DBWI: Vladimir Zhirinovsky

I remember reading a book on the Soviet Union's collapse and read of a man named Vladimir Zhirinovsky who led a party called the Liberal Democratic Party of the Soviet Union until his death a week after from a heart attack. Not much is known about him except for founding the party (even his birth date is not known), though I wonder had he survived, could he had become relevant in politics and eventually become president, leading Russia to become a liberal democracy instead of being under the authoritarian rule of Alexander Lebed?
 
Zhirinovsky's pretty obscure but sometimes appears in works by European authors. A lot of people use him as an alternative for the psychotic Neo-Fascist Oleg Malyshkin who still to this day runs the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. Now would Zhirinovsky avoid the rapid Pan-Slavism of the party's current base? Hard to say really, but a lot of what certain members of the Liberal Democrats did in the early 90s would've been out of his control. A massacre targeting Chinese-Russians in the Far East, that left 61 people dead in 1994, was largely covered by the international press; the fact that the shooter was shown to have been radicalized by Malyshkin's views hurt the party greatly in polling for the 1996 elections. There were just simply too many problems with the far-right in the party for it to be a truly democratic establishment. I've noticed that the scant times when Zhirinovsky does appear his rule is best described as a "European Saddam Hussein", with all the depravity and bloodshed such a scenario would imply. I actually doubt that could happen. Not a lot of Westerns know that the Liberal Democrats are still active, though they would seem to be more interested in street fights with Chechens rather than getting Malyshkin elected. As if Lebed would ever allow that. Still they provide good fear-mongering and a way for the current oligarchs to present themselves as "reasonable". So if Zhirinovsky were to have survived, he would be just bread and circuses to distract from the corruption and censorship of the current authoritarians.
 
Zhirinovsky's pretty obscure but sometimes appears in works by European authors. A lot of people use him as an alternative for the psychotic Neo-Fascist Oleg Malyshkin who still to this day runs the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. Now would Zhirinovsky avoid the rapid Pan-Slavism of the party's current base? Hard to say really, but a lot of what certain members of the Liberal Democrats did in the early 90s would've been out of his control. A massacre targeting Chinese-Russians in the Far East, that left 61 people dead in 1994, was largely covered by the international press; the fact that the shooter was shown to have been radicalized by Malyshkin's views hurt the party greatly in polling for the 1996 elections. There were just simply too many problems with the far-right in the party for it to be a truly democratic establishment. I've noticed that the scant times when Zhirinovsky does appear his rule is best described as a "European Saddam Hussein", with all the depravity and bloodshed such a scenario would imply. I actually doubt that could happen. Not a lot of Westerns know that the Liberal Democrats are still active, though they would seem to be more interested in street fights with Chechens rather than getting Malyshkin elected. As if Lebed would ever allow that. Still they provide good fear-mongering and a way for the current oligarchs to present themselves as "reasonable". So if Zhirinovsky were to have survived, he would be just bread and circuses to distract from the corruption and censorship of the current authoritarians.

OOC: ITTL the Liberal Democratic Party is a short lived party which collapses after Zhirinovsky's death, and little is known about the party or Zhirinovsky so people just assume it was a party which stood for liberal and democratic values based off the name.
 
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