Zhirinovsky said with tears in his eyes: "All my life I was looking for him. I believed that he was alive. I believed that someday he would find me... But there is a silver lining. I tried to imitate him... And I was able to achieve a certain position in life, even without the support of my father."

Zhirinovsky's Israeli relatives included an uncle and cousin, meeting and befriending them for the first time only after discovering more about his family's story in Israel.

Zhirinovsky's Israeli family did not know that he was a politician in Russia but responded warmly to his invitation to stay with him in Moscow.

During his lifetime, Zhirinovsky ran in every single Russian presidential election apart from in 2004.

He was known for many controversies, as well as staunch advocacy for Russian military action against NATO.

Zhirinovsky was born in Alma-Ata, the capital of the Kazakh SSR, modern-day Almaty, Kazakhstan.

His father, Volf Isaakovich Eidelshtein, was a Ukrainian Jew from Kostopil in western Ukraine, and his mother, Alexandra Pavlovna (née Makarova), was of Russian background from Mordovia region.

Zhirinovsky inherited his surname through Andrei Vasilievich Zhirinovsky, Alexandra's first husband.

His paternal grandfather was a wealthy industrialist in Kostopil, who owned the largest sawmill in (what is now) Ukraine and was head of the local Jewish community.

His grandfather's mill today has an income of $32 million a year, and over the years Zhirinovsky demanded that successive Ukrainian governments return it to him.