Zhirinovsky

IMAGINE a country that has recently undergone devastating inflation, humiliation of its military, territorial losses, large-scale unemployment and an attempted coup d'etat.It gives about 25 percent of its vote to xenophobic and authoritarian parties that claim fundamental hostility to its fragile constitutional order.The country was Weimar Germany in early 1924.Within a year, however, it was on its way to economic stability; extremism was waning, its rocky beginnings apparently overcome.Six years after that electoral breakthrough, the Depression settled in. Foreign policy issues fed rancor and revanchism, and in September 1930, Germany's National Socialists sent a shudder through Europe by jumping from 2 to 20 percent of the Reichstag.

Paris.--The time has come for Western governments to lay off attempting to do good in Russia. The result of their attempts thus far is election of a Russian parliament of irresponsible nationalist majority -- less menacing to Russia's neighbors perhaps than to Russia's own chaotic political society and ravaged economy, but an international menace nonetheless.The success of Vladimir Zhirinovsky nationalist movement obviously has more complicated causes than simply what the West has thus far done in Russia.

The unexpectedly heavy backlash against Russia's democratic reforms and free-market policies is worrisome news. Instead of having a more cooperative parliament, President Boris N. Yeltsin now will have to deal with a substantial number of legislators from extreme right and left who have nothing but scorn for pluralistic democracy and efforts to dismantle the Soviet-era centralized economy.The strong showing of Vladimir Zhirinovsky ultra-nationalists produced instant jitters throughout Europe.

MOSCOW -- President Boris N. Yeltsin described Russia's surprising parliamentary elections as a major reprimand and said yesterday that his government would give more attention to the problems of the poor.Conducting an hourlong news conference, Mr. Yeltsin said that he would not change his economic team or its reform program but that he would broaden the information channels to his office and foster dialogue between officials and the public in keeping with a "new, more open style."Mr. Yeltsin acknowledged the successes of those who had used primitive nationalism, outright lies and even dangerous provocations," but he avoided direct criticism of the person he saw as the major beneficiary of those tactics, Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky.

MOSCOW -- Buffeted by political strife and disappointed in their party leaders, Russians yesterday gave President Boris N. Yeltsin the constitution he wanted but they also appear to have given him a strong opposition in a new parliament.If early results and exit poll findings hold up as returns come in from across the world's largest country, the various pro-Yeltsin reformist parties should constitute the strongest group in Russia's first post-communist legislature, if they can work together.

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.

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.

Santa Monica, California -- Even a slick Hollywood lawyer would have a tough time getting to first base with Vladimir Zhirinosky claim that Alaska should be returned to Russia, but an ''L.A. Law'' hot-shot might have a ball with a claim against the Central Valley of California, and the capital, Sacramento.Such a legal whiz might even induce Mr. Zhirinosky (the new mover-and-shaker in Russia's new parliament) to move in, with two or three dozen of his bully-boy ex-KGB friends, to the sleepy little resort town of Fort Ross, 80 miles north of San Francisco, where he could run up the Russian flag and call for United Nations protection.

First the Redskins move to Laurel. Then Congress.Zhirinovsky is Milosevic writ large, speaking of chickens come home to roost.Hooray! We have a trade deal! And it will be weeks before anyone reads the 550 pages to find out what's wrong with it.Coppin State for the Big East!

Moscow -- So far, Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky has been uncharacteristically mum on the fate of Ilie Ilascu, a man whose death, if it should happen, could come to stand for the defining moment of a resurgent Russian nationalism.That nationalism is suddenly visible everywhere. Mr. Zhirinovsky startling success in last Sunday's elections was emblematic of an emboldened Russian nationalism, not only in Russia proper but among ethnic Russians living in the other former republics of the Soviet Union.