Zhirinovsky

MOSCOW -- The United States approved a visa yesterday for ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, astonishing some Russians who thought America was treating an extremist courteously while abusing ordinary citizens.Mr. Zhirinovsky, whose remarks against Jews and several nationalities have led to his being banned from some European countries, has obtained a visa at a time when many Russians are complaining about the visa process at the U.S. Embassy."This is a total loss of a sense of reality on behalf of American authorities," Valery Senderov, a former dissident and human rights activist, said last night.

IT SAYS quite a bit about Russia's unpredictable politics that ultranationalist demagogue Vladimir Zhirinovsky is the parliament's deputy speaker. It says more about Mr. Zhirinovsky himself that although his Jewish relatives perished in Hitler's inferno, he is an anti-Semite who just months ago refused to rise to honor Holocaust victims in parliament. Because his father's first name was Volf, it was long rumored that Mr. Zhirinovsky was partly Jewish. He kept denying it, but has finally admitted his father was Volf Isaakovich Edelshtein, a Polish Jew who ended up in Kazakhstan.

Most people are uncomfortable with those theories that suggest history is not made by the actions of people but by inexorable forces too vast to discern. They believe that individuals matter.The average truck driver plying the interstates might know little about the course of Russia's re-creation of itself through the current reforms. But he probably knows who Boris N. Yeltsin is. He is that Russian who gives life to politics.Mr. Yeltsin, before he impressed himself so thoroughly upon the Russian mind, came here and captured the imagination of everyday Americans -- even if he didn't get an invitation to the White House.

WHAT A difference a year makes. Twelve months ago, tough-talking former Gen. Alexander I. Lebed was a nightly attraction on Russian television. Newspapers carried his populist pronouncements daily. Now he has disappeared from center stage. So has Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist hothead renowned for his anti-Semitic buffoonery."I was born a winner. Sooner or later, victory will be mine," says Mr. Lebed, 47, who hopes to be a factor in 2000 when Russians elect a successor to President Boris N. Yeltsin.

IT SAYS quite a bit about Russia's unpredictable politics that ultranationalist demagogue Vladimir Zhirinovsky is the parliament's deputy speaker. It says more about Mr. Zhirinovsky himself that although his Jewish relatives perished in Hitler's inferno, he is an anti-Semite who just months ago refused to rise to honor Holocaust victims in parliament. Because his father's first name was Volf, it was long rumored that Mr. Zhirinovsky was partly Jewish. He kept denying it, but has finally admitted his father was Volf Isaakovich Edelshtein, a Polish Jew who ended up in Kazakhstan.

MOSCOW -- Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, resplendent in a high-collared, custom-made jacket as yellow as a Yellow cab, was brandishing a bottle of his namesake vodka and half a hard-boiled egg topped with red caviar."

WHAT A difference a year makes. Twelve months ago, tough-talking former Gen. Alexander I. Lebed was a nightly attraction on Russian television. Newspapers carried his populist pronouncements daily. Now he has disappeared from center stage. So has Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist hothead renowned for his anti-Semitic buffoonery."I was born a winner. Sooner or later, victory will be mine," says Mr. Lebed, 47, who hopes to be a factor in 2000 when Russians elect a successor to President Boris N. Yeltsin.

PUSHKINO, Russia -- It was not a sound-bite kind of day on the campaign trail. Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, the shortest fuse in Russian politics, was not hot. The little curl of the lip that always seems to signal a headline coming was inactive.This suburban Moscow stop by the most active campaigner in Russian politics was a bust.When his black Mercedes and his retinue of burly bodyguards in black leather brought him to the 500-seat movie theater, it was only half-full with a mostly male and unresponsive group -- plus one stray dog patrolling back and forth in front of the stage.

BERLIN -- Russia's neo-fascist political star Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky abruptly canceled yesterday a planned three-day visit to Germany amid a wave of public and political resistance here to the prospect of his presence in the country.Mr. Zhirinovsky had been invited to Germany by the private television station RTL in Cologne to appear on an interview program yesterday.Once plans for the interview became known, politicians from all major national parties in the German capital of Bonn demanded that the program be canceled, and some questioned whether the Russian political figure should even be allowed into the country.

MOSCOW -- The person who terrified the rest of the world by voting for Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky party last week was a youngish man, less-educated and lower-paid than those who chose the parties of reform.This person -- as he emerges from pollsters' profiles -- most likely is not really a fascist now, though Mr. Zhirinovsky himself has been so labeled. But within his soul he harbors all the danger signs.He is a person who will be ardently courted in the coming `D months by the nationalist, anti-reform elements that emerged from the Russian parliamentary election.

MOSCOW -- Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, resplendent in a high-collared, custom-made jacket as yellow as a Yellow cab, was brandishing a bottle of his namesake vodka and half a hard-boiled egg topped with red caviar."

PUSHKINO, Russia -- It was not a sound-bite kind of day on the campaign trail. Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, the shortest fuse in Russian politics, was not hot. The little curl of the lip that always seems to signal a headline coming was inactive.This suburban Moscow stop by the most active campaigner in Russian politics was a bust.When his black Mercedes and his retinue of burly bodyguards in black leather brought him to the 500-seat movie theater, it was only half-full with a mostly male and unresponsive group -- plus one stray dog patrolling back and forth in front of the stage.

It's no accident that the Russian parliament, with its lawyers, limos and members-only elevators, bears such a striking resemblance to the U.S. Congress. "We used the American system as our model," said Fyodor Burlatsky, a former adviser to Mikhail S. Gorbachev and one of the planners of the first post-Soviet legislature. "Your politicians would be right at home here."Of course, that assumes that they come trained in hand-to-hand combat and armed to the teeth.Last year, while members of the U.S. House and Senate were arguing over which weapons to include in the controversial crime bill, their Russian counterparts were busy deciding which ones they should bring to work.

MOSCOW -- A new book by Russian ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky begins with a chilling vision: On a cold November night, a train pulls out of Moscow bound for the far north. The last wagon -- a freight car -- is jammed with Mr. Zhirinovsky's enemies.He does not need to tell his reader where the condemned are going. By his gleeful tone and garish insults, we know they will be disposed of in the time-honored way -- in Siberian labor camps.The train holds the "Who's Who" of Russia's democratic experiment, including the "birthmarked reformer," former President Mikhail S. Gorbachev; the "suckling pig" Yegor T. Gaidar; even the "witch" Yelena Bonner, widow of dissident Andrei D. Sakharov.

MOSCOW -- The United States approved a visa yesterday for ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, astonishing some Russians who thought America was treating an extremist courteously while abusing ordinary citizens.Mr. Zhirinovsky, whose remarks against Jews and several nationalities have led to his being banned from some European countries, has obtained a visa at a time when many Russians are complaining about the visa process at the U.S. Embassy."This is a total loss of a sense of reality on behalf of American authorities," Valery Senderov, a former dissident and human rights activist, said last night.

Most people are uncomfortable with those theories that suggest history is not made by the actions of people but by inexorable forces too vast to discern. They believe that individuals matter.The average truck driver plying the interstates might know little about the course of Russia's re-creation of itself through the current reforms. But he probably knows who Boris N. Yeltsin is. He is that Russian who gives life to politics.Mr. Yeltsin, before he impressed himself so thoroughly upon the Russian mind, came here and captured the imagination of everyday Americans -- even if he didn't get an invitation to the White House.

MOSCOW -- Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, a leading democrat, called yesterday for a broad "anti-fascist" coalition in parliament that would include the Communist Party.It sounded like an echo from an earlier era.Just as a variety of liberal, socialist and Communist groups banded together to fight Hitler in the 1930s, Mr. Kozyrev said the time had come for a new united front in Russia -- to resist the advance of Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, the ultra-nationalist who came out on top in Sunday's elections.

Washington -- As the final tallies of the Russian parliamentary elections trickle in, the surprise victory of the populist nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky Liberal Democratic Party emerged as the most important result after the adoption of the constitution.The message it has sent will dominate strategies and actions among the Russian political class for at least the next few months.Societies undergoing a rapid political, economic and social change are bound to reach reflexively for the certitude and comfort of simple but firmly stated solutions.

MOSCOW -- Russians are slowly beginning to get the hang of President Bill Clinton. Perhaps a splashy summit will complete the job.Most Russians feel about Mr. Clinton's predecessor, George Bush, the way most Americans feel about Mikhail S. Gorbachev. To the average Russian, Mr. Bush was a great world leader who was tossed aside by his countrymen inexplicably and without any warning whatsoever."How does being governor of Arizona prepare him for world politics?" one Russian expert on U.S. politics blurted out the day after Mr. Clinton's election.

MOSCOW -- Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, the insouciant bad boy of Russian politics, swept in and out of the nation's brand-new parliament yesterday looking as though he was having the time of his life.He made nasty remarks about the Americans, the French, the Germans. He spied a Hungarian television crew and tossed a few insults at Budapest. He laughed, he roared, he shrugged, he pounded. In his wake came jostling cameramen and reporters, followed by the big bloc of extreme nationalist Liberal Democrats who have now taken their seats with him in the middle of Russia's new lower house, or Duma.